4 months....

last night with culinary retreat having dinner in Gaillac

That's how long I've been away from my blog.  I've missed it, but I just haven't had any time to update it.  The first week of June the roller coaster began.  We left for Italy to meet our best friends for a week of catching up, drinking wine, eating good food and hanging out.  It was amazing.  We returned to France with 1 week to get ready for our summer art camps.  We had (3) session this summer, all incredible.

We still rented a house for the summer (hopefully not next summer), which is great but hard on us.  Because of the change-over dates we have to be in on a Saturday and out on a Saturday.  So each session spent 2 weeks at the house and then 2 days in Toulouse.  We basically have to move out of our house here in St. Antonin and then move back after each session, relax for 3-4 days and then move back into the rental house.  It's so hard not having our own house.  We had 22 kids come over the summer, from all over.  USA, England and France.  Every single one of them were amazing!

Session #1

Session #2

Session #3

So fast forward to August 14th.  We are back in our house in St. Antonin and have 2 weeks until our adult retreats start.  Again, we had to rent a house to accomodate everyone.  This time we decided not to stay at the rental house, mostly because of the dogs (no pets at the house), but also because they are adults and we had Steve Edwards for the fitness retreat and Rachael from Chicks with Knives for the culinary retreat staying with the clients.  Easier because we didn't have to move out, but hard because now we were getting up and driving 1/2 hour to the house and then at night we had to drive home.

Visiting Najac

In Saint Antonin for the Sunday market

cooking in the kitchen

Fitness retreat chillin

Yoga at the fitness retreat

One big happy "fitness retreat" family

The adult retreats were very different from the teen retreats, not in a bad way, just different.  We had amazing clients come to both retreats and we made some good friends.  We'll be doing another fitness retreat and culinary retreat in May.  We finished the adult retreats on Saturday the 24th, got everyone to the airport and on their way back home.  Then we came home and slept!

Day 3 - post retreats.  We are still fatigued.  Trying to get back to our normal schedule of working out, bruce doing his art and me focusing on the business.  We had an amazing summer and business is good. Can't ask for much more than that!  Oh, and we are still living in France with no plans to return to the states.

My goal is to update this blog more regularly now that I have the time.   It feels good to be back.

Our last camps at the studio

Drawing the big pepper tree 

Today we finished Camp #13 at Art-Works Studio, our business that we sold in May.  We are Independent Contractors right now, helping the new owner, training new teachers for classes, etc...  The studio had 13 camps over the summer, they are day camps and we do amazing projects with the kids.  I think we have done about 150 camps over the past 10 years.  They are a piece of cake, fun, easy and casual.  We worked a few in June and then 1 the end of July after we returned from our first teen camp in France with our new business Raison d'Art.  Then we took August off and came back for the last 2.  

It's strange to think we will never do another summer art camp at Art-Works Studio.  A bit bittersweet, but we had a good run and it's time to move on.  We had a great group of kids the last 2 weeks.  We had a girl named Emily in both camps.  Emily started at the studio when she was just 6 and today she turned 14!  We are very close with her and her family and it was great that our last 2 camps had her in them.

print by Emily

Abstract Tree

Miles

Next week we will be at the after-school classes, but we are slowly turning things over.  We only have 4 more weeks until we leave for France.  It will be good to see everyone coming back for Fall classes, kids we haven't seen since May.  We are putting out an email this weekend to all our customers letting them know that we'll be moving in October.  Many don't know that we are leaving, for good.

At first it was hard to let go of the studio, it was our baby for 10 years.  But now it's done, it's not ours anymore and we feel really good with the new owner and what she's doing.  She's psyched and excited for her new life as the owner and we are excited and psyched with our new life in France.  A win win for all of us.

NEW BLOG and BUSINESS

So...got a new blog and some exciting news. That's all I'm going to say. You will have to check out the new blog to get all the details. I won't be posting here anymore, so make sure you add the new blog to your favorites. I will say one thing...IT'S AMAZING AND EXCITING.

Raison d'Art