Let’s see…where did I leave off? Yes, we have the kitchen coming soon. The furniture from IKEA comes tomorrow and if all goes as planned, it will be assembled Thursday. All good. Yesterday we went back to our antique / junk store, Luigi Filippo di Bastiagnelli. They are scheduled to deliver next week so I wanted to get a couple more pieces from them so I can have everything sent at once. I got two armadio, or wardrobes. These will be all shelves and I will be able to use them for storage. Looking forward to getting my things organized!

Sweet friends brought us the gift of soup and flowers today. How nice is that? They have a beautiful garden. And they had a big crop of parsnips which they just harvested! They are almost non-existent here. All the UK people around here are always looking for them. Anyway, they made parsnip soup, which I have never had. I will be enjoying it tonight for dinner. They also brought me some tulips. They happen to be my favorite flower so I am so very pleased.

I took my friend through our house. She loved the terrace. She said she had everything I need in her own garden to plant and that she would help me with the planting and design. I may also invite my friend in Assisi who is also a plant expert to come and they can work together. I’ve been wanting to get them together for a while anyway.

It has been very cold here. Going down to minus 4 Centigrade this week. That’s about as cold as it gets here. Good for killing the pests of summer so I will deal with it. Speaking of cold, we visited our local stufe dealer. These are stoves that burn either wood or pellets. We are going with another pellet stove. They are scheduled to come check our space and make sure all is well for installation and use.

I also have a house painter recommendation. He came and looked at the space. Said he’d come back and measure and then give me a preventivo, or estimate. If it’s ok, he will paint in March. I hate the thought of painting while we are living here. I guess I’ll have him start upstairs. Perhaps we will do a short trip somewhere while he does the downstairs. We will have to take our cat hair factories along. It will be nice to have walls repaired and freshly painted.

Today we visited a vendor who had replaced screens for us to pay him. He had never billed us. Stupid maybe but we want to be on good terms since they do custom woodworking and all sorts of things. We paid them and asked them to come to see if they could do some custom built in shelving for us. And a cabinet in the kitchen.

We went to Centro after that and had a caffè at bar Mary and visited with our good friend Irene, then emptied our freezer in our apartment and got our ladder. It was our last task there. We also visited our friend Angelo in the alimentari downstairs. I miss having him so nearby. So convenient. He said we are now happy to have the elevator, but we will miss what he says is the best view in Umbertide. He is probably right and I do miss it. The views here in the new place will never be what we had in Centro. But we’ve had some pretty sunsets. Maybe in summer, where the upstairs terrace has good views we might enjoy the view of Monte Acuto, our big mountain.

Our cats have amazingly settled in nicely. Here is Simba a-snooze on the sofa.

I think that is about it for our progress and news. We will get there. It does take time to change house. In fact it takes time no matter where you are so patience is key. And I have that. I am thinking that maybe this weekend we can go somewhere for a wine tasting. Maybe we can even go with some friends. It would be lovely to remember I live in this beautiful country and have beautiful things to do close by. I sometimes lose track of that. Andrà tutto bene!🌈