Busy as a Bee

fields of flowers in Holland

I'm excited and thrilled and a bit overwhelmed right now. Raison d'Art is now a reality, but with that comes work and I'm still running the Art-Works business, even though we sold it, we'll stay on and do what we have been doing for the past 11 years until the end of October. But, we have our first trip in July for Raison d'Art and we already have people wanting information on 2011. We need to develop a website and I've got us on Facebook (Raison d'Art if you want to be our friend) and twitter too (same name). I never thought I'd tweet, but I was reading a great article on the 10 things you need to do to market your business and one thing they suggested was to get on twitter and tweet. I haven't updated it today, what do I say silly stuff like "updating facebook"? Do people really care about that?

A few days ago I joined Start A Business in France. A great service run by Valerie, who is french and knows so much about how businesses work in France. It's very confusing. We are going to register Raison d'Art as a French business, probably a EURL. Valerie takes questions, gives great advice and guides you through all the things you need to do to get things going, pay taxes, etc... It's nice to know there is some help out there.

I was using Stumbleupon today, another site I was told to go to and LIKE things, not add anything for my business, just LIKE stuff. I'm not sure how this helps me, but it's fun. I stumbled upon this quote and I had to share.

Stop buying unnecessary things

Toss half your stuff learn contentedness

Reduce half again

List 4 essential things in your life,

stop doing non-essential things.

Do these essentials first each day, clear distractions

focus on each moment.

Let go of attachment to doing, having more.

Fall in love with LESS

Welcome to Raison d'Art

The beautiful village of Cordes

You like the name? We do. Thank Kim, a very good friend of ours for coming up with the name. It’s perfect. So, welcome to my new blog. It's going to be all about our new business, our new adventure, our new life! Some of you followed our adventures when we moved to rural france from October 08-October 09 at my other blog Our Juicy Life. You know how it changed our lives, you know we didn’t want to come back to the states, you know that we were trying to find a way to get back to France. Well, we did it.

So, the first big news is that we have sold our business, Art-Works Studio, where we have taught children the fundamentals of drawing and painting for the past 11 years. The plan is to move over to France and focus on our new business Raison d’Art. Raison d’Art is a unique summer art camp in rural France for kids ages 12-17.

This summer we will be taking 8 kids to rural France. We’ll leave Los Angeles on July 2nd and arrive in Toulouse on the 3rd. Then we’ll pick up our rental cars and drive 1 hour to Le Sivadal our home for the next 14 days. Le Sivadal is a 200 year old farmhouse near Cordes sur Ciel in the Tarn. Cordes is one of our favorite villages. For 14 days we’ll do art, eat great food, have french lessons, visit villages, see a stage of the Tour de France, do some kayaking, rockclimbing, swimming, hiking and zip-lining. We’ll unplug from the busy world. No computers, no cell phones, no texting. Then on the 17th we’ll leave Le Sivadal and spend 2 days in Toulouse (the rose city) where we’ll do some shopping and sightseeing. Then home on the 19th. Hopefully this trip will change some lives.

We don’t just want to bring kids from Los Angeles, we want kids to come from all over the world. Summer 2011 we’ll offer (4) 18 day sessions, starting in June and ending in August. We’ll take a maximum of 12 kids on the trip, ages 12-17. The schedule for 2011 will come out in August and we’ll start taking reservations in September.

This is big. Really big. We are so excited about Raison d’Art and the experience we will be able to give kids. We also super excited about getting back to France as we both miss it every day. Stay tuned.