Happy 10th Anniversary from French Ethereal!

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Happy 10th anniversary, dear friends! I think the past few years I’ve forgotten to even mention that July is my blog’s anniversary month. Probably because I was too busy cleaning, or painting, or just trying to stay cool in July doing things around the house is why. 😉 This year, however, seems like a good time to reminisce and see what changes have taken place while blogging as French Ethereal this past decade…

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Year One – 2014

Ten years is a long time and 900 posts later, I’ve picked a range of posts for you. Bring your cup of tea or coffee and something to snack on as we visit these special posts again. 🙂 Also, feel free to skip around, come back later to click on posts you’d like to read then. “Do you,” as people say today. 😉

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Year one we were still in our second house, the Big House, in California. I had a really large dining/living room which we had laid travertine tiles down over spring and summer a year or two before (around 2012). My kids were just beginning their college years, I was still in my tea group where we’d get together and have lunch once a month at each other’s houses, and that fall we added a new porch onto the back of our house.

My son said, “Mom, you should write a blog since you like to decorate so much.” He was learning about social media in his journalism classes in high school.

So I did. 🙂 I shared laundry on the line, vists to Northern California, our pool and gardens, and how to make a settee cover (parts 1-5)

It was also the year my husband lost his job…. Literally three months after I began posting. 🙁

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Year Two – 2015

In FE’s second year, I shared Southern California’s cold spell, Downton Abbey had a new season (I was just learning about the show from my cousin who worked for WGBH then and they had a Downton Abbey tuxedo party to celebrate.), I was decorating tea towels, sharing roses from our garden, candles and our fireplace.

We were painting inside the house, Mr. Ethereal was still coaching pole vault at our adult kids’ high school and also started substitute teaching during the day to earn extra money as he was not in his usual job at the time.

Towards summer, the house went on the market and in August just as I went back to school, we moved out and…

God was gracious and gave us one last year in California ~ to get used to the idea of leaving and going elsewhere. We lived as camp hosts just as the tiny house movement and RVing was starting to get big. We were “in style,” in a strange way, along with the other camp hosts who were working checking in campers and fishermen every weekend at Riverside Parks’ Lake Skinner, in Winchester, California.

Our Yoda learned to love meeting new people and other dogs there! He made friends with other dogs for the first time, which was really fun. He loved going for long walks then… I miss him…

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Year Three – 2016

Coming into year three, I got to take a boating trip out onto Lake Skinner the Saturday or Sunday afternoon after Christmas,. It was magical! All the wild birds, zipping across the water, seeing the boat launch area. From then on, I loved walking down there when I took long walks…

In spring of 2016, I won a writing contest for the Design Bloggers’ Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I wrote about Monsieur Rabbit Comes to Tea, and I shared our views from Campground C and our incredible camping spot there (above)!

5:30 or 6:00am was a magical time as the sun rose over the Tucalota Hills, part of the 14,000 acres which are Lake Skinner.

That year, we drove to South Dakota for our son’s wedding, toured around the state and antiqued along our way back to California. While driving to the wedding, we stopped at Magnolia Market and saw Chip and Joanna Gaines’ place at The Silos!

And just as we were heading into our second fall at the lake and were really looking forward to an easier time and more time to ourselves ~ a time when the lake basically becomes your home and isn’t inundated with the massive amount of summer campers (just the hardcore ones who love colder weather, which was just a few each weekend). It was then that Mr. Ethereal, my Hubby got a call about a job in Dallas, Texas area…

On the last days of October, I quit my job working at a middle school in Murrieta, California, and so did Charles. He ended his coaching days as head track coach that spring and finished up with his vaulters in the fall (weekend practice group which was year-round) turning them over to a friend. The pumpkins above were the gifts I gave as a going-away present to my coworkers and friends at Skinner.

And we moved to North Texas. 🙂 Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas!!

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Year Four – 2017

Rolling into 2017, Mr. Ethereal was settling into his new job with one of the biggest companies in the world. Interestingly enough, he was gone on business trips to different warehouses for 9 months the year.

We took a summer trip up to visit Peter and Justine in South Dakota; I went to Design Bloggers’ Conference again, this time in Beverly Hills, California, and stayed at the hotel of the same name ~ so lovely!!!

I also had fun blogging as I wasn’t working yet until 2019 so I had a whole series of fairytale posts, like this one:

And we bought a new trailer ~ as you can see above! Now we were living large with five slides and like 200 sq. feet of room, way more than our first trailer. We found permanent spots at Wagon Master RV park & Alpaca Farm, had a Friendship Tea with new neighbors, visited the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, saw alpacas get sheared, drove everywhere finding places to study and shop.

It was a really fun year as everything was new and Texas feels so much like California in its size! I spent the second half of the year doing more crafts like making chair slipcovers.

And then we had the whole chair slipcover reveal, a fall garden tour at our final campsite, and cooked pumpkin chocolate chip bread as we came into fall.

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Year five ~ 2018

KIndness was a running feature in 2018 as I helped a new friend to clean and organize her trailer and several of us helped her throughout the year. A trip to California got back me to visit friends again plus a visit to our storage units.

This year, a running theme was good design and movies such as this post ~ You’ve Got Mail, Bookshops, and Great Design in the Movies. This was a year full of teas and An Afternoon Spring Tea Party is one of them.

This was another year of crafting and a furniture redo of a Hobby Lobby piece, and late in the year, Mr. Ethereal and I went to San Antonio to visit the Alamo and to enjoy the city. We stayed at a lovely hotel:

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Year six ~ 2019

2019 saw us moving into our new home and leaving our Prairie Home ~ this was bittersweet as we both loved the RV but it was time… I was outgrowing the garden and little pallet porch! In March, I drove out to California, stayed a week visiting with friends and met the movers. Driving back just six days later, I got home in time to meet the movers in Texas with my mother-in-law who helped unbox everything.

I also shared a trip to see the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, MInnesota. This was the year Share Your Style began for me, too.

Sunday Sentiments came back and one I shared about Getting Back to the Heart.

Then, I shared a small our home and the beginnings of our backyard gardens. Boy has that changed! That large pot is still in its same spot and an iron fence is right to its right. 😉

A visit to see our daughter in Austin began a favorite pastime of visiting the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I began joining 10 on the 10th as well as Pinterest Challenge during this year. There were more table stylings, and a Roaring Twenties-inspired evening event:

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Year Seven ~ 2020

Covid 19… The year of Covid for everyone across the world. I had it in Jan/Feb. of 2020 but the ER doctor didn’t know what the symptoms were so he didn’t know what to tell me or really how to treat it. I recorded everything I could remember to share with my regular doctor later on where it was eventually confirmed that that was what it was. Then I had it AGAIN in October/November and my body reacted violently.

25 days of hell with usual temps of 103 and worse some nights. I broke out in hundreds of shingles all over my back plus had double pneumonia. Went to the hospital and they sent me home with NOTHING for the pneumonia and then nobody would see me until after 15 days from the initial visit. Talk about terrible medical care! It’s a wonder anyone survived. Medieval blood-letting… How about for you??

But not all was bad that year as we had a lovely dusting of snow the second week of January. For February, I made a Heartsy Garland and later on a baby blanket for a friend at work. There were more teas and I also made my son a huge t-shirt quilt for his graduation from college.

I had fun photographing spring wildflowers around where we lived and also in Central Texas then the United States was shut down and shelter-in-place began to try and stem the Covid-19 plague.

Craft and tea posts kept right on coming since now school was also shut down beginning with spring break. In May, I laid bricks for a trashcan area at the back of our property. Then a trip up to see our 6 week old grandson in mid-May and we got home, woke up and received a phone call… My father-in-law had passed. So one day later, we headed out again to California for two weeks.

His memorial was held at their friend’s home in Sacramento and I snapped pics of their lovely gardens the day before. Coming home, more crafts and fairytale posts abounded in 2020.

Hubby made me a garden bench while I went out for my best friends’ daughter’s wedding. He’s a keeper! And at Thanksgiving, I was grateful to be alive after not much help with being so ill with Covid-19 B version. I really understood how the Victorians took to the sea for respite after long illnesses to recover; it was way into the next year before I felt better.

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Year Eight ~ 2021

We welcomed in the New Year with bubbly and snacks and pizza! There was a little Mardi Gras fun in one post, a visit to Oklahoma with a friend where we found a couple of neat garden nurseries… See that large, upside down terracotta trough? It lives in our garden. 🙂

The rest of the year we celebrated Mother’s Day with a post as I often do, there were more teas and then I began painting our bedroom (three weeks to finish). Styling the cupboard is a favorite seasonal decorating change around here and this year I shared a Marie Antoinette French-Styled Hutch for Mid-Summer.

And we got our new garden shed!!! From then on, it was decorating inside, insulating it while Mr. Ethereal was off on more business trips, hanging paneling when he was home, and starting gardens around the shed. Later that year, I found a new chandelier for our dining room ~ much prettier than the contemporary one the previous owners had there.

We ended the year visiting Judith from Botanic Bleu at her annual Christmas sale. 🙂

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Year Nine ~ 2022

2022 started off with a European breakfast table setting and as we moved into spring, it was all about planting:

We planted a lot in the garden, decorated the hutch indoors and worked on a garden shed for my mother-in-law’s house (in the pouring rain!), and prepared for my daughter’s and my trip to Paris in July…

Talk about another trip of a lifetime! Amy and I LOVED Paris!!! Okay, who doesn’t? For the girl who never takes photographs, Amy took over 1000 while we were in France. She had a great time and I’m so glad she oped to go. We flew in for our niece/cousin’s wedding and it was everything we hoped France would be. <3

Coming home it was back to school and work, but after sharing all of our French fun in posts, I was back working on DIY with adding glamour to a vintage door. Trés magnifique!

I shared our visit to Versailles after the wedding was over and we’d taken the train back to Paris. Towards the end of the year, I shared how to make these salt & pepper snowmen, pictured above.

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Year Ten ~ 2023 t0 2024

Coming into year ten, a Christmas mantel was shared and the super rapid drop in temps as we headed into an Arctic Blast about the middle of January where I talked about insulating plants and overwintering a bunch inside our new shed.

New balloon curtains were sewn for the kitchen, we styled chairs out in the early spring garden as part of a Pinterest Challenge, and then I began painting again.

And our sweet Yoda told us it was definitely time to go. He would push his head against the wall near from his bed tucked into a corner by our tv fireplace in our Texas home. This is a sign that a dog has a headache or a sign of stroke, just as an FYI. He lived a long 18+ years and I kept him alive longer than he probably should have been, but I wasn’t ready. Miss that puppy dog…

Later in 2023, I went on a little thrift store adventure, and I shared more from France…

Later in the fall, I shared my snafu with buying the buffet from our local upscale thrift shop and how the smell could not come out of it. I still need to try stripping it with Easy-Off Oven Cleaner. Heard good things about that. 🙂

We shared an Autumn Cranberry-Apple Crumble recipe, the cutest Halloween Poppers recipe, and a Winter Wonderland Tablescape to finish out 2023.

We had Winter Whites and Soft Pinks ~ A January Birthday Tea then welcomed in the New Year and the coming spring with a spring blooming containers tour.

But the best post I could share for Spring 2024 is my favorite:

Gunning for the Moon: Our Date with the Solar Eclipse, 4/8/2024. Other than when I flew to Germany when we flew out of JFK International in New York City, over Canada and the Arctic Circle, and were flying up around 49,000 feet where you could see the curvature of the earth as the sun was setting in the west, this was tied for the coolest thing I’d ever seen!

Please do check out that post as it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I’m so glad our pilots made sure we would be there for this adventure! 🙂

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And that, my friends, are the highlights of a good ten years blogging. So many different adventures, posts, Christmases and New Year’s Eves and birthdays, Mother’s Days and Father’s Days. Just a decade of amazing things!

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I hope you poured an extra tea or coffee as needed, took a break here and there, and enjoyed yourselves while reliving some of these special posts with me.

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Happiest of anniversaries with many hugs,