FAVORITE THINGS: LITTLE WHITE HOUSE ON THE SEASIDE

Welcome to another edition of Favorite Things!

My guest blogger today comes all the way from Brittany, France.

Many of you know Magali, from The Little White House On The Seaside. 

If not, let me introduce you.

 Magali writes about her adventures and misadventures in renovating 

an old fisherman's cottage on the western coast of France.

In addition to her ongoing projects (always with two cats under foot), 

she takes her readers on walks around French neighborhoods (occasionally getting lost),

shares her decor inspiration (sometimes influenced by TV show sets), 

and occasionally dishes up a recipe (usually enjoyed with a cup of tea).

Here's Magali!

Hi Readers of Mrs Toody Goo Shoes,

First let me thank Amy for inviting me over at her blog for her series. I feel very honoured to be part of it. Should I offer the readers a nice cup of tea to have while reading?

As Amy's blog is much more famous than my very confidential one, I expect most of you not to know me. So let me say a few words: I'm Magali and I'm blonde. Yes, this is very important to this post... Because when I read Amy's email inviting me, I understood the series was about our favourite thing - singular. I began thinking about what I could write about - something I love, but could make an interesting post... I found it and was all proud of myself... Until I got the first post of this series in my inbox and discovered it was about favourite things - plural. I mentioned I was blonde, didn't I? So you had been warned!

Featured: Cottage before any renovation - cat #1

I was a bit unsettled at first and then it struck me the favourite thing I had chosen is linked to so many others that it could still work. I guess if you're reading this, it means judge Amy ruled it worked...

Featured: cat #2

So let's get to the point. One of my favourite things is tea. It might seem a very frivolous choice, but it shapes my life. OK, that was a slight exaggeration... My cats shape my life, then comes tea.

1. I'm French and live in France, but some of my ancestors came from England and settled in France a few generations ago. Nobody knows why but the Englishness seems to show more in me than in any other member of my family. Tea is part of that heritage.

2. I collect dishes. My love for pretty dishes dates back from my high school years. In the town where the high school was located, there was a cute small English shop selling English china. That's when I fell in love. So, you'll see in the different pictures that I have many different tea cups and teapots. I buy them in what we call in France "empty-your-attic" sales, which is a bit like a yard sale. 

3. I work as a teacher and this job is one of my favourite things. It means a lot of work is done at home and lessons are better when prepared with a good cup of tea nearby. Actually, I have a cup of tea near me whatever I'm doing: prepping school work, gardening or painting.

4. Oh, yes, I haven't told you yet, but I bought a few years ago a small fisherman's cottage that needed complete renovation, one of my favourite things (excluding the fact that I constantly live in the dust). I've been working on it ever since and I blog every time something is changed in Cottage (he's a character of its own and he's a "he"). That's why you can see very different ambiances on the pictures as I had fun digging through all my pictures to show different tea cups and teapots I have.  

Featured: a vintage coffee pot transformed in lamp, some Farrow&Ball paint and the first cup of tea my mom gifted me as a young girl.

4. I could try and lie to you, telling you how I drink tea to loose weight and such things I often find on the Internet. But the truth is that I just like it and I like it even better with a cake, or a muffin, or a cookie. You caught that on the pictures, didn't you? I like trying on new recipes or even to create recipes and when they work I share them on the blog. A few months ago, I had to change my diet due to some serious health problems, so I'm experimenting a little, but I still bake and I bet in a few weeks, I'll be able to share some brand new recipes again.

Featured: tea & cookies on my new kitchen counter top.

5. On the pictures, you may have noticed that my cups of tea follow me in every room of Cottage (well, we don't have that many rooms and the bathroom isn't showed, not because I don't occasionally drink tea in my bath, but because this room, being in the middle of renovation, is top secret) and in the garden... Sometimes, I also go out for picnic and of course, my teacups are invited to the party. I'm fortunate to live in Brittany, which is the western peninsula of France facing America (though my Cottage is on the coast that faces England...) and so I'm only a few minutes away from the beach, another of my favourite things.

Featured: a cup of tea and the Channel in the background.

6. Last (but I bet I could get the list going if I wasn't afraid to bore all Mrs Toody Goo Shoes' readers to death and make them all unsubscribe from Amy's amazing blog), I used to only drink dark tea. But I've been reading a lot about plants and their benefits lately. I was forced to do those researches due to my health problems, but unexpectedly, learning about nutrition became one of my new favourite things. So if you come and visit me at The Little White House, you may be offered something as weird as dill tea or achillea millefolium tea. 

Somehow I think I wrote more about myself on this guest post that I ever revealed on my own blog... Thank you, Amy, for this great therapy session!

Wishing the best of summers to all the readers,

Please stop by to say hello to Magali over at

Little White House on the Seaside! 

Favorite Things will be back with another edition on Sunday, August 7!