Good Morning Pizzo !

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We made it !
We moved in ! Although the moving truck already delivered tons of boxes over two years ago !

We finally spent the first night in our house in Pizzo !

We survived the night - everything was new ... one moskito disturbed our sleep and the blue movement control light that switches on whenever you move was a bit strange too, but it helped to find the way to the bathroom. The newly aquired matresses, bed sheets and pillows are very comfortable.
But above all, the sound of the waves was fantastic !

The breakfast photo, that looks so beautiful,  is a bit of staging though ... I have to admit....

1) I usually do not eat Choco Pops for breakfast (only today, since I had no other choice).
2) My son, who eats this, however did not want to join me for breakfast in the sun, he prefered the kitchen counter inside
3) CC and Angelo were absent too; they went for a morning walk like always and planned to have breakfast at Belvedere (!)
4) the two espresso cups are empty because the espresso machine had the wrong (Chinese) plug! And the other espresso machine that would have worked, we had forgotten in Vibo Marina...

I am enjoying myself very much! We all do !

Lunch, however, we have again at Hotel Mamma in Vibo Marina, as usual. The only way to publish this post... (I need to find out how to blog with my phone). Also a chance to pack the other espresso machine - and to borrow a dining tabel! Angelo will transport it to our house on top of his car after the siesta.




no title

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For this post I have no title.
Or should I call it "my strangest summer holidays ever" or "lost in renovation"?

Since ten days - this is how long I am now in the South of Italy - I am telling myself, this is only a short phase, we are going to move in soon, tomorrow, maybe, and tomorrow I am telling myself the same thing, we are moving in tomorrow, domani, magnana...

But what do we do in the evening without light in the living room? Or at night in the bathroom? Okay, lets buy lamps. Of course, CC does not want to spend his holidays buying lamps, so we buy all in once... not sure how many dozens we bought in one afternoon – mainly wall lamps (applique).  Is it only our team of electricians or do Italians in general have a passion for wall lamps?

wall lamps for the whole house

Luckily we found a shop similar to IKEA that has quiet a good choice (Semeraro at Lamezia's Due Mare shopping center). Of course we did not only buy lamps. Also adapters, plugs and jacks to harmonize Asian and European lamps and appliances with the two Italian systems of electric plugs we both have spread irregularly all over the house. - And hooks, we also bought lots of hooks and mirrors for six bathrooms...

red bathroom: mirror installed (inherited from mother-in-law),
matching lamp hopefully found
(in this room the camera failures always!)


After the shopping tours, we are now in the phase of installing all the loot. While Angelo is drilling I am sucking the dust with the vacuum cleaner, like an assistant of a dentist. Whenever I have finished dust cleaning a room, new workers appear with something, like installing air conditions or a built-in wardrobe, delivering a wet sofa (it was raining the other day),  a mattress (not wet) and marble sills. Still some wood and ceramic cutting for the flooring downstairs is outstanding -  of course, they promise – they will work outside with closed doors.

seminterrato: kitchen installed, flooring almost completed


Before I get crazy, I escaped with our son to the beach at Pizzo Marina this afternoon.
It was my first time this summer, and it felt so good!


Short excursus: There was this Italian guy at the beach who seemed keen to practice his German with me that he learned 20 years ago in the Ruhrpott.... When he asked me where my husband was, I said that he is working. Where, he asked. At home, I said. At home? He thought not to understand well. But I insisted: at casa, he is installing lamps, I added. - Oh, said the guy, so he is an electrician? I am a bricklayer! And he started to ask more and more questions.... - It was not easy to get rid of him without being impolite. Not sure what kind of reputation German ladies have with some senior Italians. 

Beside my encounter with a slightly annoying admirer, I had a nice and relaxing afternoon at the beach. And I am looking forward to see the progress in the house that happened without me.

BTW, CC said we are moving in tomorrow!!!

black kitten after rain

amazing green sea after rain and wind yesterday

When are we moving in?

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When are we moving in? When will be our first night in the house - after all those years of renovation?!

We do not know!
That's what we ask ourselves everyday.....
We could already, almost.

The matresses are there. Even the matress protections. Enough pillows too. Also some sets of lenzoli, bedsheets, for sopra, but not for sotto, the sheets to stretch over the matresses were sold out at Vibo Center yesterday. But we could borrow one... We also have enough glasses and plates, some towels and clothes. Toothpaste, soap, toilet paper... yes, we could already move in. So what are we waiting for?

Maybe for Rosi, to give us a helping hand... the house has still a bit of construction site and lots of fine dust everywhere.

Angelo has been working non-stop in the last days for the flooring of the seminterrato, the basement. The sawing of the wooden panels still causes lots of dust. And the battiscopa, baseboard for the parquet was just ordered yesterday and will arrive next week. It is a ceramic baseboard and it's cutting will cause more fine dust... So, after another deep cleansing of the house - not sure, how many times Rosi cleaned it up yet - we might give it a try ...

After all these years of renovation, one day sooner or later does not count anymore.
We are not in a hurry.
But maybe a bit nervous?

Do we get cold feet???

Moving out of Hotel Mama???

Ha ha! It must be this!

The laundry will not be washed and folded and ready anymore. The table will not be set up and lunch served just in time after coming home from the beach. Food and drinks will not come out of the fridge automatically and the house will not be cleaned by itself. Oh, my...

Okay, just a few more days... let's enjoy Hotel Mama.

Now, I understand more than ever all these young and not so young Italians, and even the so called "mammone", why they stay as long as possible with la mama!

Hotel Mama in Vibo Marina


Colourful Folly

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From Angelo's pictures that he had sent via email I knew more or less how colourful the house would be. But he did not send me pictures of every corner .... he left surprises for us.

When I entered the house again after three months absence, I felt like Alice in Wonderland... And while opening and unpacking the last boxes and walking ten, twenty times in and out of the living room, I started to feel dizzy. Was this the summer heat - or was this the impact of all those colours?

I imagine painting so many walls and ceilings day after day, all alone, must have become more and more boring for Angelo. And I can imagine how he tried out one colour and another colour. He must have become more and more frantic when shopping for colours - it must have been a kind of colour flush that had overcome him!

"Colourful Folly", I thought, must be the title of a post to honour this work, conveyed from the German expression "der helle Wahnsinn", that leo.org translated into "plain folly".

I count seven (!) different colours

(the blue of the ceiling is different from the blue in the arch (which also is spatolato technique) and I counted the white (border, doors, radiator) as one colour.)


I have some chairs to upholster with some not yet choosen fabric... I guess it need to be very neutral fabric ;-) ... Usually I prefer white walls and play with colours of fabrics, paintings, ceramics, flowers etc. But okay, Angelo was our painting master in charge and this is the South of Italy. Lets first move in and see how it feels. Before getting crazy, I might have to find a brush, as Angelo always says...

the sunlight makes the colour of the window alcove shine brighter