2011: The Year of Living Simply Yet Fabulously!

2011 was a simple year, yet full of exciting, fabulous events. My current life in the Abruzzo countryside is a mixture of down-to-earth living and connecting with people from all over the world via the Internet.

Helping K carry logs chopped for firewood in our jungle.

A new olive tree, my Xmas pressie!! This 3-year-old olive tree cost 8 euros from our local garden centre, Rosa D'Oriente in Cepagatti. Dr Luigi very kindly selected this Leccino variety for me. The idea that this olive tree will be here in a hundred year's time, long after I am gone, gives me a good feeling. It should withstand all that nature will throw at it and it will survive to grow into a venerable tree, I hope!!

The happiness I derive from living amongst chickens, cats, dogs, falcons, the occasional wild boar, olive groves and vineyards is one that invariably transcends having the latest material goods. However, I have to confess, I do get the odd pang of desiring something, but I content myself by saying I can't have it NOW, but hopefully at a later date. This usually does the trick....

I know this solitary lifestyle could be transient, so I am making the most of it, and yet at the same time, trying to do my utmost to further my teaching career, whether virtual or face to face, which is now in its incredible 33rd year!!

Many Heartfelt Thanks to....
.......all the wonderful team at The Lake School of English, Oxford for their continued support. I enjoy teaching there so much, and the course participants are always so keen! Many best wishes to all the lovely staff, and teachers and students I have had the pleasure of teaching this year.

In addition, I would like to say a very special thanks to all the fabulous team at The Consultants-E for making this year very interesting and varied with the different online projects I have had the pleasure to have been involved in.

To everyone I know, via this blog or Twitter or other projects I have participated in this year, I would like to say a very, very BIG thank you to my PLN - Passionate Learning Network. I appreciate all the support and guidance that I receive. I hope I can give the same back to you, I really do.

So, 2011 is nearly over and it's time for a few reflections!!!

Blog ChallengesI took part in 6 blog challenges! Thank you to each and every challenge organiser. It was a pleasure to be a part of the EFL community. Below are links to the original blogs, which hosted the challenges.

Dave Dodgson : Truth or Lie?
Vicky Loras: What's Your Story?
David Warr: A Word Cloud Blog Challenge
Adam Simpson: 11 from'11
Ann Hodgson and Brad Patterson: Compare and Contrast
Anna Loseva : ELT Workplaces

Blog Carnivals
I took part in two fabulous blog carnivals this year.
Eva Simkesiyan: Warmers, Fillers and 1st Week Activities.
Berni Wall: The Most Popular Posts on your Blog

The Year of Webinars and E-Conferences
I continued to attend and present at international webinars and Virtual conferences. I feel immensely happy that I participated in them and I still can't believe it's true!! My trusted and faithful laptop has taken me on a rollercoaster virtual ride and I was in 7th heaven!! Thank you to all the organisers of the following events!

Connecting Online 2011
Virtual Round Table
Reform Symposium 2011

The Year of Firsts!
I tried out quite a few new tools for the first time and you can see which ones in the Tagxedo below. You can find out how I got on with them by searching for the labels on the sidebar.

Scoop.it
My Scoop.it web curation site on Comics and Cartoons was begun in July 2011 specifically to house the links and resources connected to my Reform Symposium online webinar on Fun with Comics and Cartoons in the Classroom. I would like to say thank you to all my fellow "Scoopers" for suggesting new comics and cartoon sites and posts to add to this growing collection, which I hope is useful in some way! In particular, the BookChook blog has very kindly suggested lots of materials to add, and I appreciate this collaboration very much!

The Comics and Cartoons Scoop.it site is doing very well! It now has 100 followers, and has had 2,000 page views, with 1,200 visitors! I am delighted by this, and would like to thank everyone involved in making this particular project such a great success. I don't plan to curate other topics for the moment, as I already follow quite a few topics anyway. However, I don't know what 2012 will bring, so it will be interesting to see what happens in this area.

Electronic Village Online 2011
I attended a 5-week course in January 2011 on Digital Storytelling and learned so much from my lovely tutors and fellow participants. What I gained from the course helped me to produce my very own digital story called "An Idiomatic Love Story". This formed the central part of my first ever presentation at IATEFL Brighton 2011. You can find all the materials I created here.
The Year of SEETA Courses!
I attended 4 marvellous free online courses via SEETA and I had 4 of the best tutors in the world as moderators! Interacting with fellow teachers from around the globe was also amazing. If you would like to read my feedback on each of the courses below, please look under the label SEETA in my blog Sidebar!

• mLearning with Nicky Hockly
• Creative Reading with Marisa Constantinides
• Jazz Up Your Digital Storytelling with Ozge Karaoglu
• Humanism and Modern Technology with Hania Kryszewska

IASKU
A special mention to Chiew from IASKU blog for the fantastic interviews that he is recording with teachers from all over the globe. It was a huge honour for me to be interviewed by him during the summer. Click here to view all his guest interviewees.

ELTChat

I would like to say a big thank you to all the fab moderators and team of ELTChat, held every Wednesday at noon and 9pm UK time. They are doing stirling work in givng teachers from all over the world the chance to discuss pedagogical matters of great interest. I hope to be a more active member in 2012!! To find out more, click on the ELTChat wiki link here.

QR Codes

Writing a blog post on QR codes was one of my most researched topics this year and has led me to be curious about how they will impact on the future of learning. Already I can see that they are playing a big role in a lot of areas such as marketing a product, for example. Recently, I have read a piece on Motorcycle News quoted as follows: "BMW is now incorporating QR codes into the camouflaging used on disguised road-going prototypes, so sharp-eyed and curious onlookers can use their smartphones to scan the codes and go to an official website to find out exactly what they have just seen."
I have discussed the use of QR codes with my hubby K, and I think I have imparted a curiosity in him to find out more about their use. I am thrilled that he has taken on board some of the ideas. He is now busily researching ways to deal with such codes in his industry, high level motorbike training. He's already experimenting with a QR code for his blog home page.
To the left, you can see a photo I took of K riding home on his motorbike after testing out the new road surface!! It passed the test, thankfully. You can see the same photo here.







Wallwisher Resolutions for 2012
I'd like to invite you to add your wishes for 2012!! Hope they will all come true!! Just double click on the Wallwisher to post a stickie and add your wish or resolution.

Christmas 2011 Wishes from Janet's Abruzzo Blog

During this festive period, I would like to send a heartfelt message of joy, peace and goodwill to all the readers of my blog, and all the members of my PLN. Thank you very much for your support and kind comments throughout 2011. It's been a fun-filled year.

Here's an Animoto message from The Motley Crew below:

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

If you would like more ideas for creative Christmas messages using apps and other fun sites, look no further than Shelly Terrell's amazing post "30+ Holiday Apps for Creativity and Learning". It is packed full of great ideas to keep you busy over the coming days.

Below are some festive mince pies that were made today by K and I. For me they represent a typical Christmas tradition from England. We followed Delia Smith's recipe.

A few of my Christmas tree decorations to get into the festive spirit! One of my lovely angels...

..and a peacock!

Father Christmas on the fir tree outside the house, waiting to come in from the cold!!

A personal message from Fluffy:

Best wishes to you all.

To finish off, here's a fun, easy to create e-card message from Jib Jab!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

A Traditional Abruzzo Christmas Delight:Recipe from Life in Abruzzo Blog!

Following recipes has never been my forte, but seeing one for the traditional Abbruzzo Christmas "Calgionetti", in Life in Abruzzo blog, spurred me to have a go, and the results are truly delicious!! These special treats were made by my mother every Christmas time, and she used to make hundreds of them for us to eat, and also to share with friends and family. Sadly I wasn't at all interested in cooking in my youth, so I did not pay attention to how these were made. Imagine my delight when I came across the recipe! Without hesitating, I knew I had to make them and hopefully you will be inspired to make them, too.

Please note that this recipe contains quite a few nuts, so will not be to everyone's taste.

I noted today that homemade calgionetti were on sale in the special Christmas food section of SISA, the local supermarket. They were selling them for 18.50 Euros a kilo, which makes them quite a delicacy!!

Here is a link to the post"Caggionetti, Calggionetti, Cagiunitt" where you too can make your own Abruzzo special Christmas treats, if you follow the instructions carefully!

The ingredients required for "calgionetti" can be found in the Wordle below!

Below you can see images I took of some of the stages.

Boiling the chestnuts, an important part of the process!

Rolling out the dough made from flour, olive oil and wine! A copy of the Life in Abruzzo recipe which I used can be seen next to the rolling pin and dough.

The pastries waiting to be fried!

Angel Delight
The angel you can see in the photos certainly helped me to create these yummy sweets which are a traditional part of the Christmas festivities! She was able to oversee the delicate process while I made two batches.

The finished pastries, sprinkled with icing sugar, waiting to be devoured!

To make these Calgionetti, please read and follow the recipe instructions in Life in Abruzzo.

I have just submitted an article for the series on "A Few of My Favourite Abruzzo Things", so please watch this space for further details coming soon!

My 11 from '11 in the 3rd Year, inspired by @yearinthelifeof

What better way to celebrate my blog's 3rd Anniversary than to join in another exciting blog challenge "11 from '11" inspired by Adam Simpson's A Year in the Life of an English Teacher blog? The aim of the challenge is to reflect on a year of blogging and highlight 11 posts with explanations for their choice.

I have just created a short FlixTime slideshow of some of the 2011 highlights. I first learned about this lively and exciting video slideshow tool from The Consultants-E Tool of the Month page. It's my first attempt, and it looks cool and very easy to use!



Reflections, Reflections
Writing my blog for the third year has given me a new outlook on life, broadened my horizons, connected me to educators world-wide, challenged me to the full, encouraged me to share what I have learned, given me a confidence I didn't know I possessed, and given me much joy and pleasure. A life-changing experience indeed! I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for helping me on this fabulous and amazing journey.




Below in no particular order, 11 of my favourite posts from 2011.

Homage to Nicaragua
This post was written in homage to my visit to Nicaragua. My poem was added to Bookr, one of my favourite web 2.0 tools.

IATEFL Brighton - An Exclusive Interview with Janet
This interview laid bare my techniques for preparing for a global presentation such as IATEFL Brighton. Luckily, I managed to get everything done in time!

The King and I at IATEFL Brighton 2011
The title says it all, really. IATEFL Brighton was the most wonderful experience I could have wished for - my dream come true!!

OBI, RSS and QR Codes!
This post was a factual one and I enjoyed doing the research and adding some comics as a test item at the end. QR codes seem to be everywhere in Italy and I have yet to embrace them fully.

Janet's Top Scoop.its!
A list of top Scoop.it curation sites that I particularly like following.

Learning is Sharing
This post explains how sharing has become the way forward in terms of personal fulfillment.

SEETA: Humanism and Modern Technology
I learned so much from this fabulous course and my feedback reflects my feelings.

Playing with Bubblr!
I really enjoy writing about my experiments with new web 2.0 tools, and this post is all about a fun tool called Bubblr.

Santo Stefano di Sessanio - A Veritable Feast
This post is on one of my favourite places in the Abruzzo region. I hope you will be tempted to visit this relatively unknown area of Italy.

Learning in a Diabolik-al Way!
This has to be my favourite title of the year. The title came first, and then the content just flowed!

Language Garden: A Word Cloud Blog Challenge!
I loved experimenting with this fabulous tool, created by David Warr.

Many thanks once again to Adam for creating this lovely blog challenge!! I have enjoyed reading other bloggers' reflections of their 11 from '11. In addition, it's been fun for me to go down memory lane....

Janet's Nominations for the 2011 Edublog Awards

When everyone is outstanding, it is always difficult to choose excellence. The yearly nominations phase for the Edublogs Awards 2011 has come round again, and here are my choices below:

Best Individual blog: The English Blog by Jeffrey Hill
Best teacher blog: English Raven by Jason Renshaw
Best group blog: Teaching Village by Barbara Sakamoto
Best librarian/library blog: The Daring Librarian
Best new blog: A Journee in Language by Brad Patterson
Best Edtech blog : Free Tech for Teachers
Most influential blog post: Blog Challenge: What's Your Story? by Vicky Loras
Best Twitter hashtag: ELTChat
Best free webtool: Fotobabble
Best educational wiki: Greeting From The World by Arjana Blazic
Best educational use of audio/visual/podcast: Teacher Training Video Tutorials by Russell Stannard
Best open PD/unconference/ webinar series: Reform Symposium
Best educational use of a social network: English Companion Ning
Lifetime achievement: Scott Thornbury

I wish I could have nominated everyone I follow and admire, but of course it is not possible. Best of luck to everybody mentioned above!

A huge thanks to all the members of my PLN, who are a constant source of encouragement, enlightenment and engaging interaction:-)

Update on Award Winners!
The Edublog Awards winners can be viewed here. Many congratulations to everyone involved! Vicky Loras has just written a lovely post called Educators Everywhere, Congratulations!

Thank you Vicky for this heartfelt and wonderfully uplifting post! You have expressed the true ethos and benefits of such events in a very eloquent manner indeed.

Janet's Top 10 Tools for Learning 2011

Here is my selection of the Top 10 Tools for Learning I am submitting for Jane Hart's 2011 edition of Top 100 Tools for Learning. I have chosen the following tools and sites because I like using them for either teaching, or my professional development.

In no uncertain order, here are my choices for 2011:

1. Twitter - I wouldn't be able to keep up with current trends and technology without it
   
2. Posterous - a new blogging platform for me
   
3. Slideshare - useful for keeping my presentations in one place
4. Jing - a great tool for screen captures and making videos
5. Powerpoint - I enjoy creating presentations with this easy to use tool
6. Storybird - a beautiful storytelling creation site
7. Scoop.it - an easy to use web curation site
8. Diigo - great to keep all my bookmarks in one place
9. Animoto - fabulous slideshows can be easily created
10. Moodle - a versatile virtual learning platform

If you would like to vote for your Top 10 Tools of 2011, you can add yours here:

http://c4lpt.co.uk/top-tools/share-your-top-10-tools/

Voting closes on Sunday 13th November, so make sure you submit your entries before then!

Update November 14th 2011!
The list has been finalised and you can view the full list on Jane Hart's site here.

I have embedded the latest slideshow below. Three of my tools made it to the Top 10!

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

View more presentations from Jane Hart

Learning in a Diabolik-al Way!

"Alien Language" comic created by Janet with Marvel Super Hero

Learning a new language via comics is fun and engaging, and this has been proved in numerous pilot studies as reviewed here. Comics usually contain short sentences, phrases and are often repetitive, thus making the language easier to comprehend. People of all ages enjoy reading them and I often recommend that students buy comics of their choice while they are in England or else suggest they view suitable comics online, to pick up new vocabulary and expressions. Comics often contain examples of everyday, colloquial English in manageable chunks.

I am still collecting links and resources for using comics in the classroom via the web curation site Scoop.it. You can view the latest additions to this site here.

Learning Diabolik-ally
In addition to reading motorbike magazines in Italian, my husband K also sometimes buys copies of Diabolik comics (fumetti) in Italian in order to pick up the language in a fun and stimulating way. Diabolik is a fictional character, an anti-hero featured in a series of Italian comics. He drives an E-Type Jaguar and his girlfriend is called Eva.

The hugely popular comics were written in 1962 by two sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani, both born in Milan. By all accounts, they led a very exciting and fulfilling life. Both sisters had an extraordinary and vivid imagination to be able to produce this series of comics, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2012.

Below you can see a personal copy and image of Diabolik, "Sull'Orlo della Fossa", March 2011 edition. In parts, K has annotated in pencil with translations in English. Maybe if I were really "teacherly", I could create a series of review cartoons in Italian specially for him to test his understanding of key words??? Hmmm, maybe if I have time....

The comics are well illustrated and full of high action with easy to recognise sound effects such as "Boooom!!" Craaash!! Splaaash!! etc

Everyday expressions crop up frequently such as the following:

• Che cosa succede? What's happening?
• Buona fortuna! Good luck
• Grazie Thanks
• Ma che cosa...?? What on earth..?
• Poco dopo.. Shortly after...
• Piu tardi.. Later .....
• Sono d'accordo I agree
• Va bene! OK!
• Attento! Watch out!

These short phrases enable the reader to take in the meaning of these expressions with ease. I would love to add some of the comic scenes on my blog, but the publishers have imposed strict copyright usage on their content, and I have to respect that.

A Diabolik Scenario
In view of this limitation, I have reproduced a typical generic scene from Diabolik by using the Super Hero Marvel Comic cartoon site. I have written a short sample dialogue in Italian using some of the language I have introduced above. See if you can work out what the characters are saying :-)

Comic created by Janet with Marvel Super Hero Comic Squad

Can you understand what the 2 characters are saying in Italian? If you can, well done!!!

K enjoys reading them and with the use of a dictionary, he can pick up a lot of new vocabulary. I also like looking through them as they are so visual and the stories are interesting! This comic series comes out monthly and each copy costs 2 euros and that is quite good value.

You can view Diabolik comics online from the official Diabolik.it website if you click on Diabolik Fumetto Online. So if you are learning Italian, and you want to pick up some useful Italian expressions, go ahead and browse through the site. Then why don't you make your own free and easy to use Super Hero comic strip using the new language you have learned and print it out directly? You could also keep your lovely creation in a folder for review purposes, or simply print it out and pin to your work area wall and create a nice collage of your work of art??

That is what I am starting to do in order to jazz up the wall of my "office" area, as you can see below!

PS
Apologies to anyone following my blog for my accidentally publishing this post yesterday with just the title. I deleted it immediately, as I hadn't written the post content yet(!!) but for some reason, I think it is still showing up in blog feeds as published.

Language Garden: A Word Cloud Blog Challenge!

My very first Language Plant! My plant is surrounded by a Tuxpi flower ornament frame!

David Warr from the amazing Language Garden blog kindly encouraged me in a very convincing way, by the mere mention of kittens, to take the leap of faith, and play with the fantastic Language Garden Plant Maker tool, which he has created. This was for the Blog Challenge he has set up as follows:

"Well, stage 1 is here, and I’d like to propose a blog challenge. It’s simple enough: make your own word art – a language plant, a mind map or word cloud using the new language plant maker."

It took one simple tweet to get me to leap into the unknown and create a simple language plant. How could I resist David's challenge after the tweet below?? Within moments, I took up the challenge and tweeted back to David with the image of my handiwork.




I was thrilled when shortly afterwards David tweeted this very helpful alternative based on my original Abruzzo plant with the comment: "Sharing the adjective morphology endings". This indeed would be an excellent introduction to studying such adjective endings with students. It shows how creative you can be with different adjective endings.
Images / screenshots above and below reproduced from tweets sent by @DavidWarr.

I also received this lovely, beautiful plant on the theme of kittens.

A Message from Fluffy

All these fabulous creative examples prompted me to have another go, and this is the result. As you can see, I hadn't cleared all the little icons when I saved the language plant.

I found as with all new things, you need to practise and practise to get used to how a new tool functions. I viewed David's helpful video tutorial below and this helped me a lot.

I felt that I could do better than my first Test version, so I timed myself to see how long it would take to create a similar one, but with more colours and separating the words. I was much quicker the second time and I was able to move the words around more easily.

Here is my creation below. I am really thrilled with it!
However, I could see that the colours were a bit mixed, so I set out to try to change the colours and separate the "I love" into 2 blocks rather than one block. Here is my 3rd attempt, which took me an even shorter time to create. I could see that I was getting quicker and more able to manipulate the bends and sizes. The final letter of the word "weather" is a bit tilted, but I am sure practice will make perfect!!

Feedback
I think this tool is a fabulous resource and leads to a lot of creative activities. You can get students to make up short poems, write short descriptions, play around with grammar items or teach each other simple phrases such as demonstrated in the blog challenge samples submitted by various bloggers in Language Garden. My verdict? It's a sure fire winner with students and teachers alike!!

One thing which would be good for the future is an "undo" button if you make a mistake or want to delete a word. I am sure that this will be possible in due course :-) For now, I believe it is an amazing tool which will make learning and teaching English much more fun! So many thanks to David for sharing this brilliant creation with everyone!

Why don't you have a go, and then share your language plant with David on his blog? He would be really happy, I am certain to add your creation in his beautiful Gallery.

The Abruzzo Dream - My Story

Thanks to Vicky Loras's Blog Challenge, I would like to share this post, which presents a different angle to a part of my life. The reason why I moved from England to live in the heart of Abruzzo, Italy. Then soon after, an event which shattered me to the core..

Worlds apart yet a destiny foretold. My blood is 100% from Abruzzo, my heart is 100% British. Two countries forever intertwined from the moment of my birth. I was born and brought up in England by my parents, both from Abruzzo. Now I find myself living deep in the beautiful countryside of Abruzzo surrounded by olive groves and vineyards. Far From The Madding Crowd. I wrote about these two very different worlds in May this year and to read all about it, you can click the link Worlds Apart.

My parents had left Abruzzo in the 1950s during the depression to seek a new life and work in England. Both my parents have settled down in England forever, and they return to Abruzzo now for holidays and only accompanied by myself or my sisters. My beloved grandmother had also left Abruzzo at the grand age of 61 to begin a new life in England with my parents. I wrote about her life story here.

I have written about the unique love story of my parents in "1955: The Look of Love" here. I guess I owe my life to a certain mirror which played a pivotal role in their first encounter. Below is the anniversary card I made for my parents this year. They both loved it. A young, beautiful couple, their whole lives ahead of them.....in England in 1955.

What brought me to leave my country of birth after half a century?
Together with Karl my hubby, we decided we wanted to live in a more open, less hectic space. It was impossible to afford this in England in 2007. House prices had rocketed with the housing boom, and we were faced with properties costing up to half a million pounds. YES!! that is what it would have cost to buy the house of our dreams. At our advancing ages, we would have had a mortgage around our necks forever.

Time for a Change
At that time we were living in a tiny two-bedroom maisonette in an area only a bike ride away from the city centre of beautiful, historic Oxford. We had lived in the same place for 16 years. However, the area had changed considerably over the years. From friendly, peaceful neighbourhood to a busy, noisy and ever changing scene. People never stayed in the houses around us for long. Respect for the buildings and gardens was different from when we first arrived. Strangers coming and going. We had neighbours above us, next to us, across from us - every direction was covered. There was no peace, no quiet. It had become a living nightmare, if truth be told. It was time for a serious change. A change which led to the image below.

In the depths of the Abruzzo countryside

A Seachange
The change was about to become dramatic. We began looking at houses in the Oxfordshire area. We wanted a house with a bit of land around it, so we would not have the problem of noisy and unfriendly neighbours ever again.

We looked at lots of properties and we even put an offer in for a beautiful, charming, picture perfect cottage in the heart of a lovely village in Oxfordshire. The house cost a cool quarter of a million pounds!!! The bank had already agreed to lend us the money for a mortgage. Everything was set for paperwork to be signed. Then after a survey of the cottage was completed and everything was ready to go, we suddenly got cold feet and we pulled out. In hindsight, if we were meant to buy the house, we would have gone ahead with the deal. Nothing is impossible when you are determined and are passionate about something!

So we continued looking, but became disheartened. We both had excellent jobs and I suppose we were the epitome of DINKIES. Dual Income, No Kiddies, so we had quite a bit of disposable income at that time. Yet we still could not afford what we wanted without having to borrow a huge amount from the bank. That is when the idea came to our minds. Why not go to Abruzzo?

Why was Abruzzo chosen?
It was an area K and I both knew as we had visited for holidays many times. The pull of my family's roots played a part. The land where my parents were born. The land they had left to begin a new life in the 1950s.

The price of properties in Abruzzo was much lower compared to in England. Why not give it a go? The seed had been sown.

We could have chosen to go anywhere in the whole world, but Abruzzo held a special, magical attraction. The people, the lifestyle, the scenery, the food, the traditions...the glorious summers, the beaches, the mountains......what was there not to like about this region? Why not move lock stock and barrel to this stunning, quiet, unspoilt area?

We were advised by friends and family not to sell our little house, which was in a prime location.

"You should rent out your house in Oxford, get a mortgage, buy a property in Abruzzo then in the future if things don't work out, you can always come back to your house in Oxford."

My dear readers. I absolutely agree this was very sensible advice at the time. However, we followed our hearts and instincts. We did not follow this advice. We chose to risk everything for our chance to live the dream and walk the talk............even if it eventually turns out to be temporary.

Location, Location
So in 2007 we began looking on the Internet for properties in Abruzzo in earnest. We discovered so many sites.....at breathtakingly reasonable prices. We registered with House Around Italy and they provided excellent assistance in all stages of the process. Within 5 weeks of viewing our property after a whirlwind weekend tour of properties, we had the keys to the house. It was a fast and painless process. Maybe we were lucky. We were so, so excited!!

What we got for a very reasonable price was a tumble down "casale" (old farmhouse) in great need of restoration and tender loving care. It was the perfect restoration project! The property was set in 12,000 square metres of land, with olive trees, an orchard and many other fruit trees. It also had a big open barn and outhouses. Two rooves were missing...... Undeterred, we fell in love with it at first sight.

We had been in the right place at the right time and the moment we sold our flat in Oxford was the highest point in the property boom. It crashed a few months shortly afterwards. By that time, we had spotted the house of our dreams in Abruzzo and with the proceeds of the sale of our property, we were able to buy the house outright and have money left over to start the long renovation process....That was in August 2007. The move to Abruzzo wasn't complete until mid 2008. Within months of the dream move, however, my life and that of K's changed completely.

February 25th 2009
My mother suffered a devastating accident on her bicycle on the way to church one bright, sunny, beautiful, calm and peaceful day. In just one second her life and all the family's life changed forever.

I returned on the first plane to London to be told by the consultants to brace ourselves for the worst possible scenario. My mother had suffered a catrastrophic brain injury and it was touch and go whether she would pull through. The idea of abandoning our new home in Abruzzo was something we considered privately. I spent more time in England than in Abruzzo during these turbulent and stressful days, weeks and months.

Amazingly, my mother did pull through!!! She spent over 5 months in hospital and rehabilitation. The day she came home was the most fantastic day ever. We celebrated her birthday in style, and then I finally returned to Karl and furkids in Abruzzo.

I have written about this miracle many times on my blog and so will not dwell on it in this post. I would just like to say that as a result of this event, my heart has been in 2 places. My family need my help and moral support. For this reason I travel back to England quite often. I am half here, half there. The dream move did not come at the right time, in all honesty. I have not been able to seriously contemplate a full time position in Abruzzo, because of the need to return to England at a moment's notice to deal with my mother's affairs, and also to give my sisters a well-deserved break. Maybe one day, a fresh decision will have to be made about where to spend the rest of our lifetime.....

K and I agreed that a margin of 10 years to do up our house would be realistic. 4 years have passed since we actually signed the paperwork. We are only a third of the way there! Now we have become LILOPs. Limited Income, Lots of Pets! We are currently actually living like the proverbial church mice, but it is a new experience and we shall see how long we can last.........

How have my two lives fared?
They have fared well so far, but it hasn't really been easy. Dividing my life between the 2 countries, and the pull of family commitments tugging at the heart strings is something which is difficult to get to grips with. I am faced with the eternal dilemma. I would like to be in two places at once, but that is of course unrealistic.

What is my future destiny?
The simple answer is I don't know. My life is still an open book waiting for the next page to unfold. Yes, this is a bit scary sometimes, but I don't dwell on this, as I am living in the present. In the past, I used to live with my head in the future. All I know now for sure is that nothing is permanent. Life can change in one second, that is all it takes. My family in England is very dear to me. I love Abruzzo and I feel at home here. I love England and feel at home there, too.

Together with K, we feel comfortable in both worlds. I would like to say that K has been my rock and has supported me and my family with great understanding and devotion.

Abruzzo Scenes Today with the Menagerie

With Kelly and chicks.

With naughty Fluffy and more chicks.

With new kitten on her first outing in the garden today.

More new kittens relaxing indoors.....

Due to a special request by @ David Warr, here are some more cat images!

Kitty's looking at you, David.

A pensative Fluffy. She is a brilliant big sister to the 4 kittens.

Below, in the early days in our new home in Abruzzo. You can see me de-weeding an area which had no roof, so weeds had reached to the ceiling! This room now has a roof, and it needs considerable more work done to it before it is finished.......