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Dream of Italy December 2013 Newsletter

In This Issue

December Update
December Special Offer!
Story: A Different Way to Cope with Pre-Christmas Stress!
Italian Recipe: Spiced Christmas Biscuits

December Update

Alan and Kathy

Christmas has seemed to round up on us this year in rather an abrupt fashion. I wonder if that has been the case for you too? It has been an incredibly busy month for us at Dream of Italy with unprecedented levels of both internet and shop sales and also a lot of new stock just in. We have been delighted with the beautiful quality of a huge Murano Glass order, new mask orders and also stationery.

Murano Glass Clown just arrived from Italy

One of my favourite Murano Glass items are always the clowns and this order we have two completely new interpretations of the classic clown figure from Murano. One of them is shown to the right.

Just in from Venice are also a brand new range of hand painted crystal, including some sensational vases and crystal glasses. They are just beautiful and won't last long - we sold out of our last order within days! These are not up on the website yet, but will be soon, so keep a look out under "New Arrivals".

This is our last newsletter for 2013, so we wish you our customers a very happy and safe Christmas Season and thank you for your support over 2013 and we look forward to bringing you a lot more 'Exquisite Pieces of Italy' and to feed the Italian dream in all of us in 2014 and beyond!

Buon natale a tutto!

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December Special Offers!

Christmas is getting SO close now. If you are still struggling to find that 'perfect something' for someone special, why not give them a Dream of Italy Gift Voucher? Just for you our Newsletter Customers you can purchase a Gift Voucher on line with a discount of 15% and we will send it to you immediately either as an email with a voucher you can print off or we can post the voucher to you.

This is a great offer as you don't need to leave home or your desk (time is running so short and the traffic is terrible!) and yet you can get something that is unique and beautiful and also DIFFERENT for your friends and relatives. (You could even get one for yourself!)

ALL Dream of Italy Gift Vouchers reduced by 15% - available from $25 to $500!

Remember, they can order on line and delivery within New Zealand is absolutely FREE!

Offer expires 20th December!

To claim this offer just quote Coupon 01180 when you check out and you will need to be logged in on our site, so in case you have forgotten your log-in details, your User ID is shown in the email with a link to help you find your password.

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Italian Story- A Different Way to Cope with Pre-Christmas Stress!

No doubt you, like the rest of us, are now fully into the Christmas period of lists of things to complete and so much to do before that Christmas deadline – gifts to buy, food to prepare, tasks to do before everything shuts down for a while….

It reminds me of our second to last day in Italy as we tied up all the loose ends before leaving for the best part of a year. Tradesmen to pay, parcels to ship, people to meet to say goodbye to.

One of the most pressing tasks was to ship some Fiat car parts back to New Zealand for a friend who had bought them on eBay and had them shipped to our house in Italy, so we could send them on to him in New Zealand. We also had to get money out from the bank to pay tradesmen. Sounds easy, one trip to Poste Italiane and one trip to the bank.......

Italian Recipe - Spiced Christmas Biscuits

Many of us have Christmas traditions that we have built up as families over the years and this month we bring you something you may want to add as from this year! These Italian Spiced Christmas biscuits can be a great addition that you enjoy throughout the day. They are great served with fresh coffee, Vin Santo (Italian dessert wine) or ice cream.

Recipe courtesy of Ursula Ferrigno, in her book La Dolce Vita, sweet things from the Italian home kitchen

Check out the full recipe!

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Feedback

We would love to hear back from you and get your thoughts on our products or services! Any ideas on how we could improve our service to you our customers would be welcomed too!

If you have any feedback at all for us you can send an email to alan@dreamofitaly.co.nz.

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We left our little house in mountains just out of Rome in the heat of August to the stern warnings from locals to ensure that we turned the water off at the mains turned all the taps on and emptied the hot water cylinder before leaving the house. It was hard to imagine this being necessary (to stop the water freezing in the plumbing and bursting) and such dire cold was possible was we struggled to cope with 30^oC temperatures. However, the snow has come early in our village this year. Check out some photos of how beautiful it looks (from afar!).

This month's photo is taken in the Sicilian capital city of Palermo and the buttresses shown are actually flying across a very busy street below! We had a great time in Palermo, which is famous for also being the mafia capital of Italy. We never saw any evidence of that there, but we will never forget the experience of driving there - definitely on a par with Naples! If you haven't seen the video I took driving with one of our suppliers in Naples it is worth a look!