paris is well worth a mass.

first things first... ladies and gentleman i am honored to present to you, on sunday, february sixth of the year two thousand and eleven, the one and only brady bunch meets pioneer, plaid-on-plaid, thrifted in france dress.

tah-dah!

if you know me, you know i live for photoshoots. if you don't know me, then you should know i live for photoshoots. glad we got that sorted out. i love taking the pictures, i love being in the pictures. today was one of those days when i just needed a photoshoot. my seventies dress was just asking for its picture to be taken. i wasn't about to let the fact that my usual photographers (j, mind, mal, katie, mom, etc) live on the otherside of the world stop me. i asked my dear roommate emily if she would help a sister out -- and she was totally game. she did a great job! so thanks to her, you now get to look at lots of pictures of me. just humor me and pretend like you are enjoying it...

crazy pose.
love the colors.

a lot of times when i edit my photoshoot pictures they end up looking classier in black and white. i loved that these pictures just screamed for color. what a gorgeous afternoon, and what a beautiful place i live in! this is literally 30 feet away from my front gate. beauty.

after that little extravaganza emily and i decided to forgo our post church naps and do a little experimenting in the kitchen. due to our lack of baking powder, oil, shortening, chocolate chips, non-metric measuring equipment and a few other key ingredients, we were hard pressed to find a cookie recipe that we could use. i was inspired to search for no bake recipes, and we decided to attempt to use nutella instead of peanut butter. so... we had sugar, milk, and butter. we nixed vanilla and cocoa powder. we substituted nutella for peanut butter... and we added a whooollleee lot of oats. all in all we pretty much forwent the whole recipe, but...

family life major + food scientist + nutella = sweet success.

i'm still not sure how we managed to do it (1/2 cup was replaced with... hmm that looks about right, 300g? yeah that feels like it should work) but it worked. and it really really worked. the nobakes set up perfectly! and the nutella made up for the lack of cocoa and vanilla. we were so happy. yum! can't wait to share them tomorrow.

the only measuring device in the house. metric. and most of the numbers are rubbed off. sweet.

our resident food scientist

yum.

our ingredients of choice!

after the nobakes flirty grandson theo and his mom came over (we are still not sure why, nannick was nowhere to be found!) and so emily and i decided to forgo our homework to hang out with theo. he gave us some quality french lessons and helped us with our accents. i can now say the phrase "les oiseaux chantent, et ils sont bleus" almost perfectly. we then took turns playing some of our favorite songs and compared our 'gout' or taste in music. he actually listens to mostly american songs so it was funny to see who he liked (old black eyed peas, kiss, radiohead) and they tried our cookies. they didn't quite get the no-bake concept, but i think they liked them!

after they left emily and i remembered the free museum on the first sunday of the month deal, so even though it was getting late, we decided to see if the museum one stop further was open. we hopped on the RER and got off just in time for it all to close up. so we ventured into the nearby cathedral and sat down on a random pew. just as we sat down, others started filing in. i got up and grabbed a program and we decided what the heck, lets stay for mass! so we did. i actually really enjoyed it. it was a 'messe de jeunes' or mass of the young so all these younger teenagers were doing most of the singing and praying and collecting and the like. they could SING! and the organist was out of this world. there was incense and everything. emily and i were both really impressed at how packed the church was. there were people everywhere, and not just old grand-meres either. families, couples, even single teenagers and everyone participated. it was beautiful. they talked about how we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world and our time to be an example is now. a simple message, and lots of singing. it was nice to know that there really are people who go to church and who are religious, even if they don't worship the same way as me. it was a really enlightening experience. and the cathedral was gorgeous, of course.

lots of information. great sabbath day. i love paris. and seventies dresses. can you tell?