Assembling Perpetual Paris (And Three Reasons Why We Love It)

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will know that one of the Christmas presents I gave Andre last year was Perpetual Paris by Little Brown Pen - a glorious calendar that can be used one year after the next, comprised of 49 gorgeous photographs of Paris that fit together collage-style:

So the other week we decided to break Perpetual Paris out of its (immaculately presented) box and assemble that bad boy.

First of all we laid out the letters:

And then the numbers:

And filled the gaps with pictures:

So, having made the tough decisions regarding which picture to place where, all that remained was to clip all the squares together. Ahem.

I found it easiest to hold the cardboard square, and then very gently wiggle the clip into place:

It got a little trickier when I had to push another cardboard square onto a clip that had already been wiggled into place:

And even more tricky when I had to clip one row onto another:

In fact the whole process took rather a long time:

Yep, over an hour. But that's really cos I'm a total perfectionist and had to get each square exactly aligned:

I look proud, right? Look! Look! Look at what I did!

Perpetual Paris is so awesome. And I'm sure you wanna see it on the wall, yes? Well, je m'excuse, but you will have to wait just a little longer for that  - we hung it over the desk in our home office, and immediately realised that if we painted the wall dark blue it would make Perpetual Paris look even more fabulous. Before and afters coming up soon - watch this space...

So, here are three reasons why we love Perpetual Paris.

1. It's super-pretty. And it's very entertaining to sit while I'm listening into a boring conference call and try and work out where all the pictures were taken. We think 1, 4, 14, 17 and 22 are from menus (and that 14 is from the same menu as the separate picture) - 25 is from a bottle - 10 is from the Metro - 8 is a number plate, and 30 is a speed limit.

2. It's the perfect colours for our house. We have a very defined colour palette of blues, browns, ivories, creams, and splashes of scarlet in our casa - which is based around a glorious abstract painting created by my artist Grandpa.

Check it:

You see the red splash in the corner of the painting? You see how I placed the red car (the only red photo in Perpetual Paris) in the exact equivalent position in the calendar? Totally unconscious, I swear. It obviously just feels right to me that a red splash should always appear in the bottom left hand corner of an image.

3. It reminds us of Paris:

Photos taken from our most recent trip to Paris for my birthday last year - Notre Dame and the islands, our smiley selves, breakfast (with kir, natch) on the Rue Vieille du Temple, and the view over les toits from our attic apartment in le troisième.

Le sigh. J'adore Paris. And our new calendar. Oh, and if you want a Perpetual Paris of your own, check out Little Brown Pen's shop immediately (if not sooner).

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Berlin's Unter Den Linden - Or, A Love Letter To Paris

Dear Paris,

You know I love you. You're my favourite city in the world. Andre and I are planning to move to France just to be closer to you. My perfect weekend is spent wandering the streets of the Marais from café to bar to restaurant. I have walked down the Champs-Elysées in spring, summer, autumn and winter. I wear Jo Malone French Lime Blossom perfume just to remind myself of you.

But when it comes to magical Christmas lighting - Paris, I'm so sorry, but I think Berlin's Unter den Linden just about has the stylish edge over the Champs-Elysées. What can I say, the way those rope lights highlight the shape of the trees is just uber-fabulous. 

 

I know you'll forgive me, my beloved Paris - I may be having a moment for Unter den Linden, but you know I still love you the most of all.

Alice at Simply The Nest xxxx

A Trio Of Paris Apartments

I’ve mentioned before how much Andre and I adore Paris. We love spending long weekends wandering happily around the Marais – and we always stay in rented apartments, rather than hotels. We tell ourselves it’s all necessary research as part of our Five Year Moving To France Masterplan, which you can read about here.

We stay in different apartments every time we visit, which we book through Lodgis. Today, I’d like to share three very different apartments that we have stayed in over the past few years with you.

This is the first apartment that we ever rented in Paris, about five years ago. It’s in the 2eme, on Boulevard des Capucines. We chose it because it was central, cute, and inexpensive (at the time, it was around 75 euros per night, which left us with plenty of change for mojitos on Rue Oberkampf):

It’s a 23m sq studio with a sofa bed – and I really like the retro styling, and in particular the huge floor lamp. It’s on the fifth floor, so we had great views over the Opera Garnier.

Here’s apartment number two – this one is on Rue St Louis en L’Isle, and is pretty special. It’s 40m sq, with a gorgeous 20m sq roof terrace overlooking Notre Dame:

When we visited Paris in September of this year, we stayed in this apartment in the 3eme on Rue au Maire:

I love the staircase! I think the owners did a great job with the design. They actually built a second ‘bedroom’ on top of the bathroom, accessible by a chunky wooden ladder that looks more like a piece of sculpture. And apart from the lovely styling, it’s one of only four certified organic apartments in Paris.

Again, this apartment is on the top floor, so it had a great view over the (slightly run-down) street at the front, and the Centre Pompidou at the back:

Which one do you like best? I like the price of the first one, the street and roof terrace from the second one, and the location (but not the street) and styling of the third one.

Now I just need to choose an apartment for our next trip – I always say to the landlords ‘oh yes, we’ll definitely be back’, and I do mean it at the time, but there are just too many fabulous apartments in Paris waiting to be discovered….