Time to choose a home......

Here are my first ten favorite Italian villas.

All are between 120,000 & 170,000 euros. ($160,000-$240,000 Australian dollars)

All have between 6-10 bedrooms.

All are in need of partial renovation.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think. 

And don't forget to click the Follow link at the side bar to keep updated on my move to Italy.

 

Under construction.......

I'm making some major changes to my blog layout today and adding links to my Etsy & eBay sites.

I am dedicating the whole weekend to listing on Etsy and Ebay so keep checking back over the weekend as I will be having a major sale.

I'm so excited. These will be my first sales added to the Italy house fund.

That has given me an idea.

I'm going to place a link at the side and update the house fund amount as my items sell.
It will motivate me to keep listing!

The more I sell, the more I can spend on renovations!

Whats the word for Willow Tree in Italian?....

I've been thinking about the weird sentences I will probably need to know in Italian. You know the ones I mean. The out of the ordinary ones that are not in the average phrase book.

Something like...

"No that ladder is not long enough. The owl is stuck in the very top of the chimney"

or

"There's something wrong with the engine. It is making this whistling then clunking noise about every 3 minutes or so"

Then I started thinking about walking into supermarkets, post offices and pharmacy's.
What about the train station?

Scary thoughts, I tell you.

And what about the garden shop or garden nursery's as they are called in Australia. I have a hard enough time with everything written in English let alone Italian.
Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that I'm that person who walks in and says "I saw this cottage plant in someones garden on my walk today and it had the cutest cobalt blue flower. Do you know what it is?" Sometime I'll be super helpful and hand the store assistant a leaf that just happen to fall off the plant as I was walking past.

Anyway to save myself hours of embarrassment in Italy I have decided to keep a record of the plants and trees I want in the garden in photo format. I can then print the image and carry it with me to the store and if I can't find it on my own I can produce the photo and Voila!

My first photo is the Willow Tree and the Weeping Willow Tree.



These are a garden must have item.

The Italian language....

My father was born in Italy and immigrated to Australia with his family when he was eight years old.


That's my father on the left with his little brother

He suffered a great deal through his school years as being a little Italian kid with no English skills made him a perfect scapegoat for the bully's of the school. They made his transition from Italy to Australia a living hell and even though he tried really hard and finally grasped the language he never forgot what it felt like to be an outsider.

When he became older he met my mother. They got married and when his first child (me) was born he made the decision to not teach his children how to speak Italian as they were Australians. (he did not want us to suffer the bullying that he did)


My mother and father at 16 & 17 years old

How I wish that those times had of been different. My father is Italian and I cannot speak one word of the language. I'm moving to live permanently in Italy and I have to overcome this language barrier. I need to be able to communicate and besides it's just plain arrogant and disrespectful to expect to be welcomed into a country when you have made no effort to fit in.

So Italian languages classes it is for me. I have enrolled and start on the 28th February.
My father was here on the weekend to visit and I asked him to speak to me in Italian for five minutes. I understood about 10% of what he was saying. Mainly through commonsense but also through the familiarity of the words, as even though he would not teach me I still got to listen to him converse with his parents when I was a child.

Anyway when he was talking Italian to me on the weekend the small stress knot I had in my stomach about the language problem disappeared. The flow of his voice and the comfort I felt hearing the language made me feel like I was home. Not my home from when I was a child but home, deep inside myself.

So no worries, I can do this this.
I don't think I will ever be able to speak a million miles an hour like a lot of Italians do but I am confident that I will be able to ask the builder how much it will be to fix that kitchen wall that fell down last night.
To tell the chef at the restaurant not to serve me anything with poppy seeds as I have a bad allergy and will die if I eat them.
To tell the butcher that I would like my chicken without the feet as they are freaking me out.
To be able to understand directions when I get lost because I just had to see what was over the next hill.
To be able to tell some hot Italian guy that he has the sexy eyes of a gypsy, lips good enough to lick and a body made just for me. (wait a minute. I'm just writing that down in my notebook to ask my Italian teacher to translate that for me as that sentence is important!)

So I can do this. Learn a new language in six months. No worries. Piece of cake

.

Doggone it!

"Dogs have owners, cats have staff"

I use to have a cat so I completely agree with this quote but after trying to figure out how to get 4 little dogs to Italy I need the staff!

As you know I have been looking into the legality's of relocating my dogs to Italy.

I have 3 boys and a girl and only the girl is desexed. Apparently the boys must be done as well. This is good for them as they can fool around with the Italian dogs with no consequences. Cost to me? $150 each for the operation.


They need rabies injections and 2 other necessary injections. Cost to me $110 each dog.

They need to be micro chipped but my vet is a bit confused about this, as if they are micro chipped in Australia and get lost in Italy how will this help get them home? I'll get back to you on this rule but cost to me? $200 each chip.

Airline dog travel crate. I was going to buy soft sided crates because I thought they would be more comfortable for the dogs but on a 20 hour flight hard sided crates are safer apparently. Cost to me $150 each plus accessory's for the crate $15 each.


Plus the airfare for each dog that I haven't even inquired about yet!

Maybe I could smuggle them in my luggage to cut down on costs.


I know they have super hearing as they start barking like mad before I even drive into the driveway. Maybe they have other super powers and they could fly themselves to Italy!


Then with the money I save I could have a beautiful Ballroom in the villa like this one.

10 to-do lists and still going...

So, 4 hours ago I started making to-do lists AND I'M STILL GOING!!!!! I am trying to categorize them from most important to least important but everything seems important.

First thing to do is to organize my documents for my passport application.

Second thing to do is to find out the rules and regulations for taking my dogs with me. My 4 little dogs are already spaghetti eating little monsters so they will fit in with Italian life just fine.

That's 3 doggy phone calls for this morning. The vet to talk about vaccinations and micro chips, the Italian consulate to see what regulations there are on pets and the air lines to check on costs and rules for travel.

Montana-Male-Maltese, Poodle cross-9 years old

Tommy-Male-Maltese, Miniature Toy Poodle cross-8 years old


Cleo-Female-Maltese, Chihuahua Cross-6 years old (the Beautys dog)


Rocky-Male-Son of Montana & Cleo-4 years old (the Knights dog)

Well I'm off to make the calls. I'll keep you updated on what I find out.

So...of all the places in the world, why Italy?

Today I told my family and friends about my decision to leave Australia.

Amongst all the "are you crazy" "how will you live" "how can you afford it" "what about your family" questions, the most asked question was "so...of all the places in the world, why Italy?".

To tell you the truth I was nervous about their reactions so I was prepared with 100 intelligent, informative, well thought out answers to give them.
But in the end everyone got the same very simple answer. "I'm meant to be there".

Do they think I've finally lost the one brain cell I have left? Sure. Am I worried? No.
I could of told them that I wanted to go 5 years ago but I didn't because I was scared. Scared of the unknown, of myself, of the world, of everything. But I never wanted to admit to that, let alone say it out loud.

Well, I'm not scared anymore. I just woke up yesterday and said that's it. Get a grip, your going to be in Italy for Christmas.
I'm surprisingly confident and incredibly calm but stupidly giddy with excitement on the inside!!!!

All I have to do now is sell most of my things over the next three months so that I can afford to buy the house, a car and have enough money left over to spend the next year renovating my villa.

Piece of cake!