Never seen so little snow this time of year!

 I’m putting these here so in other years where it gets a bit thin we can remember how much worse it could be!

More snow needed!

It’s been lovely sunny weather for a few days, and before that a lot of rain. Both of which have been hard on the snow cover. Pretty, but we need more snow!

Here is Poppy doing her best snow dance…

Skiing on sand

The ski area has gone a rather unattractive brown colour due to lots of Sahara sand being blown up this way and they getting washed out of the air as it snowed then rained.

Perhaps it is nice and exfoliating for the skis!

Trip to La Mongie

 Not rented at the moment as we can’t find time with my work.

We are doing a little bit of painting and useful things.

Lovely to have a weekend up there.

Doug modeling a tshirt I made him. We also made the red back for this lights and I made the skiing bunny pictures and Doug just put them all up

Pasta gorganzola for dinner. Healthy!

Lots of walking a little skiing

A sunny day in amongst the rainy ones. Time to go skiing, or really we should call it walking with a little ski at the end!

There were quite a few people around despite the area not really being open. But we went up the (somewhat) shady side and mostly avoided them.

Doug’s tracks!

Poppy ran sooooo far. Hard work in deeper snow!

Now she is very very tired!

It’s snowing!

 In La Mongie, not at home...

I’m busy painting the bathroom and bedroom ready for the day we are allowed to stay up there again. 

Doug has been making various wooden bits for improvements and repairs.

Poppy isn’t tremendously helpful at painting or making things, but she does love the snow.

... and it tires her out nicely so she rests while we do useful things...

Walk above La Mongie

Going to La Mongie to do change overs of the apartment isn’t too much of a burden when we can go for a lovely walk afterwards.

I had the lens of my phone cleaned, but it needs doing again!

Wild blueberry

Kitchen Work in La Mongie

We decided that we needed to put a dishwasher in to the La Mongie flat as people pay quite a lot for the holiday weeks in winter - and also because we want one!

Here's why we need one...

This is the before picture, you can't see very clearly how crappy that bit of the kitchen is, but I wanted  to show the buffet on the left too as the new unit is intended to reflect this.

Doug made the units and cut the tiles, I stuck them on and grouted them. Exciting to learn a new skill.

It was a lot of work as we had to do electrics plumbing and make the unit to size as well as cutting the worktop, fitting the sink and tap and dishwasher.

We will replace the top unit too with one with the same look as the bottom unit. There was a pressure to get it done as we had guests coming in for new year.

We made it in time. Phew! So now we can go skiing...

DIY shops and fixing things

It is the first (and probably last) sunny day in ages, where did we spend it?  In DIY shops!! We were getting stuff for a bit of a kitchen upgrade in La Mongie, but as a fabulous side effect I fixed our kitchen tap at home! It has been getting weedier for a while. Living in London I never considered what is inside a tap. Why would I - any problems call ‘a man’. But life here is different.  We bought a water pressure meter to try to track down the problem. When I took the tap apart to use it, I found lots of little black bits that have obviously been sucked up by the pump at some point and got stuck in the filter (no I didn’t know there would be a filter in there - we had ruled out bits getting through the pump as surely we would see them in the water). I have washed them out and the tap is back to normal. Hurrah! Ok it doesn’t make me a genius, but I am happy to feel that over time we are getting to grips with the challenges of doing everything ourselves (difficult to find a plumber to tackle the oddities of our swamp/spring/eccentric pump water system). It was very hard and stressful at the beginning, but is getting easier with time. It made the missed sunny day feel worthwhile!

Balcony furniture in La Mongie

We are so happy with the bench Janet bought us, that we have bought pretty much the same for the balcony at La Mongie. Loving it!

We celebrated the new furniture with a meal out

The flies were bothering her so I put my hoody over her to protect her. Awww.

 ... and finally on to the new furniture. Here is a lifestyle shot of it (with Eclair)

Lovely

La Mongie apartment curtains and other things

We have been beavering away putting up pictures, making and putting up curtains, cleaning and other useful things in the La Mongie apartment so it is ready for renting in the winter.

New light and pics

Curtains got the bedroom

Newly painted buffet thingy

New living room curtains

Christmas decorations

It is nice when we use the apartment to have it a bit snazzyed up also.

Spruce up at La Mongie

We are busy preparing to rent the apartment in La Mongie. Not quite ready yet though. We need to sort the ignition on the cooker and hang a new light fitting and some more pictures as well as raise the cooker a bit and finish the top part of the new storage unit.

Pic du Midi with Olli

While Olli was here we dragged him up the Pic du Midi despite his fear of heights. He was very brave.

There is a new sky bridge up there.