Happy Birthday Karen!

[Cupcake]

Happy Birthday Karen Hope you have a wonderful day and that your holiday was lots of fun. I had no idea that it was your birthday just now, but am sending lots of love and blessings that the year ahead be full of happiness, health and lots of love and laughs. -x-

[Ghost]

Happy, happy, happy Birthday Karen

Hope you have a work free day and lots of pressy

[Trainer]

Happy Birthday Karen!!
Enjoy your special day, thanks for everything you do!! Take care!

[egerandi]

Oh, happy birthday, lady! Hope you have a fab day

[karen]

Ahhh thanks! My birthday is actually October 8th...so I guess today is my "European Birthday". Wonder if I can get hubby to take me out to dinner anyway??

[lcash]

Welcome home, Karen. I hope you'll share some details of your European adventures so some of us can vacation vicariously! And what the heck - Happy Un-Birthday!! Lauren

[karen]

Sarah your new pic is gorgeous! Your skin is just gorgeous...you look lit from within!

It's good to be back...France is absolutely wonderful, but down south almost no one speaks English- so it's fun, but after a while it gets tiring. At one point I spoke it quite well, but I'm pretty helpless at this point. It was really hot there- about 95 every day. It's dry heat, but so is an oven. So we drove around a lot because the car was air conditioned, and saw a lot of cool stuff. The town where my MIL lives is actually the birth place of L'Occitaine, and there are tons of fun things around the area. The extreme highlight of the trip was a visit to Rousselon where they mine oxides. I need to blog about it and post pics because it's in the Alps- so there are fairly tall mountains and hills all around, but when you get to Rousselon they have the same hills- but they're pigment. 100% pigment. It's awe-inspiring- a mountain of red oxide, right next to a mountain of yellow oxide. Just walking through the parking lot my shoes looked like they do after a day at work...just covered. They also had a museum, and I managed to get the gist of how it's all done- absolutely fascinating. Most of the pigments there are for use in art...most weren't approved for cosmetics, but it's still just a gorgeous, gorgeous place.

It was also lavender harvest time and one of the lavender capitols of France is about 10 minutes outside of town. This was our first visit during the harvest time, and oh my goodness. They have fields of lavender and olive groves like we have corn fields...they're just everywhere you look, and at this time of year they're in full bloom. Everywhere we went they were harvesting lavender- and the scent of true French lavender is just incredible. I was never really a lavender fan- turns out I was sniffing the wrong lavender. Provencal lavender is sweet- not sticky sweet, but it doesn't have the camphor hit that so many have- it's lovely, and we got to see a distillery in action. They bail it just like hay- big round 1000 kilo bales of lavender. The still takes 2000 kilos of lavender, and makes about 25 kilos of essential oil. The still sits on a hill overlooking the river valley- in the middle of an olive grove and it's staffed by two crazy Frenchmen. Between the fumes and the sun- they were highly entertaining. It's not something that's really open to tourists- but they're happy to show you around in exchange for a little money to spend at the bar (hopefully) after work. In the states we wouldn't be allowed anywhere near it- insurance reasons- but they let me climb all over the still, and peek inside the vat that separates the oil from the hydrosol. Very cool. We also went to Grasse which is the perfume capitol- but it's a hilly village overlooking the Med and it was super HOT that day. By the time we drove all the way there, it was just too hot to walk around that much, and it was thronged with tourists- we missed the jasmine harvest by about a week, but did have a wonderfully informative tour of a perfume factory.

We also visited the salt flats of Carmague....it's a bit farther south, so it looks entirely different- they raise bulls there, and a couple of towns have a running of the bulls. We have cows all over the place up here, but I've never looked into a field and seen a whole herd of bulls. They're massive, and more than a little intimidating, but beautiful animals- glossy and black with horns that make them look majestic. Most of the area is a nature preserve, and they have wild flamingos everywhere. They're a fun bird to watch. If there was one place I'd joyfully go back to it would be Carmague- camping on the beach. I've never seen a more beautiful beach- it's quiet, not at all crowded. I tried to convince MIL to move there, but she's not going anywhere anytime soon.

We actually drove about 3500 kilometers through 6 countries this trip...so I'm still a little beat, and just starting to catch up with things (including sleep). It was entirely too short- I fell in love with so many different things and don't feel like we got enough time to really enjoy some of the incredible places we drove through (20 minutes in Austria...oh to have stopped in Vienna, but it was at the other end of the country), and cameras just never quite capture the essence of standing on the side of a cliff- almost a mile up in the Swiss Alps, looking up at even more mountains and just feeling absolutely dwarfed by everything around you. We had a fantastic time...can't wait to go back- but I think I need some serious Rosetta Stone sessions.

[Xarata]

Hope you enjoyed your birthday and did something girly!

I love french lavender, i believe that's what the sarafina toner was made of which is why i've never found a replacement (i want sweet lavender not in your face lavender) France sounds like so much fun!

[Ghost]

WOW your description for France ma e me almost buy a plane ticket Sounds absolutely spectacular, glad you had a nice time.


Oh thank you Karen. Believe me the only reason I look good is because of SN. I had just come back from the hairdressers.