Manny's Blog

Sharing our French adventure as we live and work and renovate our forever home in the Haute Loire.

All posts in: “Renovating our old farm”

Throw back to summer ’23

I was so excited to share the kitchen progress last blog that I didn’t talk about last summer ! We had the most beautiful long, hot summer last year – a glorious few weeks of all the family here at the same time… and the big excitement of the birth of our second grandson Noah…

We’re in !!

So a few weeks ago, after making sure we had varnished, oiled and treated every bit of the beautiful wood Joe has used to build our beautiful kitchen… we moved on up and started using it ! Words cannot begin to describe how momentous this has been – after years of temporary kitchens, albeit fully…

March winds

Here we are in mid-March already! I guess it’s a good sign that time passes so quickly these days! Or maybe it’s just a sign of getting old! We’ve been working on our home here in Solignac for more than six years now, (we got the keys in January 2017) and living in the house…

The Summer of ’22

September 2022 – it’s been a jam-packed roller coaster of a year so far! My sister Sasha got married; I turned 60 and caught Covid; Oscar turned one and was Christened and and on the same day (June 5th) we lost Joe’s much-loved Dad, Dave. So the year has involved quite a few trips to…

A Blue Skied Autumn and the first snow of winter

Quite a cliffhanger I left you dangling on in June… the night of our darling, beautiful grandson Oscar’s birth. Sorry about that! As always I thought I’d be back to my blog sooner… but as always, it’s taken longer than expected to get back here! Oscar is now six months old (nearly seven months!)- he…

Summer’s been a long time coming

(May 9th) I’m writing from a top floor room in a cosy Parisian Hotel – the windows open, curtains billowing in the warm breeze, and the soothing sounds of the city evoking distant memories of city-dwelling many moons ago! Curfew still in place from 7pm, so hardly any sounds of folks on the street, but…

La Source – build it and they will come!

We have our 3 stars from the Tourist Office… we have our first guests arriving in a few days, through Airbnb, and we are fully booked until mid-March with a summer three-week booking too. Honestly we couldn’t be more thrilled! We’ve given it so much love and attention, and I have to admit to having…

Christmas… so last year!

We had ourselves a Merry Little Christmas here in Solignac – even though we couldn’t all be together physically, we were all with our loved ones, and we were together in spirit. Beth’s Christmas video this year summed up our year with such grace…and her beautiful voice. And with all the difficulties and obstacles and…

Summer on the farm!

As we approach the end of September, I can hardly believe it’s been more than four months since I last wrote a blog! The year of Covid strangeness meant a summer at home, with very little travelling for Joe and I, however we were truly blessed to catch a month with Beth here in France,…