Wedding Season

    The Wedding Season is almost over (May to end of August?) but to me it's just begun! I will be attending 3 weddings within the next couple of days and they're all going to be in England. We're going to take the train from Paris to London, and apparently the Eurostar train goes underwater? I think I heard something like that... That must be pretty scary. I think it takes around 2 hours so it's not that long. Hopefully I won't start feeling claustrophobic while we're under water, haha.    
    This will be my first time at a wedding and I'm pretty excited! The first one is a family friend's wedding, the second is my Uncle's wedding and the third is my Grandfather's wedding (his second marriage). I'm a guest for the first two weddings but I'm a bride's maid for the last! Luckily I'm bridesmaiding (yes I made it into a verb, hahaha) for the last wedding and not the first since I would have no idea what to do; this being my first time at a wedding and everything. At least this way I'll have some experience before my "big" role. At first I didn't really know what to wear to each wedding but luckily they each had a very descriptive pamphlet regarding what guests are expected to wear. The dresses for the bridesmaids were already picked out too and I'll be seeing it for the first time once we get to London. 
    For now here's a glimpse at me making weird faces (I don't know why...) and a part of the dress I'm wearing to the first black and white themed wedding:

    The bottom of this dress was kind of short so we took it to alterations today to add some stuff to the bottom to make it knee length; more suitable for a church setting, and as stated in the detailed pamphlet I mentioned earlier. Anyway, I'll blog again in a of couple days with pictures from the weddings. Until then, hope you all have a wonderful weekend!   

~ Aurelia Maude

Moving

    My father's work forces us to move every year or two and it's always to some far away place where I have no friends and I haven't even visited before. Therefore, I've moved quite a lot of times in my life and almost always to a different country. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have lived in 7 different countries: Canada, The United States, England, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and now France. Fortunately all the countries we moved to spoke mostly English so there wasn't much of a language barrier until we moved to France. My father's Russian and my mother's Swede but I don't know how to speak either of their native languages! All I know is English and a bit of French, haha. 

    

    I was born in Monaco (I kind of counted Monaco as France so I said 7 countries but Monaco is its own principality so I guess I've actually lived in 8 countries, not 7) and the first time we moved from there was when I was 3 to London, England. We moved from London to Cape Town, South Africa when I was 5 then from South Africa to Cottesloe near Perth, Australia when I was still 5 (a few months later). We moved away to New York when I was 8 and then to Anchorage, Alaska when I was 10. We moved to Tauranga, New Zealand when I was 13 and then to Toronto, Canada when I was 14. Finally, we moved to France about a month ago at 15.  

  

    Here's a simpler version:

1. 1996 - Monte-Carlo, Monaco    
2. 1999 - London, England
3. 2001 - Cape Town, South Africa
4. 2001 - Perth, Australia
5. 2004 - New York, USA
6. 2006 - Anchorage, USA
7. 2009 - Tauranga, New Zealand 
8. 2010- Toronto, Canada
9. 2011 - France

    I know reading all this you must be like "Oh my gosh doesn't she ever get to rest!?" well it's not as bad as it sounds; I mean 2 years is enough time to settle in. The worst part of having to move so often is that you never get to make any close friends. I've been the "new girl" my entire life which isn't always a bad thing but I never get to talk about things we've done in the past together with my friends. It's always a clean new slate each and every time. There's always someone asking about your weird North American-British-South African-Australian-New Zealand accent, hahaha. Moving isn't completely awful though. It's fun to move into different houses with a new atmosphere, and by the time you're starting to get bored of it... We move again!     


~ Aurelia Maude

                

My First Award

Jumping for joy!

    I would like to thank sweet CutestPrincess of It's A Girl Thing for presenting me with my first and only blog award: The 'One Lovely Blog Award'!! I can't believe I'm already winning awards and my blog is barely a month old. I was actually kind of scared when I found out I was nominated because I had no idea what to do!   Thank you so much CutestPrincess, what a surprise! 

    

The Rules Are: 

- Link back to the person who gave you the award

- Complete the form below

- Tell seven random things about yourself 

- Nominate 15 bloggers


Questions:

Name your favourite colour: I don't really have a favourite colour but if I had to choose one I guess it would  be light coral pink. 

Name your favourite song: Well my favourite artist is Martin Solveig, and if I had to choose my favourite song by him... It would probably be "Hello", you can watch the music video of it here. 

Name your favourite dessert: My favourite dessert is chocolate souffle. I love almost all desserts though, like: pumpkin pie, mango custard, chocolate mousse and more.

What pisses you off: I really hate it when people borrow your things promising that they'll take good care of it and then they ruin or break them. This isn't only once though, they make you forgive them and then they repeatedly do harm.

When you're upset: When I'm upset I can cry, write in my diary, think about the hard lives people in poor countries live (if I'm selfishly upset), or lye on my bed and possibly take a short nap.

Your favourite pet: My favourite pet is a Coton De Tulear. They're so white and fluffy!

Your biggest fear: My biggest fear is to not be able to fulfill my dreams before I grow old.

Your best feature: I think my best feature is my eyes. I've been told many times that they appear to be violet (I think they're a blue-grey). Maybe because I'm a redhead, the lack of pigmentation in my skin affects my eyes too? 

A picture a friend took of me and photo shopped the background so my eyes stood out more 

Everyday attitude: I always try to see a silver lining to every cloud. Which also means that I try to make the best of any situation. 

What is perfection: I think perfection is being beautiful inside and out, getting outstanding grades at school, having loving friends and family, and most of all: being happy.   

Guilty pleasure: My guilty pleasure is dark chocolate and spicy foods. I know they both cause pimples but I have to have a bit of both each day! 

7 Random Things About Me: 

1. I dream of becoming an architect or fashion designer some day.
2. I am extremely terrified of spiders, but I don't mind mice and non-poisonous snakes, hahaha. 
3. My Hollywood crush is Daniel Craig 
4. I love sauces and I can't properly enjoy a homemade meal without Tabasco Sauce (original, chipotle, or Asian), spicy ketchup (if there's potato fries or hamburgers), salad dressing (I really like Renée's Italian or Mediterranean), and soy sauce (on rice usually).     
5.  I love to cook and my favourite dish is Pad Thai. 
6. I'm actually surprisingly good with technical things like fixing computers. 
7. I've lived in 7 different countries.    

The blogs I nominate for the 'One Lovely Blog Award' are:

Sous Ta Chaussure  

Opium Poppies 

Nina Says Hello

Frills and Thrills

I know I should nominate 15 blogs, but I don't know that many since I'm still pretty new! I hope you all enjoyed learning a little more about me and congratulations to those I nominated!  

~ Aurelia Maude

Rainy Mornings

My body decided to wake up early today and not go back to sleep. So here I am blogging on a Sunday morning at 6 a.m. because I have nothing better to do. Did I also mention that it's raining outside? The soft pitter-patter of raindrops on windows and the slightly louder noises coming from our skylight. It's kind of eerie knowing that I'm the only one up at this hour. I have this all to myself until 7 a.m. when the caretaker gets up to do his usual errands. I know it's not long but it's the most peace and quite I get through out most of the day.

The rainy sky at dawn from my window

     Well besides not being able to sleep, I've been getting beauty tips from my mother. I recently started getting a few pimples on my face and my mother said that it was because I don't drink enough water. So now I'm on an at-least-7-glasses-of-water-a-day diet, hahaha.

Me drinking water, to prove that I'm hydrated enough

(The flash from my camera nearly blinded me in this one, that's why I look like I'm glowing, hahaha)

EDIT: I thought I posted this at 6 in the morning but I just noticed that it wasn't posted on my blog, so here it is, 18 hours late.

~ Aurelia Maude

New Pets

    I love animals but unfortunately my parents both think the opposite. I've always wanted a cat or a dog to play with since I always got lonely being an only child but my parents never wanted to hear any of it. Now finally, after we moved away from the city.. I can get a pet!!! I'm so excited!! Unfortunately it can't be a cat or a dog.. But we have some stables near the house so I can get horses! I used to take riding lessons back in Canada so I know how to ride them but I have no idea what to look for when buying them.. I guess I'll have to do some research... Speaking of animals, I went to the farmers market a couple of days ago and I bought two baby chicks! I might post pictures of them later. They're the most adorable things ever! I named them Chick and Pea (the bigger one Chick and the smaller one Pea). They're living in a big cardboard until I can find them a place more suitable.
    Aside from baby animal stories: my tutoring has been going well Je pense que mon français est plus bonne qu'avant. So what do you think? I don't know if that's 100% correct grammar but it will have to do, hahaha. My parents also got me a nanny... I know right? A nanny for a 15 year old!? It was a matter not worth arguing so I'm going to have to suck it up and move on. My dad's almost never home he's always out working or in his study and my mother does her own... Stuff (whatever it is she always does)...so I guess a nanny could keep me company until school starts and I make some new friends. My piano and dance lessons have ended until September 6, so I have a lot more free time to blog and take pictures!
    That's about it! Hope you guys are having an awesome week so far and I'll blog later!  

~ Aurelia Maude

The Specifics

From the pictures I posted a lot earlier today, I guess you can tell that the furniture we have in our house isn't very "up to date". My mother's going to fix all that though. She likes the more contemporary style, but since we moved into a Louis XIII style home built in 1878, it's going to be a little tough for her to completely change over a century of history. I like my room just the way it is, a soft elegant style if you can see it properly in the photo (sorry for the bad lighting from the windows). She said we could meet in the middle though, maybe that classical modern style that's pretty in right now? Anyway, more about my house:

-  It's a Louis XIII style château (although it's quite a bit smaller than the others we vsited when looking to buy a house) built in 1878.  

- It's in a residential village about 50 km from Paris and in the middle of a 33,000 m2 park by the Seine river

- It's been completely restored

- There's 8 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms on 800 m2 or 8,608 sq. ft. (I know it sounds big but all the other châteaux we looked at were 20,000 sq. ft.+ and that was way too much space for only 3 people and a small staff!)

That`s all about the new house, I`ll write again real soon!

~ Aurelia Maude

Interior Photos 2

The continuation of the interior photos. Post 2 of 2

The master bedroom dressing area

Another bedroom

The master bedroom bathroom

Another bathroom

The bathroom on the third floor

Decorative ceilings

Decorative little paintings above some doors

And last but not least... My room and bathroom!

Well I hope you guys enjoyed the pictures! I'll write a follow-up post a little later about the history of my house and how my week went. Write to you later!!

~ Aurelia Maude

Interior Photos

Hi everyone!! So I promised that I would show you the inside of my house a super long time ago but I've been very busy this past few weeks so I didn't get the chance to. Well, I finally took all the pictures and with out further ado.. Here they are! (For those of you who're wondering what I'm doing up at 5 a.m. I'll talk about that in another post.)   Post 1 of 2

Inside the pool house

The great room

The breakfast room

The other side of the great room

The sitting room

The dining area (if you're wondering why it looks slightly more contemporary, that's because my mother already "fixed" the furnishings into something that better suites her tastes)  

The main staircase

The drawing room

The main floor kitchen (can you tell how lightly it's been used?)

The lower floor kitchen (the one our cook uses)

The family room

The music room

The library

My father's study

The hallway

Guest room

Guest room

Bedroom on the third floor

Bedroom (some bedrooms have bathtubs in the same area)

Guest room

Master bedroom

There'll be more pictures in the next post! Post 1 of 2

~ Aurelia Maude

Now Hiring

    Good evening or good afternoon - it depends on where you are in the world, maybe even good morning? Again, sorry for my absence. Not much has been going on and I didn't want to bore you by talking about what I had for dinner. Speaking of food; my mother finally found a cook so we're free of dried processed food, hahaha. We also now have a caretaker living in the caretaker's house I showed in my earlier post. It was about time, since our gardens and yards were starting to look a bit like a jungle. To keep the inside of the house looking sparkly, we also hired a maid's  service that come by every week to do some thorough cleaning. Once a week is fine since we're a family of only 3 people and we don't live very messily, but this excludes my father's study, hahaha. My mother isn't an avid cleaner and even if she was, cleaning our entire house would've taken forever! Now that I come to think of it, I never really explained my house to you. I'll try doing so in another post for those of you interested in Napoléon III architecture and history.
     Enough about the house, now about me; hahaha. I started my ballet classes again yesterday at a local dance studio (I was amazed at all the things the town has to offer in where I used to call "the middle of nowhere"). The language barrier isn't that bad since I learned all the positions in French in Canada so there wasn't much of a difference. My piano classes started today but I'll actually be going every Tuesday, today was just an odd "starting" day. My piano teacher know a bit of English so understanding is fine in that as well. To get rid of this "language problem" my father hired a tutor that will come 3 times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) starting on Monday. She'll be kind of homeschooling me for 2 hours and it will also help me learn French. I'll be taking something like FSL (French as a Second Language) after school starts but until then, this is just to give me a head start.
   Wow, I said I had nothing to talk about but I guess I had everything to say! Hope I didn't bore you out of your wits. Will type soon!

~ Aurelia Maude