In own bed

This is not my bed, nor even my headboard, but maybe one day it will be. MSTRF's Liber headboard is to my mind the sort of solid, heavy influence required in a bedroom, with a nod to mid-century geometric style.

After two months sleeping in empty flats, spare beds and unused beds, we are finally back in our own. A few weeks of respite while we wait for the four insurance companies to come to enough of an agreement to start the complete redecoration that is needed to rectify the water damage, time to breathe long and deeply.

Thank you dear friends, for your kindness in the bed department recently.

On the boulevard St Germain

Two weeks living in St Michel was lovely, and just around the corner is the chic shop of chocolate artist Patrick Roger. The windows are always whimsical, in a Left Bank kind of way, note the little chocolate conkers - when I took these photos, Autumn was on its way. Now it is here.

The chococlate honeycomb is a reference to his new range of chocolates, produced with the honey from the beehives he has kept since October 2009, in the garden behind the shop, and on its roof in Sceaux.

Nomadic newlyweds

Living in our flat still unlikely for the foreseeable future. On the upside, we are moving around a lot and getting to know areas of the city we didn't know before. Currently at St Michel, not far from the Jardins de Luxembourg, wonderful for a Sunday run. Unfortunately no Internet in our current appartment, but having Shakespeare and Co around the corner dulls the pain.

After a long absence

... we are back. Fabulous and wonderful wedding: done, wonderful and perfect honeymoon: done, returning to find our home underwater: done... In the middle of a complicated insurance claim that will take months to sort out, we are temporarily homeless and mourning the loss of some - thankfully not many - treasured belongings. Most upsettingly, this includes most of our wedding cards, which are being carefully dried out so they can still make it to the scrapbook. Bad times.

Our cheering-ourselves-up stragey includes lots of time spent looking at happy, smiling wedding pictures like the one above, burying ourselves in bed with books and films, and blog wandering to find inspiring pictures of other people's stylish and lovely homes, that have not recently been under 6cm of water. The Someday Blog is a rather gorgeous recent find, set to become a favourite... More suggestions, internet-based or otherwise, for general escapism from the whole thing would be very much appreciated.

A very sweet Sunday

Queue outside the Bistro Vivienne, as cupcake fanatics jostled for their sugar hit

Last Sunday saw the Cupcake Camp at the Bistro Vivienne in the 2nd. A hot, heavy day, so we were glad of the internal courtyard at the back of the bisto once we had filled our boxes...


The day's favourite was rose and pistachio, top right, but the bottom-left with blue flowers won top marks for icing from our group. 4th of July cakes were a little too sugary, check out the real Cupcake Camp winners.


A cupcake dragon by Wedding Cakes Avenue. Great icing!


A sugary, full, waddle back through the gardens of the Palais Royale, we came across an exhibition of designer scarecrows made out of hemp, from the Linen and Hemp Community. Above is the shabby glam Swarovski scarecrow.

Balenciaga and Lanvin.

Martin Marghiela's hairy scarecrow.