Trip to France - part 2: Giverny

Claude Monet (1840-1926) is one of my favourite painters, therefore I dedicate a separate post to his residence, which is located in Giverny, France.
I have adored this place since my first visit there back to Spring 2002.
Monet found Giverny in 1890 and spent the rest of his life there. After the first some years he gave up to travel difference destinations for looking for topics to his paintings, as Giverny provided everything he needed. If you visit it, you will agree with him completely. The house is pale salmon pinkish with green doors and shutters with an amazing view to the garden. The garden is separated by a road (now you have to use a subway to walk from the upper garden to the lower one with the pond and the waterlilies). The upper garden is full with different flowers, roses, geraniums, sunflowers, dozens of species I have never seen before in my life. The air was heavy with their fragrance, birds twittered among the trees and though the garden was packed with visitors I felt myself extremely calm and contented. People sat on the benches, chatted with each other or simply were mesmerized by the fragrances and sounds of the garden. It is the Paradise itself.
The waterlilies on the pond are in full bloom, whites, pinks and pale yellows, the water reflects the wheeping willows, the sun plays tricks on the surface of the water. You are safe here. It is a different world: peaceful yet vivid. Harsh colours are everywhere: yellows and pinks and magentas, purples, oranges and reds with the thousand different shades of green. Monet wasn't only one of the greatest painter and father of impressionism, he was a great gardener too. If you have a chance don't skip it and visit Giverny. It is about 1 hour from Paris. You can take the train from Gare St. Lazare, the train station where Monet painted the steam some 140 years ago....

Trip to France

I know I didn't posted anything in the last 3 weeks, but I was fortunate enough to take a short trip to France and made some studies to my salon de thé (yes, it included some visits to different Ladurée salons: Champs-Elysées, Chateau Versailles and rue Royal). We accomodated in Paris and took a trip to Vernon and Giverny (to Claude Monet's house and beautiful garden) and certainly Versailles and the Trianon Estates.
Vernon was fantastic with a tiny old town centre packed with half-timbered houses from the 15-16th centuries and a Romanesque - Gothic style cathedral. We took a long walk to the Old Mill and Chateau des Tourelles as well as to the Chateau de Bizy.
Versailles was as magnificent as ever. Though there was huge crowd and people were everywhere, we were able to reach the Trianon Estates before the crowd and spent some fantastic hours there. This was my 6th visit to Versailles, but I'm still amazed and always discover something new what I didn't see before.
Here are some photos about my trip:

The French Pavilion at Petit Trianon

Petit Trianon

Marie Antoinette's Hamlet at Petit Trianon

The Old Mill in Vernon

The Chateau de Tourelles in Vernon

Half-timbered houses in Vernon

See you soon,
Orsi

My "Eco" project - Blackberry Bush Garden Cottage

Ok, I moved on to salty things, but there is no photo yet, so I decided to write about my eco project I built earlier, it is called Blackberry Bush Garden Cottage.
18 months ago I found a plastic bucket, which originally was a detergent container and my neighbour threw it away. I thought about build something from leftover materials and keep the budget really low. This plastic bucket became the base of the cottage. A leftover piece of wood served as baseboard, bamboo placemats did good job as wall covering both inside and outside, the windows were made of an old child-safe picture frame's fake glass (plastic). An unused Ikea birch blind became the roof (it was a hard work to cut it into pieces....). I used some ceiling decoration material to make the box in the garden, the soil is a mixture of grinded tea leaves (boiled and dried first) and lavender flowers. The flowers were made of silk paper and paper coated wire. I made the wrought iron chairs and table (thanks to my former teacher, Alan Hamer). All I had to buy was a bottle of paint and some air drying clay to make the stones outside and the floor inside. So altogether I spent less than 20 pounds to make a cottage with a garden and noone can tell it was made out of scrap I "collected" during the years :)

Flowerbed before flocking

The garden



Someone prepares to paint the garden chair

Rear view

The finished garden

Inside view

The blackberry bush in the back garden

It started with a bucket...

Wood and cardboard

Today is a big day or BIG DAY to be correct. The real work started today. The cardboard and wood panels arrived and cleaned. It will be much bigger than I first thought. When I saw the biggest wood panel, which will be the base of the Salon de Thé I just stared and started to find out how it will fit into the planned space....

I know this photo shows only pieces of wood, but I'm always very excited when I start a new project. You start with  a bunch of wood and board and something totally different: a room or a house will come out of it. Now it is hard to imagine that within 6-7 months it will be a perfectly elegant French tearoom.
I hope you will enjoy this "journey".

See you soon,
Orsi

French Pastries & Dragon Cake

Thanks to the relatively cool and ultimately not summer weather I made some French pastries to my salon de thé.
The left ones are rose and caramel Religieuses the right ones are mini Desirés:

Creamy orange cake slices:

Finally the dragon cake I made to a friend of mine:

the orange stuff is coloured "strawberry cream" (certainly polymer clay),

it represents the flames with some strawberries,

and there are some cream puffs, serve as rocks on the hill.

Gilded Chest

This chest will be a part of my Salon de Thé project too, actually we will see it when we open the door of the powder room.  I thought a lot about the colour, then with a sudden decision I painted it antique gold and used oil paint to give some antique charm to it. The top is pink marble, painted by me. The walls will be covered with white-pink toile wallpaper.

As finally we are blessed with cooler weather I will make food during the weekend (maybe some pastries to the salon de thé), so more photos will come on next week.

See you soon,
Orsi

Secrets Revealed

As I promised, now I post some photos about my newest project.... or at least a part of it:

This will be the counter of my Salon de Thé (Tea room). It was inspired by Versailles, Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette and the famous French confectionary Ladurée. The counter is white marble with antique gold ornaments, and it took more than two weeks to put together. The base is simple wood covered with several layers of gesso (sanded accurately after every layer) and white paint. Making the marble effect took long days, but I think it worth. The whole floor will be covered with marble in the tea room, so I try do not imagine how long will it take to make....This is how it started:



The cakes are not the final ones (not all of them), I have to make more French pastries to fill in the counter, though the pink "Libertine cakes" were made to this project.

From now on I will post photos about the improvement on a regular basis.

I hope you will enjoy this little journey.

See you soon,

Orsi







Something Posh and Something Homemade

Let me clarify something. I'm not only a miniaturist, who makes miniature food. I love food and eating.... I spend time with looking for recipes in cookbooks, stand in the kitchen and cook either use an old family recipe or try a totally new one found on the internet.
The "Something Posh" is my Chocolate box cake, which is actually more a tower of boxes than a simple chocolate box. I must admit I'm a chocoholic... so it was pretty obvious choice to make a chocolate cake, but I wanted to make something extraordinary... and this was the outcome:

The cake is 3 staggering gift boxes, partially open (except the top one) with loose ribbons. The boxes are chocolate cakes covered with blue marzipan, the top of the boxes are separate unfilled cake layers covered with marzipan too. The partially open bottom layer is decorated with a pale blue sugar layer, which incarnates silk paper, and Belgian chocolate stars and truffles pour from the open box. As blue goes particularly well with silver, I used the tiniest silver beads (if we talk about real cake these are edible sugar beads of course) to decorate the cake with them and used some dark chocolate roses to embellish the feminine line. The cake became a big hit, it was published in the Spanish Miniaturas magazine as well and now it is in a loving home in the U.S.
Something homemade: I'm a "berry-fan" too, I hardly can imagine a summer without ripe strawberries, juicy blackberries and without those fresh and perfect blueberries. So it is a faboulous blueberry-mascarpone cobbler (thanks God and the Italian for the mascarpone and ricotta), simple and yummy. It is perfect for a late summer afternoon indulgence with fresh lemonade or tea if the weather turns colder.

My tiny cobbler on the cookbook's photo:



My newest project I mentioned is on its way, but it will take far more time than I thought, so no photos yet.  I hope it will change by the end of the week. Fingers crossed....

Something Salty

After several posts on sweets I decided to write about salty food today. I'm not a meaty person, eat far more cheese and veggies than meat, so here are some cheese-veggies-fruits combo.
I think France has the widest variety of cheeses, mild or sharp flavours, amazing taste.... is there anyone out there who doesn't know at least one French cheese?
Here is a collection with some wine, nuts, grapes and crackers and European cheeses. The cheeses are clockwise from the olives: Brie de Meaux, St. Nectaire, Tomme,  Emmentaler, mild Roquefort and Langres.

Another ultimate favourite of mine: Italian Caprese from juicy, ripe tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, extra virgin olive oil and basil/oregano.



A healthy snack for hot summer evenings: cheese dips with olives, tortilla chips and fresh vegetables (carrots, cucumber, English celery).



Those ones who have a sweet tooth finally I present the dessert: strawberry pies with luscious strawberries and fresh whipped cream. If you are thirsty, I can offer fresh lemonade too :-)



Second serving anyone?

In the meantime I work on my secret project, I hope I will be able to reveal more within some weeks.

See you soon :-)

Sisi Room

I was away and didn't have opportunity to post, but from now on try to post regularly :)

The Sisi Room was made to my little sister and I wanted to recreate the interior design what Sisi liked so much. Therefore different shades of violet decorate the room, as it was Sisi's favourite flower. The wall covered with dark violet silk and wooden panels with gold decor. I cannot say which was the worse: working with silk or making the floor.... Though it was only a small room, I gave up quite soon counting the pieces of floorboard. I can't imagine to cover a whole dollhouse with this.
The wooden box on the sofa hides the visit cards, there are some cream puffs on the tea table and Sisi's favourite: candied violets in a porcelain bowl. There is writing desk in the opposite corner, with ink holder, stationary, a fancy violet quill and a visit card. An oversized pale lilac marabu feather fan left on one of the chairs. The walls are decorated with paintings of Sisi and the royal family.
I don't need to say that my sister cherish her tiny roombox :)