Photography in part by Ari Nordhagen of Amen Photography

Day Two in Paris woke us up to a 5:00 a.m.alarm clock.  I had my hair blown out into big smooth curls (vs my usual afro style) so I got dressed and applied eyelashes.  Ari spent time curling her long black hair.

We took the metro to the Eiffel tower, decked out in fancy dresses with heals in our backpacks.  When we rounded the corner of a building outside the metro, we were presented with a gorgeous misty view of the Eiffel Tower.  BREATHTAKING!

We quickly got dressed into heals while my hair curled up tighter and Ari’s went straight.  Thank you humidity.

Ari has shared a couple of the final shots on her Facebook fan site and I will host a blog post with more photos soon.

We accomplished the whole shoot in about 15 or 20 minutes.  We could have gone on but more people were arriving and we were a bit of a spectacle.  Strangers really wanted to use her camera to take our photo for us…no thank you.  The guards with machine guns were kinda cute though.  We were totally tempted but refrained from asking to take a photo WITH them.

Back to our hotel to change and then downstairs to our little coffee shop where we ordered deux cafe au lait and chocolate croissants, our breakfast of choice.

Top of the list for the morning was Le Cordon Bleu.  We had looked into their schedule of classes as part of our prep work but most of them were all day and we decided this would take up too much time.  Our visit was a bit disspointing as we had hoped for nicer gift shop or perhaps a viewing area or restaurant like the one in Sonoma California.  Ari bought an apron and we headed back to the metro.

While walking through Paris, we came across so many beautiful doors.  I look forward to gathering these photos together into some sort of collage.  I know, I know…they are doors.  But you have to remember who you are talking to here…

A little cafe coaxed our tummies to order two slices of pizza to go and a GiAnT macaroon.  One of the memories I will always have of Paris is the ease in availability of healthy food.  When hunger struck we never had to go far to find a fresh salad or baguette with meats and cheeses.

We enjoyed our little snack or “first lunch” as we sometimes called it while sitting in a park with a beautiful statue of a mother nursing her baby.

Our next destination was the Luxembourg Castle and Gardens via another cafe where we bought baguette sandwiches to go of course.  Food Food Food.  Food.

The gardens were gorgeous and pink everywhere.  Children could rent sailboats for three euro to push with sticks in the pond.  We found this to be a common past time as it was available at other locations as well.

The gardens also had a pay to enter playground for children that looked so fun it was a bit tempting. Check out the video we took:

Shortly after snacking on our baguette sandwiches it was time for another meal.  A plate of assorted cheeses and a Nicoise Salad paired with white wine and a Stella.  It is lovely dining alfresco however we moved three times just to avoid being inches away from breathing secondhand cigarette smoke as an appetizer.

The next destination on our list was the Notre Dame.  Celebrating it’s 850th birthday, our entrance was complimentary.  The intricate architecture was astounding.  Ari lit a candle inside for her grandmother as we walked a big loop inside admiring all the stained glass and carved tombs.

After the Notre Dame, Ari and I enjoyed the most delicious banana and chocolate crepe.  I’m sorry to admit that we apparently neglected to photograph this momentous occasion.  I believe this may be the only food we did not photograph while in Europe.

Little alleys near the Notre Dame were home to tourist shops, book stores and just about any kind of cuisine you can imagine.  We found ourselves lured into one where we enjoyed people watching with an evening cocktail while entertaining ourselves with the camera…again.

We did a little more shopping before heading back to our hotel, armed with a fresh baguette, meats, cheeses and pasta salad to stock our fridge for midnight snacking.

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Photography in part by Ari Nordhagen of Amen Photography

Super excited for my travels, I took the 9:00 flight to LAX from the Reno/Tahoe airport.  Our Paris flight wasn’t scheduled to depart until 3:45 and so I originally thought I would have lunch with friends in LA until the furlough went and messed up my plans.  Ari joined me early at the airport so indeed I did have lunch with a friend.  I took some time to write a little note to each of my children and husband to be mailed before we left the country.  Ironically they arrived only one day before the Paris post card I sent many days later.

We were way early for our flight so what better way to spend our time then taking photos with pay phones…like a museum of archaic technology.

Riding in style…our plane was an Air France Airbus A380-800.  This thing had a spiral staircase in the rear and as the flight attendant said, “Everything on Air France is free.”  Tons of movies, alcohol choices and well, I guess that’s enough to be pretty cool in my book.

We settled in after some minor discrepancies with the man sitting in our seat.  Uh, no, we don’t want to trade you for the center seat.  Everyone was happy in the end after a couple adjustments were made and Ari and I “moved in” for the night.  Notice the two masked passengers behind us?  They kept making me wonder if they knew something I didn’t.

For the duration of our flight I was able to amuse myself with the view from one of three cameras positioned on the outside of the airplane.  Fantsy Pantsy this aircraft was awesome…but I guess when you are sitting in the same seat for nine hours anything can rock your world.

We flew into the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris where a couple artsy items really captured our photo lenses.  This curved wall had tiny panels of wood on the wall and ceilings.  Apparently they have a whole art gallery available to passengers past security.

Wall o plants.  I know!  This is like my dream wall.

After waiting at the wrong baggage terminal for longer then I would like to admit, we took a 52 Euro cab ride to our hotel, Mercure Arc de Triomphe Etoile.  It was quite nice and perfectly located in the middle of a nice shopping district, a couple blocks from the metro.  Turning the lights on required inserting our room key card into a slot on the wall.  You retrieve the card upon leaving, turned off all lights.  Love it.

We freshened up a bit and set off to find a cafe. It had long been decided that we would eat our way through Paris and Barcelona so eating remained our top priority.

May 1st is Labor Day in Paris so most shops were closed.  There were however flower stands set up on nearly every corner where they sold Mugeut des Bois, Lilly of the Valley.  Also known as “Ari’s birth month flower” they are the special symbol of love that French people give to their loved ones every May 1st.  Airport greeters gave these to us when we arrived in Paris.

Our first cups of coffee in Paris. I ordered an espresso and then proceeded to ask for cream after it’s arrival.  Tsk Tsk…don’t do this.  Our waiter widened his eyes and cocked his head, followed by some french word for “after???”  I quickly learned to order correctly, my drink of choice is a cafe au lait which honestly isn’t really a cappuccino and it definitely isn’t an American Latte.  For the sake of argument I’ll just translate it as “pure heaven.”

The cafe we decided upon, Dada, was located directly across from our hotel.  We ordered a Croque Madame and a Croque Monsieur.  Ari has strolled down the Croque path before however I honestly had never heard of it. It was delightfuly tasty. (And thankfully most subsequent menus during our stay had an English translation).

Cafe seating consists of little tables and chairs that all face outward towards the sidewalk.  Ari and I enjoyed all kinds of people watching, especially this sweet lady that almost had us abandon our meal to assist her in crossing the busy street.

Bicycles were available to rent at little public kiosks on the roadside, called Velib’.  They were located all over the city and you can rent and then drop off at another location.

Compact cars were also available to rent from a domed shape sidewalk kiosk called Autolib’.  It took us a whole block to figure out this little building’s purpose.  ATM? Phone booth?  Wha?

I’m not sure what our pay phone obsession was all about but we felt inclined to photograph them.  We never saw anyone using the phone itself, but the booths were sometimes storage facilities for bags and bedding owned by the homeless.

Crazy American photographing cigarette butts.

And another crazy American is photographing someone photographing cigarette butts.

Beauty was everywhere.

 Continue to Day 2

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Packing for Europe

Day 1 – Travel & Paris

Day 2 – Eiffel Tower, Luxembourg, Notre Dame

Day 3 -

Day 4 -

Day 5 -

Day 6 -

Day 7 -

Day 8 -

Eiffel Tower Photo Shoot

Europe in Retrospect

Signs

Sitting on the floor of my daughters closet folding clothes, I received a text from my friend Ari:

I immediately phone her and she describes the Eiffel Tower photo shoot she wants of her in a red dress.  I call Dan and proceed to describe my “business opportunity.”  Fifteen minutes later we buy our tickets.  I’ve never been to Europe and could not foresee myself planning a trip in the near future so I decided to just go for it and think about the details later.

I took a head spin into the specifics of packing and prep work, but soon recovered and was able to push off my travel anxiety and just enjoy the exciting news.

A month before our trip I bought the Lonely Planet Guide for Paris and Barcelona on my iPad which also worked out great on my iPhone.  I’m not a big planner and before our trip I really only scrolled through the photos and travel tip sections.  While abroad however, the search feature on the Lonely Planet Guides were helpful on many occasions.

I get a bit anxious for travel and have been known to back out last minute.  I knew this would not be an option so I found myself extensively researching what items to pack.  The more prepared I felt, the more my mind felt at ease. Besides planning our complete wardrobes, Ari and I wrote up a basic travel itinerary for each day, leaving a lot of time for exploring and people watching.  We seemed to have similar priorities for our vacation so our relationship as travel buddies felt promising.  I kept thinking that if we returned and were still speaking with one another, that our trip will have been successful.  I will spare you the suspense and tell you now that we came home planning future adventures together.  Yes I love my husband and I enjoy our travels together, but….well… He won’t share his food with me like Ari does.

Ari is a photographer so I left the camera packing to her.  We only used her Canon D Mark III for our photo shoot at the Eiffel Tower.  She was tempted to bring it on our day to Tuileries Garden but a French woman pointed at her while getting coffee that morning and said, “you’re gonna get that stolen.”  So she pretty much stuck to her Canon Power Shot FX 260 and I stuck with my iphone.  We still came home with nearly 2000 photos.  I’ll try not to be too long winded (fail whale already) but I hope you enjoy reading about our adventure as much as I am enjoying retelling it.

Packing for Europe

Day 1 – Travel & Paris

Day 2 – Eiffel Tower, Luxembourg, Notre Dame

Day 3 -

Day 4 -

Day 5 -

Day 6 -

Day 7 -

Day 8 -

Eiffel Tower Photo Shoot

Europe in Retrospect

Signs

We are packing two carry on bags each, one handbag/backpack and one rolling suitcase.  Air France has a carry on weight limit of 26 lbs total.  TOTAL. Although we were nearly set to do carry on only, we have decided to communally check in one bag.  I was prepared to stuff my shirt with my iPad and Kindle, (for check in, not security) while wearing two sweaters and a jean jacket just to save on weight, but it was just cutting it too close.  This is supposed to be vacation right?

To pack as much as we needed and as little as possible, we outlined an idea of our itenerary and made complete outfits including accessories.  Most of our clothes have been kept to a tight color pallet so items can be switched around as needed.  A couple days ago we got together to photograph our outfits hanging out.  It was funny how unintentionally similar some of them were and in fact we had to make minor adjustments so we weren’t too twinsy!

In addition to clothing I am also packing the following items:

I always travel with my DoTerra Essential Oils

Most of the above items will be stored in Dan’s laptop backpack (thank you Dan).  This item is fantastic and features an RFID blocker, anti theft mesh on front pocket and a zipper that clips to a hook.  They have it on Amazon in fun colors too…
Pacsafe Luggage

I love my new travel vitamin/pill case.  I take a pluthera of vitamins, herbs and capsulized essential oils and with this new kit from Lewis & Clark, I can pull out the am or pm vitamin package and take it with me.Lewis N. Clark Am/Pm Pill Organizer

Ari and I plan on hitting up flea markets while in Paris.  We printed off information from a couple websites with specific directions.  We all know what happened last time we didn’t print out directions…

As it gets down to the last hours before departure, I’m keeping a note on my bag with items that I know still need to make it into the bag.  Of course I have a list on my phone, too, that I’ve been adding to for weeks.

Our checked bag contains:

I love my Tempurpedic pillow.  They sell a travel pillow that is half the size of the regular one.  I decided to use an old fake Termpurpedic pillow and make one myself.  After Sharpie markering a line in the middle, I used my electric knife to cut it in half.  Voila.  Two travel pillows.

I decided to upgrade the size of our checked bag when I couldn’t get our travel pillows to squeeze into the smaller red one.  With the extra space I added a couple extra items.

Our suitcase WILL be safely waiting for us at the baggage claim in Paris and we will have nothing to worry about.

Ari had a very thoughtful idea to buy Paris stationary (enough for me too) and we plan on writing and mailing letters to our family members while we are waiting at LAX.  (If we mailed them in Paris they wouldn’t get them till we returned. Postcards will be mailed from our destination in addition to our ‘love letters.’)

Dan and I have hired a nanny to help for the week (in addition to adding drop in days at our youngest’s preschool).  I completed a spreadsheet with instructions for all activities and meals including maps (and sometimes photos) for all locations.  I do this every time we leave the kids and then I file it away in our “command center” notebook for future use.  We are very busy and I’ve been told this is quite helpful.

Wish us luck!  I’ll let you know what I forgot to pack when I get back!

How amazing is this photo?  What an adventure we had in the making of the Wizard of Oz Dorothy photo shoot part one.  Imagine two mini vans, seven children, no cell service and walky talkies that died after ten minutes.

I woke up at 6 am Monday morning of spring break to put my kids in the car for our photo shoot road trip.  I wanted to get to Auburn early enough to have a hike with a friend I hadn’t seen in years, before beginning our caravan adventure with Ari from Amen.  Our departure time was delayed an hour and a half due to the full on blizzard outside my house.  Yes… I said blizzard.  Thankfully we were headed out of the storm towards our destination and after a Starbucks and a bag of donuts we were off.

A nice hike in the canyons of Auburn, California with long time friend Heather was a great way to start our day and get a little exercise before the extensive road trip that loomed ahead of us.  Technically our ‘jaunt’ should have taken us 1 hour and 36 minutes via highway 49 from Auburn, CA to Jackson, CA.  Moral of this story? Assume you will have no internet connection and print out directions before you leave.  The website we found that described the poppy field said it was along side the highway just south of Jackson.  We thought we should double check with someone in town for added assistance in locating our much sought after poppies.  Ari ran into an office building where the front desk person said to turn on old highway 49 and to go through the old down town.  This all resembles what we had previously read so about 40 minutes later we found ourselves at Daffadil Hill.

Which was closed for the season.

And….as you can probably guess from the name… is a hill of daffodils.  NOT poppies.

So when people pulled up behind us, they suggested that we follow the road they came in on because in fact it leads back to highway 49.

Oh great!, A “short cut”.

So off we go down this curvy road for…. an hour… To find our selves indeed back on highway 49 and the town of Jackson.  We drive through the regular town of Jackson (not old town) and are south a few miles when we start to wonder if this poppy field exists…at all.

By now it is getting late.  Shadows are long and we are loosing our light.  We are desperate.  I pull over and we decide to give up and go back to someone’s yard where we think we saw a few poppies.

And then we see it.  High on cliffs at the side of a highway.  Poppies.

Although most have closed for the evening, there are still a few in  patches of sun light.

So here we are…the mini van brigade.  Pulled to the side of a highway with 7 kids so we can get “the shot.”

This is poor Ari cleaning the second explosion of vomit from her son.  The first car seat filling heaves were about 2 hours prior so just imagine how her meandering road trip through the hills of California was filled with the lovely stench of puke.  I offered to help…by tossing her a bag of wipes and standing up wind.

She got “the shot”

And many others…

Of course I forgot the Dorothy basket at home, and I totally blanked on the lipstick and touch of mascara that we meant to give her…. But I’m in love with these photos!  This is just part one as we will do something with a “yellow” brick road here in town and your little dog too…ah ha ha (that’s the kackle of a witch btw).

Back on the road towards our seperate evening destinations, we discovered a “patch” of poppies planted in the front landscaping of a church in Jackson where Ari grabbed a couple more shots.

Only two more hours of driving for each of us after the shoot.  I turned around for Auburn to visit with my sister and Ari headed for the bay area where two lots down from the house she was staying she spotted a field of poppies.

 Also beautiful of course but nothing as special as our field in Jackson.

Please check out Ari’s website Amen Photography and her Facebook fan page.  While you’re there, check out the family photo shoot we did with her last month!  If you’ve been following me on Facebook, you may have heard about my big special trip to Europe where Ari will be my travel buddy!

I am still working on it…

Ever get almost done with something?  Like 80-90%…so it’s nearly completely functional and almost how you want it.  But not quite….so  your tools stay out because it is indeed a project in progress so why put them away, right?

You may remember this photo from Facebook on FEBRUARY 9

Or perhaps this next photo was more memorable for you…I know you like to see other peoples houses messy…

Today:

Woop to the woop I WANT TO BE DONE WITH THIS PROJECT!!!!!

There is an end in sight.  I can sense it…

more to come

(hopefully)

I’m super excited to share that Joanna’s home will be featured in May 2013 Country Living Magazine!

I met her through a mutual friend and enjoyed the opportunity to photograph her home last year.  Photos of her home can be seen by clicking on the Home Tours tab of my website.

I’m super excited thought about my new towels from Ikea.  How cute are these?  They were on sale for $9.99 so I bought four to use for the jacuzzi.  Dan and I love boiling out under the stars, but we are both lazy about putting the towels away.  If my towels match my room, then it just looks pretty when you accidentally forget on purpose to pick it up.  Right?