Yay! Summer has arrived......

Out and about near Chiche!

Welcome back to Bandouille everyone!

Again apologies for the delay in updating you all but we have been wonderfully busy and now that Summer has finally arrived properly getting more work done outside too!

ART/YOGA HOLIDAYS

We've had a few more art holidays between April and now and also a Yoga week here at Bandouille in July which was great fun and very exhilarating too.  Just by having different people here helped put us in a different perspecitve.  We had three lovely girls from Sweden and 3 other guest from the South of England plus their Yoga teacher Liz Warrington. The atmosphere that week was vibrating with peace and tranquility if thats possible. 

The weather although not the traditional scorchio up until now has been comfortable and pleasant for plein air trips and site seeing and overall considering have been very lucky..But looking at the Olympics at this time in London...haven't they been so lucky too!

We were also visited by two lovely American ladies who drove down from Paris and in the time that they were here in France (just over two weeks) they came with just hand luggage…We were very impressed! You can click here to see a compilation of their photos on Youtube.               

Lucy one of the ladies from Colorado even kicked me out the kitchen on the last night to cook for us some Creole Egg Plant which took her 4 hours to prepare and boy was it an interesting experience…Very tasty! And she had great fun doing it too!  Not sure due to the preparation time it will be going on my menu list though.

Having the yoga group here also encouraged me to develop a menu of Vegetarian recipes to see them through the week.  I loved doing this and working out new and exciting and colourful dishes and have now kept that as a format for another vegetarian group/week given that we are now advertising for more Yoga groups to come and visit us here at Bandouille.

We have also now extended our guest accommodation to the gite in the garden for 2/4 people and have installed a shower and sofa bed in the Studio for tutor accommodation so that we can now sleep around 10 people comfortably based on 4 people sharing.

GARDEN

The wet start to the summer sadly did not help with the development of the tomatoes and other such vegtables and this year it seems that we have little to practically no apples.  But we have been blessed with a profusion of little plums called Mirabelles.  Sweet and juicy I doubt they will get further than being eaten fresh from the tree..  Delish!   This is the first time in 5 years that we have got to even taste the fruit. 

MY ART

I have not done as much painting as I normally do but I have been zentangling though which I find very relaxing to do in the evening infront of the telly.  This is one that I just completed and is my largest to date.  Larger than A3 and incorporates loads of images that say Bandouille to me…For example, tiles on the roof, apples, cherries, flowers, rushes, chains, fish, water,  bubbles and many many more.  They are all in there! What can you see?… I also managed to do a quick warm up and paint an old lock from Judiths loose group on Paintmyphoto...Click here for link

Rodders perch!

FISHING

July saw Bastille night come and go and my birthday too..But I am rarely in France for my birthday but we were this year and we had some lovely friends (Rodders and Pauline) over for a couple of days and celebrated accordingly.  Rodders, a keen fisherman took great pleasure in fishing whilst he was here and was thrilled when he caught this perch.  Chuffed to bits he was!.

So with promises of regular updates - honest - we are going into a very busy period until the end of September with both Art and fishing groups.  Very much looking forward to these next few weeks. 

Now off to enjoy some more sunshine and get ready for our next guests and also to wish good luck to the remaining competitors in the future events of our surprisingly wonderful Olympics 2012 and catch up with you again in a couple of weeks.

Please feel free to comment and also visit our pages on Facebook to see all our photos

Adieu!

Bix x