March 2013 Newsletter

In This Issue

• March Update
• 40% off Venetian Masks!
• Amazing Italian Floral Festival!
• March Italian Recipe

Have you discovered Pinterest?  Pinterest is a yet another new Social Media phenomenon.  This month we have been building our Pinterest site and have been amazed at the response, with some of our 'Pins' being re-pinned by people all over the world!  Check out our site here. 

In particular, check out our Pinterest 'board' dedicated to the amazing spectacle of the Italian Flower Festivals known as 'Infiorata' that is the subject of this month's story from Diana Armstrong.  Most of the photos in this Pinterest board are from a village not far from Diana's village.  We were there in 2007 and just missed seeing this amazing spectacle.  You have to be quick, as it only lasts a few hours!  Check out this video to see the incredible spectacle of the Infiorata at Spello in Umbria.

Wellington Festival

New Products coming!

We have orders from Italy that we are expecting in the next couple of months with new inlaid wooden chess sets, miniature pewter warriors, wooden trays from Florence and masks and Murano Glass jewellery from Venice.  We will keep you up to date when they arrive on Facebook and keep checking our 'New Arrivals' tab on the website.

People Changes

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40% off  these Venetian Masks!

Order on line and quote coupon 01106 at checkout to receive your special pricing. 

Click on the pictures above to see more details and to order your Venetian mask at an amazingly low price!

           

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Amazing Italian Floral Festival

This month's story is from Diana Armstrong, who after a couple of lovely holidays in Italy, ended up purchasing and restoring a property there.  She has written a book about the ensuing adventure and after she found herself integrating into the small Umbrian town of Lubriano, she discovered she had responsibilities to participate in a lovely Festival of Floral Art on the road outside her property.  Here is her story:

Spring is everywhere showing its colors, and in the mid-morning sun, the hilltop town of Civita di Bagnoregio beams at me from the valley, so close it’s almost in front of my face. The church bell chimes the hour over there in Civita, always thirty seconds ahead of our Lubriano church.

Tomorrow is Sunday and the Feast of Our Lady of Lubriano, known among people in the area as La Infiorata. For the past 250 years, on the sixth Sunday after Easter, the residents of Lubriano have been celebrating this day by covering their one and only street with flower petals. On this Sunday every year the townfolk transform the charcoal - coloured granite of the street into a dizzying artist’s palette. Spring blossoms will decorate the paving for half a mile from the eleventh-century Church of San Giovanni Battista to the seventeenth-century Chapel of Santa Maria del Poggio. From year to year the priest and the people will come and go, but constancy will reign in La Infiorata. The colours of spring, like a river, flow through time.

We have never been here in May before, so we aren’t quite sure what to expect. Signora Gaspari explains the rules. Tomorrow our two families will be responsible for entirely covering our sixty feet of road frontage with flower petals. Oh, yes, and they must all be freshly picked!  How on earth are we going to discharge our responsibilities???

 
     Read more!

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March Italian Recipe - Pancetta, Sage & Butternut Risotto

In Italy, risotto tends to be a much more simple affair than the sophisticated recipes you find in restaurants elsewhere. Try this Pancetta, Sage & Butternut Risotto recipe that is delicious and easy to cook.


Here's a recipe for you to try ...


 

Check out the full recipe!

 

 

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