good french manners start young!

My first experience of the French school system was, of course, when my babies started at nursery school.  Inevitably I compared to the system I had known in the UK.  Many things were different, some I liked , some not.  This happens when you travel, you end up wanting the best of all worlds!!

A detail that I always found charming was  on the list of items required by the child starting a new school year was a 'porte-serviette'.  A napkin holder.  At our local nursery and primary school, every child had to bring their own napkin for use at lunch time in the school canteen.

Each Monday morning, the child was sent off to school with a clean napkin (complete with sewn on name label) in their -also labelled - napkin bag.   Each Friday afternoon, the napkin was returned home in the school bag to be laundered over the weekend.   During the week the bags were kept in a basket in the classroom and distributed to each pupil after they washed their hands, on their way to lunch.

I soon discovered that there was a sort of pride and tenderness put into the confection of the napkin bags.  They had to be pretty, easily identifiable, a little lunch-time  reminder to our offspring that someone at home was thinking about them.

I found some of these old napkin bags at a brocante this weekend, not really antique, but nicely vintage.  You can find them in my shop, inexpensive little 'souvenirs de France'.

Read More

Columbus Dispatch: More people signed contracts to buy homes in Feb.

The story is here

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More Americans signed contracts to buy homes in February, but sales were uneven across the country and not enough to signal a rebound in the housing market.

Sales agreements for homes rose 2.1 percent last month to a reading of 90.8, according to the National Association of Realtors' pending home sales index released Monday. Sales rose in every region but the Northeast.

Signings were 19.6 percent above June's index reading, the low point since the housing bust. Still, the index is below 100, which is considered a healthy level. The last time it reached that point was in April, the final month people could qualify for a home-buying tax credit.

Contract signings are usually a good indicator of where the housing market is heading. That's because there's usually a one- to two-month lag between a sales contract and a completed deal.

But the Realtors group also noted "a measurable level of contract cancellations" that also occurred in February. Many buyers canceled after appraisals showed the properties were valued much lower than their initial bids.

A sale is not final until a mortgage is closed.

"Therefore, the latest pickup in pending home sales and mortgage applications might not necessarily end up in a measurable pickup in mortgage closings and translate into an increase in existing home sales," said Yelena Shulyatyeva, an analyst at BNP Paribas.

The pace of sales varied from region to region. Signings fell 10.9 percent in the Northeast. They rose 2.7 percent in the South, 4 percent in Midwest and 7 percent in the West.

High unemployment, strict lending standards, and a record number of foreclosures are deterring would-be buyers, who fear home prices haven't reached the bottom.

Sales of previously owned homes fell last year to the lowest level in 13 years. Economists say it will be years before the housing market fully recovers. The rise in foreclosures has pushed the median price of previously occupied homes to its lowest point in nearly 9 years.

New-home sales have fared even worse. Americans are on track to buy fewer new homes than in any year since the government began keeping data almost a half-century ago. Sales are now just half the pace of 1963 - even though there are 120 million more people in the United States now.

Read More

Columbus Dispatch: Home prices falling in most major US cities

The link is here

The actual press release and data is below

Blogger note: They do not track Columbus, Ohio and all real estate is local. Your neighborhood might be very different.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Home prices are falling in most major U.S. cities, and the average prices in four of them are at their lowest point in 11 years. Analysts expect further prices declines in most cities in the coming months.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday shows home prices dropped in 19 cities from December to January. Eleven of them are at their lowest level since the housing bust, in 2006 and 2007. The index fell for the sixth straight month.

Home values in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit and Cleveland are now below January 2000 levels. A majority of the metro areas tracked by the index now have home prices at levels dating back to 2003, just as the housing boom began.

The only market where prices rose was Washington, where homes prices gained 0.1 percent month over month.

"The housing market recession is not yet over, and none of the statistics are indicating any form of sustained recovery," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's.

The housing market remains the heaviest burden on the economy, which is showing signs of strength elsewhere. Unemployment benefit applications are at pre-recession lows, consumers are spending more money and manufacturing activity is growing at its fastest rate in seven years.

By contrast, the housing market is coming off its worst year in more than a decade for sales of previously occupied homes and its worst in a half-century for sales of new homes.

High unemployment and tighter lending requirements have kept many people from entering the market. A record number of foreclosures and short sales - when the lender agrees to accept less than what the buyer owes on the mortgage - are pulling down home values. Many would-be buyers are waiting on the sidelines, fearing that the market has yet to bottom out.

"A lot of people are thinking the best thing to do is to stay put or delay until conditions improve," said Jonathan Basile, economist at Credit Suisse Securities.

The pain is not uniform. It is worse in cities flooded by foreclosures and short sales. That includes Detroit and Cleveland, which are struggling with weak local economies. Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Atlanta are reeling from overbuilding during the housing boom.

"Some people who want to buy don't have the time, desire or energy to fix up a foreclosure, so they don't buy them," said Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors Inc. in Miami, where foreclosures or short sales make up two-thirds of the homes sold.

San Diego was the only city besides Washington to show year-over-year gains in home prices, although prices there rose only a scant 0.1 percent.

Washington has stood out for its success in the otherwise tough market. Home prices in the nation's capital are up 3.6 percent year over year and have risen nearly 11 percent since they bottomed out in March 2009. And among the 20 cities, prices there have held up the best since 2000, appreciating almost 84 percent.

The Case-Shiller report measures home price increases and decreases relative to prices in January 2000 and gives an updated three-month average for the metropolitan areas it looks at.

---

Kravitz reported from Washington.

Case Schiller Index March 2011

Read More