Shopping in Paris & petit parisian giveaway #2

On my happy wanderings through the streets of Paris I discovered one gorgeous shop after another - sharing some of them with you here...

Textiles and ribbons in Montmartre...

Ribbon: Mercerie Saint Pierre, 6 rue Charles Nodier, 75018 Paris

Fabric: Les Tissus Laik, 1, rue de Steinkerque 75018 Paris

Stationery, ahhh stationery...

Papeterie Laffitte, 27 rue Laffitte, 75009 Paris

Beautiful cards from amazing print & paper workshop Intaglio, where I made new friends in the inspirational owners Stefan and Anna:

Intaglio: 91 rue de Lemercier, 75017 Paris

and 3 rue de Fleurus, 75006 Paris 

Dreamy candles from the original Diptyque shop in St Germain des Pres...

Diptyque, 34 boulevard saint germain, 75005 Paris

It wouldn't be Paris without some gorgeous food shops...

A sneaky crepe or two for the hungry shopper...

(hazelnut chocolate - this one's for you Chrissy!)

Some lovely flowers...

And then to Sennelier, the most wonderful art supply shop on the banks of the River Seine.  Established in 1887, Claude Monet might even have bought his brushes and paints here...

It is AMAZING.  If you go to Paris please please please go there, you will love it!   And come back next week to see what I painted with my lovely new supplies...

******

And so to the giveaway.  The lucky winner of the cute biscuit tin from giveaway #1 in this blog post is...  Cathy!  And I have just realised that she is also known as Tinnie Girl - how appropriate!  Cathy please mail me your address (to bethvnicholls@yahoo.co.uk) and I will get it sent down under.

Petit Parisian giveaway #2 is for the French equivalent of fat quarters, from a lovely textile shop in Montmartre.  You can win one of these...

(each is 0.25m x 1.1m)

Just leave a comment below, and tell us all whether you would prefer to have the red set or the green set and what you would make with it, and I will put your name in the beret for a chance to win!


More Paris posts here:

The most wonderful piece of bad luck
Paris je t'adore
Travelling Light
Random acts of generosity

A Homemade Life

Just wanted to introduce you to this delicious foodie/love-of-things-homemade book 'A Homemade Life', as author Molly Wizenberg has just announced a new book tour of the US. As I am not planning to be in the US in April I sadly can’t go to any of them, so I thought I’d tell you about it instead, so maybe you could pop along and indulge for me! The dates are on her award-winning blog Orangette, along with lots of tasty recipes and ponderings about food and life.

Following the death of her father, Molly took herself away to Paris, a city that ‘held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat’. There she discovered that her heart was in the kitchen, and she goes on to tell a tale of cooking, eating, reading and love (with recipes!).

It’s funny, reflective, inspiring, and you can almost taste the vanilla bean buttermilk cake.  Yum


Other book recommendations for this week:
ART: manolo blahnik drawings - a collection of sketches of some of the world's most gorgeous shoes
ADVENTURE: eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert - 'one woman's search for everything'
STORY: The Open Hand by Chris Cleave - on the back cover it says 'We don't want to tell you what happens in this book.  It's a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it'. I won't spoil it either, just say that it is stunning and shocking, sad and uplifting in equal measure