Home decor, Cook style

Yesterday, an inside joke of ours ended. This Orangina print is a souvenir Chad picked up from a street vendor on a business trip to New York City last year. It got the desired effect; I burst out laughing when he presented it to me. A year prior to that, I was two months pregnant when we left on a trip to France and Switzerland. I was in the throes of morning sickness that lasted all day, and the Orangina totally made me feel better. Part pop, part juice, I swear it was some sort of magic elixir. I had a few queasy spells when we crossed the border from France into Switzerland, but a couple of days later we were back in France and the Orangina was back on the store shelves. I couldn't get enough of it.

For a long time we had been searching for something to hang on the walls in our dining-room-turned-playroom, and we just couldn't decide. We didn't want meaningless box store prints, it had to go with the family-friendly nature of the photos and Curious George prints we already had in the room, and I vetoed the idea of Agassi posters plastering the walls. There was an eyesore of a nail sticking out of the largest wall, left over from the old dining room days, and we stuck the tiny little 5x7 Orangina print on it in jest, almost just because it looked so bad to have something so small hanging someplace so big. Nearly a year later, the print was still there and I think our family and friends thought we'd lost our minds. Relax now, people. We finally got around to ordering, mounting and hanging two prints from a series called Classics of the Tour de France. One is from the 1970s and shows the final laps on the Champs Elysees; the other is from the 1920s and shows the peleton crossing an old stone bridge in Brittany. I think it's fun that there's still something French on that wall and each print measures at least 2x3 ft - the problem of scale has been solved.

The Orangina print is now tucked away, awaiting a new life in The Room That I Will Claim As My Own When We Move. You know, the one that I will get to decorate on my own, and spread out all my projects in on my own, and even lock behind me if I so choose (surely that will foil the would-be Christmas present spoilers). It probably won't come out until then... unless, you know, we someday have another gaping wall to fill.