Week Ten

This week has been a very nice quiet one and that is the way I like it!   
K took the motorbike out for a spin yesterday evening and has kindly given me permission to add this photo here.

I just love all the colours of the sunset.  This was taken at the top of our road.  The predicted rain still hasn't arrived and fingers crossed it won't be too bad if it does come.  The road is beginning to move again, (yes, I know, it is a scary thought) and cracks are appearing across it again.

I created a tagxedo heart for a summary on Monday.

I highlighted a forthcoming Spring Blog Festival on my main blog here.  
I reused the image of the almond tree in blossom, as I like it so much!

It promises to be a great event and lots of presenters will be discussing the art of blogging, including Shelly Terrell, Sylvia Guinan and many more.

On Thursday I picked a few flowers to put in this sweet little jug I bought from a charity shop.  I like to add fresh rosemary twigs into the display.

I am keeping a constant eye on the bowl of olives I am pickling.  They were freshly picked off our trees in November and have been in a brine solution since then.  I have to keep checking the taste and changing the liquid from time to time, and tonight I think they are almost ready for eating!  They taste quite delicious and the sprigs of rosemary adds a nice flavour to them.

I recycled some plastic tubs which had contained food and made some plant labels out of them. Nothing ever goes to waste!

I created a Good Luck comic to send to 2 colleagues who are going to China for a few weeks to do some teacher training on behalf of the Lake School. Comics are a fun way to send all kinds of messages.

Our cutter hadn't arrived by Friday so I had to ring the company to ask where it was....It should arive tomorrow.

A lovely Friday evening spent in a local pizzeria with some friends.  It was great to catch up on their news and it all came to the princely sum of 10 euros each.  We had a huge pizza each and wine and beer to drink.  In the UK an equivalent meal would cost up to £20 per head, so prices can still be reasonable in Italy.

For an online weekend activity I created a rose Tagxedo to highlight activities I was doing over the weekend.  

A nice relaxing week, all in all!

Roll on Week 11.

Week Eight

On Monday I finished reading Ian McKewan's The Innocent.  What an engrossing story, and I could not put it down! Here's a link to the storyline on wikipedia.

We finally bought a cutter for the jungle area!!  Now it will take K only a morning or so to cut the 10,000 square metres of long grass instead of a whole week.  We are looking forward to it being delivered by Bartolini, the courier service in the next week or so.

Temporary image source until I take a photo of ours: http://www.tracmaster.co.uk/images/stories/virtuemart/product/bcs-630ws-commander-%26-scythe.jpg 

I was delighted to receive a lovely certificate of appreciation of helping to moderate from Shelly. It really made my day, and I sent her a little message from me with a link to my Muzy blog which had the following but with music..

The Comune men came to do some repairs to our road on Tuesday and it is just a temporary fix, as the road is still too wet to do much.  The worker said it was just to let us be able to get in and out a little bit more easily, so this is a relief.  In the spring, more work will be carried out to make it much better!

Views of the road after the work was done on Tuesday.  It was still looking a bit messy, but it was much better than before!!  Isabella and Samantha can be seen.  Samantha goes for a walk with the dogs every day!

 

The water pipe is visible in red because the water engineers said the land is still moving, so they can only dig it underground once everything has settled. It really isn't a pretty sight at the moment, but it will be improved in the spring, fingers crossed...

The Comune workers came again on Wednesday to add grit and finish the work they had done on Tuesday.  This is the section of 'finished' road below ........

Izzie taking a little break.

 

Samantha having a nice nap after walking with the dogs..

On Friday we went to Chieti, a town about 25 minutes away. We parked the car in front of the local police station.

We had a little wander around the historical centre and we came across some lovely buildings.

A view of the 14th century Saint Antonio Abate church door in Chieti.

I just love the intricate details on the door.

The reason we went to Chieti is because I had fallen in love with a chest of drawers seen on an advert in the local Internet paper, which matched our wardrobe, and so I simply had to buy it!  Here it is in its new home!

It goes perfectly with the wardrobe we already have below.

Mini Me viewing from the outside

On Saturday I posted up my blog feedback on the EVO Crafting the ePerfect Textbook session and created a new comic.

Tamara de Lempicka
Sunday was a rainy day and so I finished reading my book on Tamara de Lempicka, a fascinating artist who led a very colourful and exciting life in the Art Deco period.  She was born in 1898, just 2 years after my grandmother was born.

I like a lot of her paintings, as they are very bold and striking. 90% of her work in the 1920s consisted of portraits. Three quarters of them were of women in various states of attire, and not attired....  Such portraits must have been quite shocking and avant-garde in their day. The portraits she painted of men were mostly of her lovers.  She was described by some as a 'man-eating' butterfly'.

I had no idea that she had befriended the Abruzzo poet and writer, Gabriele d'Annunzio, so she has a vague connection with this region.  That could be why there is a huge poster of one of her paintings in a local cafe....

I like Tamara de Lempicka's quote on the back cover of the book:

"I live life on the fringes of society and the rules of normal society don't apply to the fringes".

 Roll on Week nine!