CHRISTMAS AT THE CASTLE | 2023

Welcome back to Dreaming of a Chateau!

Join us this Christmas Eve for our final episode of 2023. This December the entire family is finally united at Chateau de Puy Vidal. We wrapped the year with some final chateau projects that include landscaping, outdoor lighting, and caretaker cottage transformation into an additional new art studio. Finally, we take on the pool renovation for 2024!

From our family to you on this Christmas Eve, Thank you so much for following our adventures, cheering us on, and encouraging us. Your enthusiasm and support have meant the world to us. We wish you all the blessings and magic for your celebrations today and for the end of the year. Cheers to a magical and wonderful New Year to come!

We have received many requests to share our recipes, and so we launch a place for all the chateau recipes to live. If you have the will and inclination please try them and improve them. All cooks at this chateau cook from the heart and measure garlic with wild abandon bordering on contempt of the original recipe.

https://www.theladyofthechateau.com/chateaudepuyvidalblog/categories/recipes-from-the-chateau

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These are the adventures of Julia, her partner Caroline, her sister Penelope aend her parents Maruca and Robert, an American family taking a leap of faith, living out a long-awaited dream.

Chateau de Puy Vidal is a medieval fortress turned Renaissance castle located in the Charente region of Nouvelle Aquitaine, France. This channel is dedicated to our love of chateaux, old stones, magic, family, and history. We share with you our process of applying for visas, setting up a business, and purchasing a property sight unseen during COVID, all before moving across the world. What happens when your dreams come true?
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Thank you Artlist.io for their amazing library!
Music License and song certificate is granted by Artlist Ltd to Lady of the Château.

Artlist songs in this episode:
Veasceslav Draganov – Blizzard
The-christmasy-sleigh-ride by Frances Andrea
Southside Aces – Little Duke
Jakub Pietras – A Christmas Tale
Want to dance Scene 3 by Maya belsitzman mayan ephrat
Roie Shpigler – White morning

Find Johanna Spinks works at @johannaspinks
https://www.johannaspinks.com/

Whimsical Journey created byRotemMoav

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Welcome to PBI doll a 13th century Shadow nestled in the heart of the shant join my mother my father my sister my fiance and I an American family as we move from New York City to California to the southwest of France this is dreaming of a chatau Oh the little might be here so it’s beginning to be that time Thanksgiving just ended and mama is doing the inaugural removing I love this thing we’re going to fish out all the boxes in the garage and starting to open things and starting to kind of get a

Feel um my cousin Marcela is coming to visit us next week so hopefully we can have it looking a little Christmasy and festive by the time she gets here yeah put a whe the boxes it takes a long time it would take me a long time in the

Other house too maybe we could do something else this year that’s not so white Mama yeah maybe we could do a little richer like burgundy bows and things like that I burgundy but we did a lot of White Wonderland he’s over there but we can pick new places but they look pretty cute

Guarding the entrance right oh I have another one yeah no I don’t know where the house is Julia look how cute that’s so cute when the do open bye Papa thank you Ro how cute so cute they’re kind of broken and beaten up cuz they just so

Many times mom I think we should try out the cool French tradition of cool Advent calendars there’s like a sausage Advent calendar that the butcher saw I saw a makeup one and there’s an amazing makeup one I think Claud does one too so you get like little gifts all December instead of big

Gifts I think that sounds better yeah so will you help me a little bit I I have a huge email to right but I’ll be right there all right to hello where are we this is the tower room we call it the governance room sometimes um but this is right next to

The Lafayette room and um we didn’t used this room for the Retreats last year but we’re trying to get it ready for Retreats next year we’re going to open up a door from the hallway to share a bathroom with Lafayette mhm um and then in here we’re going to make it Cozier

We’re just staging it really quickly to see what it can look like um so we’re going to repaint the floor it’s actually tile that’s been painted um and we can’t just take the paint off we have to yeah we’d love to and make it actual terracotta but that would be awesome

Once it’s painted it strips the finish so you have to repaint it yes we’re going to have to repaint or leave it as is we’re trying to decide if it’s a pretty patina or a gross patina yeah I think it’s gross I think we should

Repaint now that I see it it be pretty if it’s green yeah um and then there’s a little toilet and sink over here we’re going to try to make the toilet work or completely remove it yeah so this is very much a room for one person but it’s

Pretty comfortable and it’s probably the most medieval room we have right now yeah this is the only room with like foly just stone walls and um it has the little medieval seats over here for sewing and looking at the window this is the baby version of the ones in the

Third floor and then down here apparently was a urinal y so you pee and it goes out and down the tower very common in castles which is actually really convenient so you don’t have to have a chamber PT yeah well apparently like in medieval castles like um Henry

VII he’s medieval right he’s like the beginning of the Renaissance so um in his castles they would have to change castles many times quite frequently because um excrement would build up yeah like inside in the boat and everywhere like inside because people the courts were out of control but it was very

Gross back then wow so this is actually extremely sanitary compared to what other places were doing wow y so that’s that’s our medieval Tower room pretty cute I think if we um swap that lighting over there a little bit yeah put a little divider between the

Bed and the toilet definitely I want to redo this it’s like French Countryside but it’s just I’m not feeling chatau when I see it yeah I think it could go in the West Wing somewhere yeah like in the Blue Room that’d be cute I think we should definitely redo the crown mhm but

Make it more old school yeah even that side is prettier I like the darker col it’s kind of nice to lie in here and look up yeah it is I kind of want to put like a little I want to paint this ceiling up there too some

Color yeahum but Julia up there don’t you think you could put like a little painting you can look at in the crown yeah I love it it’ be so cute okay let’s go look at these photos we’ve taken I think it’s great all right so we’ll tackle this

Maybe in January yeah that sounds like a good time yeah Christmas is going to be a lot of work yeah nothing this month yeah okay abent very traditional finished soup WoW tonight penal has made a salmon Dill soup Extravaganza and I love it can is the master of

Soup she’s definitely becoming that not that there was anybody to rival her I tried and we are drinking a s wine that Mom and I got in Bordeaux very nice yeah wow we don’t drink a lot of whites anymore but with the salmon fish it feels very appropriate soia and I

Decided two meals other this week to be yeah right that was so much fun yeah you like that I kept telling everyone that this is like the most fun I’ve had in France in a while oh what was it we just went to Li sonad and it was so much fun it’s

A bunch of food stalls and they sell everything from spices to oysters and beer kombucha and this amazing sausage oh my gosh it’s a sausage so good it’s so good let’s go home and have some know right uh mom and papa didn’t try it just

Julie and me so we need to have them try it and see that we’re not overhyping this it’s actually that good it’s for let own sausage yeah um so we just went in and we had had a bunch of meat and delicious cheeses um and we bought like so much so

Many kilograms of of um spices um yeah anyway this was super fun and we got to meet a lot of people and the the Stalls were super nice to us and this is one of the first times that I felt Fearless in Walking Around by myself and talking to

Vendors and I was even talking to other attend they would um talk to me and Julia while we were talking to the vendor and it became a group conversation and my French still isn’t that good but um I getting much better basically everything wow and I spoke you know

Understandably and I’m coming down the stairs and I smell Carolina just got home from a very long flight and a very long trip ride and Penelope has created a welcome home Feast of hamburgers thank you Penelope my clothes it was from doing Ariel outside in the freezing

Cold this looks delicious and this is my favorite thing on the table it’s an onion and garlic skin um spread that goes on everything but most especially burgers and it’s delicious We get very American sometimes yeah you’re tired brother tired did you sleep no you’ve been coming from New York it’s quite tiring okay I just arrived I just got back from the us yesterday and this is one of the first of three boxes that arrived and I wrote her

Name and then I wrote that’s so cute books jeans shirts cuz of course we sent her with a long list of things we can only get in the US that we miss I sent 90 lbs worth of items this is the first box wow wow it’s amazing I’m PR I’m so excited let’s

See to the office we go another sunny day back it’s our commute we go to the office to work I think your dad’s already waiting for us to chat talk business as we wrap up the final weeks of 202 three we’ve been really prioritizing progress on the actual

Property this winter we’ve been meeting with our electrician our plumber our Carpenters about lots of small projects we’ve been pushing ahead on the caretaker Cottage project transforming it into a beautiful Art Studio we’ve been getting more Landscaping lighting installed throughout the gardens and starting to consider new landscape design addition conditions throughout

The gardens where certain plants have died throughout the intense frosts and heat that chant is starting to get recently and most importantly we’ve decided to take the plunge into renovating our pool this pool was put in during the last large renovation by the former owners in the

1970s and as far as we can tell hasn’t been touched since it’s taken the five of us about months to come up with a design that really improves the proportion and sizing of the pool the overall Aesthetics to match the chatau exterior we added functionality by adding safe

Entrances and benches to better enjoy the pool a beautiful inground spa for up to six people and brand new terracing and tiling locally sourced from a quarry about 10 minutes away so this year we were not able to make it out to a Christmas Market um this is a Christmas Market

Well I mean you know a like a French German border Christmas Market um and instead we’re going to go to Bordeaux All right so we can’t go to Alas this year we’ll do the closest one this is pretty good this is pretty good Bordo We Yeah last time Julie and I were here and Bordeaux was in 2019 right before Co wow we were dreaming about moving to France L I don’t think I’ve ever seen a building like that with every single colum talked by a how did you like bordeau through the day I loved it there’s really cool restaurants there’s great coffee there’s um a lot of interesting kind of Multicultural things like a lot of

American influence and a lot of Spanish influence and we love the tram it’s just a really nice like easy City smaller than Paris a lot more walkable um and the stores are all closer together than in Paris and it just feels like kind of an equivalent town to something like San

Diego or like one of the the more medium cities that we’re used to at home um and it’s so closed we were on the train for 30 minutes we left our car in angulam and now we’re going to go back and pick up our car and go to dinner in angulam

And sleep in our own bed tonight so we didn’t know that was possible to like get some City kind of our city fixed and then go back to the sh out in the same day which is pretty cool which is important we do need our s yeah yeah it

Is important it’s one of the things we miss the most so we’re here packing the family’s gift we decided to get them all the traditional chantes slipper from no other than linos the family who owned and restored this chatau that we’re in and they built their empire on this

Beautiful handmade type of slipper here’s a picture of their Factory a very long time ago and the way it’s made is with this wonderful fabric wool and felt from the region and they make it with the woolly part facing out they hand sew it then they sew this beautiful bottom

Piece on and then they flip this part around inside out they flip it around um I think maybe they add the liner after and then they add the sole it’s so beautiful it says Made In cherant by the RO nose a house founded and I can’t read this it’s a beautiful B

B Lu it’s like Founded something like beautiful like a beautiful time or once upon a time or something like that we’re going to figure out what it means but but and they’re incredibly comfortable it’s like an Ugg it’s been handmade it’s has this really wonderful anti- kind of like traction Soul which is really important

For us around the chatau cuz it’ser and we just haven’t actually tried them out so we went straight to the factory today we got every single member of the family their own slippers including us including ourselves cuz it’s cold um and we’re really excited and then on Christmas Eve we’re going to

Have everone open them and then in France instead of leaving a stocking I think they leave a slipper I think that’s what I understood should have say maybe she meant stocking actually I’m not sure but we’re going to leave our rodino slippers and we put mandarins in them and in France

Apparently that’s the tradition and that’s what you leave for Santa Claus to Fu his Jour instead of milk and cookies super sweet also today we got our beautiful portrait that Joanna painted which we used to market the um Retreat to the shant and she was our beautiful golden woman and so we

Loved it so much we bought it from Joanna to be a collector officially of Joanna spin’s paint paintings and just had a very special place in our hearts because it it was this beautiful feminine kind of Renaissance woman and it really was the symbol of our first really wonderful official Retreat and so

She’s going to hang in our new art studio whether maybe in here or in our new outside one depending on where she looks the most at home home I think she’s going to look the most at home could do you mind opening it sure so we

Haven’t seen it yet and it’s not framed we’re going to have to go on a framing Expedition okay let’s See beautifully packaged oh my God oh my God beautiful oh what a pro wow Beautiful wow thank you Joanna beautiful a dearest Julia and Caroline so many thoughts of The Retreat just wonderful enjoy your gift warmest Joanna Sienna oh beautiful she has such beautiful cards wow oh what a this W brilliant I love that and I’ve always loved this this is true

Gilding oh my God she’s Beau gorgeous oh my God wow oh my God I didn’t real were Jews God I didn’t yeah I’ve never noticed that before wow how beautiful have there always been Jewels how beautiful oh my God it’s New Traditions art panels from Utah oh how beautiful let’s

See she’s beautiful gorgeous we actually know the model too oh my gosh this is a beautiful Julie Wan as beautiful in real life my god wow a true like Renaissance what a great gift Wow so this is what happens every time we leave the chat Pisco is the grandmother so she doesn’t care and the youngans are here like why can’t we go out with you guys And the cats and dogs get along which is wonderful lucky us ready go birthday we’re going to a Michelin star restaurant which is really really cool it’s kind of restaurant they serve you foam with a flavor on a massive plate and you’re really excited about it we’re here for Penelope’s

Birthday everyone’s looking very elegant font B and here’s the birthday girl I just got off a train from Disneyland so I’m looking a little rough she took herself to Disneyland did cuz that’s her favorite thing to do Disneyland is better alone unpopular opinion how old

Are you training I am 29 today wow she’s not too full yesterday that’s very old penal all right let’s Go Oh the knives happy birthday pel welcome back she just got back from Disney it’s my birthday too it’s your birthday too wow you look stunning Too this sounds amazing what is it you don’t eat this you do eat that Charco tell me I would love to tell you what this tastes like to me okay this came in a very Exquisite presentation charcoal black blah blah blah all this fancy French words and then I bite into it and

This is basically a to what is it toso Frito but you know that SNL skit about tosos or Tostitos this is that oh yeah the Tostito rolls yes this is that a square delicious toso French non GMO all the healthy Earth stuff in one bite and what else isn’t there something else

Mushroom with a mushroom with a mushroom filling you said mushroom dip yeah it’s like it’s like eating Fritos with mushroom tip it’s fabulous it’s super Good so this year has been a little slower on getting up and going with Christmas Echo because I think most of us are just fried from the year we have the pressure of guests so it’s it’s meant we just drag our feet season so it’s usually maruka who spearheads 90% of the

Christmas decoration and all of us just go when are you going to decorate when are you going to decorate Anda lost her Mojo and she lost her Mojo this year we lost her Christmas Halloween recently yep we’re still putting Halloween away yeah so so but we’re getting back into

It we also need to Rally around her and help her cuz she can’t do this all alone cuz she’s getting old and Fe like why is it’s over hard to decorate this place it’s true it’s just large so you do a lot of work in wor and then you walk

Around there no Christmas be than any other one right if we can get dining room and living room it’s good yeah for more room so here’s this year’s Christmas tree look at this this is the the center piece for the jingle sorry let’s see show me oh the cat that’s the center

Piece wonderful yeah and then and then there’ll be balls and different things along the way I don’t like these but I need to find other berries that are nice and very very cool these are from the grounds of Po doll it’s a whole thing and there’ll be more stuff connecting it

Beautiful I need to wrap some wire and keep it as that’s a whole Center piece maybe with this like this I’m not sure yet we don’t even know what we’re cooking for Christmas do we oh yeah we are cooking right now all right maruka is making her traditional bakalo we’re

Going to get turkey too bakala for Spain B for Christmas it’s a Spanish dish but the fish christmaseve what you want to do black for Christmas day maybe and then and then um turkey for Christmasy for Christmas Eve with oysters quag B like the full French CH oh wow

Sure sure do you know what I ordered last night from a strawberg company since we didn’t go to strawberg this year I bought two no I wish uh two k Noel the k no remember that fabulous Jam Jar we bought last year yeah yeah yeah

Well we had like we devoured in 2 weeks in January and then I bought a new confiture that is a orange figs chestnuts what what what else was in it wasn’t iter oh [Laughter] Yeah anyway we’re going to try all the confitures the family is kind of sleepy today Saturday I’m telling you it’s hard to get everyone up and going in the this is our Mexican tree okay we can do little chil Here We Go Mama did you see where iina yeah look guys that look

Pretty found the bag so you can put them in here for the doctor beautiful so this year maruka decided to do three Christmas trees the first is the one in the Grand salon which is themed what exactly the Grand salon that’s the French Christmas tree okay and then

The the dining room one is a what sort of the American Christmas tree yeah but it’s it’s more International cuz it has everything basically has a lot of the stuff we had at home right and then there are some things like the Philadelphia one and we have something

Coronado key and then there’s another thing from we should have a liberty belt we have a Philadelphia Liberty belt we have a Philadelphia Liberty Belt look at that and this one is the Mexican tree each wing of the Shad has its own little hot hot hot it’s a hot little tree okay

These are Chile Chile the AR oh my God she’s putting Chile on the Christmas tree look we bought this we bought this in Waka these are made out of tin so pretty and so and this one look like pinata I don’t have anything to really

Make it um like a light at the top or a star I’ll get one my favorite one is this one look at this one look how pretty it has a mirror on it oh there’s me with the phone hello me so I brought back from New York well I

Didn’t bring back these came in a box actually this morning too many too many Chile look at this CH so we can make uh tamales now with this this is Chile to invite Vivian over yeah okay we are in angul doing our Christmas shopping we’re off last minute here we

Go told about the h oh it’s okay Ready That’s so cute this is Fron from this no from This Is The Night Before Christmas Eve and we’re all in the kitchen doing a DIY dinner we picked up some deer at the market good and here we are dear stew dear stew we’re just heating up just heating up stuff from the market it’s so

23rd Christmas Eve is tomorrow do it yourself night do it yourself night after a very long day of working and getting stuff done what are you doing with the oranges oh I’m going to make the cake with best oh the orange cake I’m actually making three orange cakes

One for us maybe four one is going to be two are going to be for us but different recipe and two are for our friends oh very nice hello and our Christmas menu and dinner plan for the next couple of days Christmas dinner will consist of a

French CA style we’re going to do oysters with shallot sauce and champagne then we’re going to move on to f bra and reslinging then we’re going to do turkey with Forest what is it called the stuff the forest Forester it’s like mushrooms from the forest it’s mushroom stuffing with mushroom sauce green

Beans and Penelope is doing stuffing so we’re going to have a lot of stuffing um we’re going to have a red wine from the luberon region that which were just recommended by our lovely friend the wiy that we go to and there’s a cheese course and we’re going to go to mass at

Midnight Midnight Mass and Julia is going to show us a turkey this is a turkey here in France this French turkey oh this is not a interesting this is it’s like wrapped meticulously it’s stuffed already is that a head no that’s this is the wing this is very skinny turkey no this the

Head is cut off this is like the G you know Gourmet version of a turkey French turkey Papa have you seen this yes he was he gig it looks like a and then the buters made this delicious mushroom sauce for us to heat up and put on and

We can doctor it up and it goes with the mushrooms that are in the stuffing it’s a mushroom sauce okay and then our other ker resist stance is our Bush Den Noel oh Bush D Noel so this is our local not local it’s 18 minutes away but this is

The best bakery we have in time in town and this is called a bush IA normally we’re supposed to order this in advance but we forgot this year so we just showed up and asked do you have any busha left and they did and we got one

Of the last ones all right let’s see let’s see this beauty oo this is very traditional in France B Noel what is the translation for B it’s a it’s a log oh it’s a log shape of wooden L usually it’s rolled up it is rolled on the side

This you can see the roll you you turn it onto itself I used to make a pineapple pie cake for my mother and you roll it you put it flat and then you take it and you start rolling at the end and then you see the

Inside yum so and this one I’m going to try my head this one normally it’s like vanilla cake with vanilla cream or chocolate with chocolate cream but this has mad gascar vanilla Anda they often refer in France to Fu Rouge which are just the assortment of red berries like ciss um

Raspberries even throw blueberries in there like just a kind of a bunch of red berries and this one I I can’t wait actually because normally we do like a chocolate dessert on Christmas and it’s so heavy after this huge meal I’m actually looking forward to this kind of

Lighter vanilla fruit flavor and then here’s Wendell Wendell what are you going to ask Santa for Christmas this year really interesting okay well all it will be revealed on Christmas night a he wants A merry christmaseve Merry Christmas what’s different this year huh what’s different is that we’re all together it’s very very nice Papa and penelopy weren’t here last year and we had a very lovely small celebration without them but it feels really nice to have everyone together karolina’s family is

In our hearts and it’s been very lovely that she just got to see them for Thanksgiving and we hope that they’ll be here next year and we’re having a very lovely quiet Christmas very beautiful but quiet and we’re going to go to midnight mass tonight at the Cathedral in angulam

Which we all really love that feeling a very traditional Christmas Even though none of us are practicing Catholics it’s we’re in a Catholic tradition country we’d like to go celebrate that in a very French traditional style tonight and see the inside of the cathedral which we’ve never seen and Mama actually grew up

Catholic so she has infused some of that into our family and we were raised very non- denominational spiritual practicing um from a a tradition that takes a lot of meditation and yogic principles from the East so we embrace all religions and all religious practices and my father is

An atheist but he loves religious tradition he says he’s a non-practicing atheist cuz he loves church because he gets deeply moved by things so being that he is a very um good person generous person kind person he’s a scientist and a scientist non-believer but loves a cultural element and it’s

Very very supportive of those who do believe yeah never was a conflict we’re actually going to do the big Feast tomorrow which we’ve never done before but it’s giving us something to look forward to and it makes tonight be a little bit easier and more about reflection and contemplation and we’re

Having our bakaa tonight which um so we’re going to have that and I think broccoli and some white wine to kind of ease into the Christmas celebrations and then tomorrow is our big turkey meal with oysters flagra turkey bu NOA kolina is in charge beautiful no pressure h no Pressure