So many gifts have been extolled on me in the past year.  I don’t have to look very far to see blessings all around me, in so many shapes and sizes. A fun, interesting, and very busy season.  We had so many great guests this year, and spent so much time laughing and talking.  I [...]

Whether it’s snowy or simply chilly, December is a welcome arrival.  With its hearty foods and layered sweaters, it’s a chance for us to experience nature in a way that we simply can’t any other time. It’s the month of the solstice, the short days of the year, when the flickers of candles glow against [...]

   This TED video featuring director, producer and cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg made me feel very blessed to be alive and human.  I hope it does the same for you. Have a wonderful holiday weekend. 

Everything that’s worthwhile requires focus.  Focus is hard today, because we have so many things competing for our attention.  Even if we are all alone, standing perfectly still, we know full well that text messages and emails are arriving, urging us to stop what we’re doing and look.  And once we’ve looked we’ve lost something [...]

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -Leonardo da Vinci There is nothing more graceful than simplicity.  Elegance stems from our ability to appreciate the essential nature of things.  A table, simply set. A garden exploding with goodness.  A glass of wine shared with a friend on a breezy, warm summer evening.  None of these require anything [...]

“So what is it like?” she asked me as we kneaded the pasta dough during our month-in-advance-scheduled cooking class at my B&B.  I was giving the group of four a class on my Emilianese grandmother’s ravioli recipe.  Lots of roasted veal, spinach and wine were involved.  The kitchen smelled like heaven itself.  But one of [...]

The clutter, the discord and the difficulty are what produce the fertile ground of creativity. On the day you decide to follow a creative path, you will have lesson after lesson handed to you.  You will feel beaten, humbled, and alive.  You will be aware of large churnings under the surface that no one can [...]

People ask me all the time about living in Italy. The questions range from how do I get a visa to how can I support myself to how hard is it to be an English teacher to are the vegetables really cheap? My answer is usually to look down at my hands and purse my lips [...]

In Italy, you can turn a corner in a small town and a miracle can happen.  It’s just that kind of country. This past weekend, my expat friends and fellow bloggers Sara Rosso and Michelle Fabio came to Acqui Terme to visit.  To celebrate the first time of being together physically instead of virtually, we [...]

There are so many things I’m bad at.  Sometimes I can, with varying degrees of success, push them into the background and allow my virtues to shine.  But it’s a short lived panacea, because the spiders in the tangled webs of my bad habits come and bite me where it hurts. And there’s something else. [...]