Colourful Burano

A small island situated a few miles away from Venice, Burano is most famous for its colourful houses and its lace. You can read more about this fascinating island here.

NENO Award

A few weeks ago I was awarded the NENO Award by BC Doan at Reach Beyond Limits. Thanks BC for remembering me and giving me this award which I really appreciate.
This award is given to: "those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging, and to help others seek the reasons why we all love blogging."

BC has some wonderful tips on her blogs about online writing careers, advice on how to make your blog more attractive and also some very nice images. I suggest you pay her blog a visit as it will be worth your while.
Now I would like to nominate the following 5 blogs:
1. Glynis Smy at A Poet’s Word: Glynis is an author and poet who was one of my first followers when I first started blogging and her friendship has been a constant source of support to me. A Poet’s Word is just one of Glynis’s blogs. It is a showcase of her poetry and I love to pop in every now and then to read one of her latest poems.

2. Polly at Angels In My Garden: Polly’s blog is full of great recipes and sweet observations on her outlook on life.

3. Sunflower Ranch: this is a great blog which posts a weekly writer's challenge and a link to a great online store.

4. Lauren at Walk With me on this Journey Called Life: this is a sweet blog and Lauren always helps me during moments when I need to lift my spirits with her positive outlook on life and exuberant Faith.

5. Terry at Lady Liberty Patriot : this blog is full of poems accompanied by pictures and a super-friendly blogger.

The rules that go with this award are as follows:
· Upload the image in your post
· Mention the person that gives you the award with their blog link
· Nominate your blogs of choice with blog owner's name and link
· Leave comment on the recipients' posts to let them know

So I have followed the rules and nominated just 5 blogs, as required. However, I consider all my blogging friends to be worthy of awards even those who have opted for a reward-free blog. Finally, as a personal favour, I am also going to ask any of you that have an interest in art and photography to pop over to my husband’s blog Creative Canvas. He is a bit discouraged at his inability to find people who will comment on his work. So I am doing a bit of free advertising for him (sorry) to hopefully encourage more people to view his art and photos.
Finally I would like to thank all the people who read and comment on my posts and all those others who just stop by to read. Without you all my blog would not be the same.

Sixth Wedding Anniversary

Today my husband and I celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary and I wanted to share with you some memories from that special day.
After my then-boyfriend proposed at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah (you can read about that particular adventure here), we decided we would get married in Malta. So I came back home and started the wedding preparations, always keeping my future husband in the picture by constantly emailing updates, sending links to websites and scanning photos.

Hetti (my maid-of-honour) and I at my parents' house

The marriage ceremony took place at St Mary of Jesus Church in Rabat, Malta (my hometown). The foundation stone of the church was laid in 1492 and I thought it was an appropriate place to have the ceremony as 1492 was also the year that Columbus discovered the New World (my husband is American). The 15th of June 2003 was a blistering hot day with the temperature reaching 37 Celsius but the interior of the old church was cool. I chose to walk down the aisle on my dad’s arm to Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy” as it is a very uplifting and exuberant piece of music and one of my favourite classical pieces.

Church facade

Church interior

Just married :)

Our reception was at Villa Mdina, a 400 year old converted town-house in Naxxar. The charm of the place lies in its authentic features, the room with the ceiling murals and the large gardens.

Villa Mdina

Best friends

We had a totally great time visiting with friends and family, some of whom travelled from the US, Canada, Australia and the UK to attend the wedding. It was a day of special memories, spent with people who meant, and still mean, a lot to us. We had a morning wedding but it still passed way too quickly.

Best friends (again)

Cutting the cake

We chose Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ as ‘our’ song, the song we danced to, just us two, remembering the times we had spent apart in different countries and thinking about the future we would be spending together. It was one of the happiest days of my life and the start of a future adventure (which we’re still discovering day by day). We spent our honeymoon in Rome and Florence and managed to squeeze in a day-trip to Pompeii.
Six years have really flown and they have been 6 very happy years, with all the ups and downs that marriage brings. We have grown together, cried together and laughed together and we now share our lives with a mischievous little 3 year old who is always up to something and whose cheeky smile warms up our heart even when we are tired or sad. Marriage has taught me that love does not always come easy; that there is an element of sacrifice involved; that, surprisingly, there are days when you just want to be by yourself and do your own thing. That, like all worth while things in this life, it takes work to make love grow and last for a lifetime.

A Time To Mourn

This week I was meaning to write a post about a blog award that I received recently. But sometimes certain events happen in life which make me stop and think. I have tended not to get too personal in my posts, figuring that my life is not always that interesting. But I think that sharing about certain events, both happy and sad, help to create a bond with my readers, a bond shared by the simple fact that we are humans. So today I wanted to share with you about the loss of my husband’s nanna (grandmother) who died 3 days ago aged 91. It was a peaceful death, totally unexpected, a passage from this life to the next. It is not easy to say goodbye, even to someone who lived a long life. For those left behind, there will be a period of sadness, a time of mourning. But memories of nanna will live on with us forever. In her five surviving daughters, 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. In her legendary support of Liverpool Football Club. In the colourful blankets she so lovingly knitted for all of us… So although these next few days will be tinged with sadness, we hope to come together to celebrate a life rather than mourn a death. And as I sit here and write I realize just how precious this one life that we have is and how much we should cherish every minute. I need to be the first to learn to slow down, to stop, look around me and breathe in deeply. For sometimes I get too caught up in chores and cleaning, work and duties and I don’t appreciate the little things in life: the people around me who mean so much to me, precious moments that won’t last forever, my little boy’s mischievous laughter, the smell of coffee, the flight of a butterfly, the drone of a bee …

So, for now, it’s time to say goodbye to nanna Antonia, or as she was better known, Tonina... It’s time to remember a life that was not easy, but a life lived with dignity and a simple undying faith; a life lived without so many of the gadgets that make our chores easier but a life rich in the love of family and friends. Not many are left of that generation that was born at the end of the Great War, who reached their prime and brought up their children during the Second World War and saw the world change in front of their eyes. Not many are left to remember a way of life that we can only imagine. While the hearts of those left behind are heavy with sorrow, we find peace in the thought that her earthly trials are over and she is at home, in a place where there will be no more sadness and no more tears.

Antonia Formosa (nee Mizzi)

09 May 1918 - 09 June 2009

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted...

He has made everything beautiful in its time. (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2, 11)

Shopfronts of Paris

Here are some Parisian shopfronts that really caught my eye when we visited last March. From restaurants to wine bars; from accessories to chocolateries, the delightful shop fronts of Paris were as interesting and as photo-worthy as the city of romance itself.

Flowers, Flowers Everywhere

I feel that I have been neglecting my blog lately. My posts have steadily gone down and I do not want the trend to continue because I really like posting and making friends in the blogging world. Lack of time is my worst enemy and somehow, now that the daylight hours are reaching their peak, there always seems to be so many things to do outdoors that sitting down in front of a computer, after I've spent my whole working day staring at a screen, sometimes seems to be the last thing I feel like doing. So I have decided that I will try to post something twice a week. One post will consist more of photos without too many deep thoughts. In the other post, I will try to write something meaningful. So here goes…

Today I would like to share a few photos of some of the flowers we currently have in our garden. Well, to be honest, our garden is more of a yard as most of it is tiled and we only have soil along two of the walls. Most of our plants are in pots. Having a tiled yard is quite typical of Maltese houses. The very old houses used to be built around a central tiled courtyard which used to keep the house very cool in summer. Our yard is at the back of the house and is a very pleasant place on summer mornings as it is in the shade. In the afternoon and evenings it heats up to an almost unbearable degree as the sun shines constantly over some part of it until it goes down. We currently have a project to upgrade the look of our yard. We have not started work on it yet but I hope to post ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures when the work is ready, although that may be a while yet.

Anyway, here are some of the blooms in our yard. I hope you enjoy the really spectacular colours of nature.

Hibiscus

I have no idea what this flower is but it's very pretty

Gerbera

Geraniums, geraniums, geraniums!

Dahlia