Paris in July - 2011

For the second year Tamara from Thyme For Tea and I have decided to come together to host "Paris in July" a month long blogging experience to celebrate our love of all things French and Parisian. We had such a great time last year we can't wait to do it all over again!

For those of you who participated last year the guidelines for the event will be pretty much the same (Tamara and I reserve the right to throw in some surprises here and there1). Paris in July will run from the 1st - 31st July 2011 and the aim of the month is to celebrate our French experiences through reading, watching, listening to, observing, cooking and eating all things French.

Tamara will actually be in France during July this year so she will be able to take us to the heart of things with her posts. Some welcome words from Tamara;

I'm so excited to be joining Karen again in co-hosting the 2011 Paris in July event. This year I will be the French Correspondent, actually on location in France for the month of July. While this will make for interesting administrative arrangements, I am committed to fulfilling my part of co-hosting in this, our second year of Paris in July. My travel plans include some time in Paris, then actually riding my bike along with the Tour de France through the Pyrenees and the Alps from July 11 - 24th then I will be in Montpellier for two weeks attending an intensive French language program. This means I will be able to post on regional cuisine, art, culture and local history and geography. I will also be able to investigate or research any questions participants choose to send me during the month... Imagine what fun we can have with that!

There will be no rules or targets in terms of how much you need to do or complete in order to be a part of Paris in July - just blog about anything French and you can join in. Some ideas for the month might include:

- Reading a French book - fiction or non-fiction

- Watching a French movie

- Listening to French music

- Cooking French food

- Experiencing French art, architecture or travel (lucky Tamara!)

- Or anything else French inspired you can think of...

If you are interested in being a part of this experience leave a comment on this post and we will put together a side bar showing all of the participants. There will be weekly French themed prizes during the month for which we will randomly draw the winners from all the French themed posts of that week that link back to us. We will be writing weekly wrap up posts for you to link your posts to.

We have designed a couple of images to represent our Paris in July experience so feel free to add these to your blog if you are joining us. We will write posts leading up to the start of Paris in July to give you some ideas about what you might like to include and to share the books, films, music etc... that we are planning to experience ourselves during the month.

Looking forward to travelling to Paris with you in July!