La Paponie, Holidays in Dordogne

Every chance we get we try to escape the concrete jungle of Bordeaux at Paponie. Our days remain busy, filled with walks in the forest for foraging mushroom, harvesting fruits and tomatoes to prepare preserves for winter, and enjoying bike trips in the nearby villages.

Let the kids play

Building stories through playscapes is a favourite pastime with my boys and over the years we have amassed quite a collection of wood toys, scarves, felt playmats, crochet grass, sticks, rocks, plastic characters and the occasional rescue from the bin. We are struggling for storage space and at this point I'm not even trying to pretend that the wood toys are for the kids. My eldest is convinced that's all I want for Christmas this year.

Pirate bay with a carton boat from auntie

Lake playscape on a cloudy day

Hedgehog family anxiously waiting for mommy to come back home

Witch castle made with magnetic tiles

Dress and hat in crochet

Mermaids inspired by Greta to discuss solutions for the climate crisis

We are big fans of robins

Too much waste in usual advent calendars

Painting your own wood toys is not so easy after all

This little prince scenery is still waiting for a prince

Piggy back rides for everyone

This little lamb needs a full village to fall asleep

Playmat and magpie from auntie

Jungle playscape with a magnificent flamingo from auntie

This savana scene looks a bit empty

Much better now

Just perfect

Not every wood toy was bought, we even won some

This angler fish from David's Wood Store is just amazing

This witch is worried about the unpredictability of plane travel these days

Especially amazing in the dark

Crowded coral reef

Story telling invitation

Bird watching made easy

Room on the broom

Playscape with a healthy snack

We love dinosaurs but Jurassic trees are even better

Waterfall for dinosaurs

Never enough mushrooms

Small world tidepool

"Kaput les dinosaures" is our sentence of the day for language practice

Bonobo, Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

Cirrus, Bonobo

Glorious mess

The recently introduced subscription to Meta social services was the kick I needed to make blogging great again. So no more sharing of perfectly cropped and subtly filtered images of small joys and great moments of wonder with minimalistic commentary and shameless product placement. Looks like I will have to contend myself with weddings, funerals and reunions to catch up with people. Anyway for a while now my book of faces turned into a dumpster fire of anti-diversity, anti-climate, anti-vaccine, anti-abortion, anti-feminism and anti- intellectual rants. This is a welcomed opportunity for finding a new creative outlet or rather for rediscovering some old ones.