I’m often asked why I called my blog ‘Shutters and Sunflowers.’ To me, they are both so defining of Provence and indeed much of France. Throughout this beautiful country, many of the buildings, whether historic or recently built, are adorned with shutters. And in the summertime, everywhere but especially in …

Contributor blog post by Ashley Tinker: Our Kitchen before and after the renovation If you’re interested in the full Before and After of our house renovation here in Provence; voila! The kitchen, when we first bought the house, was entirely brown. The last time the house had been renovated was …

Contributor blog post by Ashley Tinker: We still haven’t hung any art yet! Soon. Notice we kept some of the blue on the ceiling. The living room reveal from our Renovation in Provence! More photos to come. When we first put this rather large bookcase in the room Robin wasn’t …

Each time I begin a blog post, it seems to start off with “One of my favourite things in France is ….” Sorry about that, but every day, every experience in this wonderful new world of mine seems to be better than the last. One of my favorite things in …

Contributor blog pots by Ashley Tinker: Here are some photos of the rather drastic living room transformation after 8 months of renovation in our tiny provencal home. Tune in next week for the reveal! The original (after we ripped a bit off the wall). That is a rather lot of …

Contributor blog post by Ashley Tinker: It’s been a long eight months of renovation in our tiny village house here in Provence. We had a deadline, as the house was going to be filmed. Ever since the mania of trying to get everything to look presentable we’ve been taking it easy. …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: If it’s not the WIFI, it’s la climatisation. This summer when we arrived at Bellevue, our home in Antibes, I clicked my heels when the little green checkmark appeared on my iPhone beside the name of our WIFI network. It worked! The WIFI actually worked …

Contributor blog post by Ashley Tinker: Up until now, Robin has been doing all of the renovation to standard building codes (he has done some serious homework and seems to be the only person around here actually following the rules). We knew we would always need a little help with …

Contributor blog post by Ashley Tinker: Replacing the steep, narrow and dangerous staircase in our house with a space-effective spiral staircase was always part of our renovation plan. We looked online at beautiful industrial era staircases from Britain and compared those to the rickety plastic structures available at the local …

Contributor blog post by Aixcentric: The town authorities are in sell-off mode, wishing to divest themselves of buildings that aren’t functional and are costing too much to maintain. First up is the Hotel de Valbelle in rue Mignet which currently houses the sous-prefecture. It’s where you have to go for various …