A few days ago our friends Jaana sent us a link to a charming site called My Milk Toof. This is without any doubt one of the most creative thing we have ever seen. Have a peek HERE, it's absolutely beautiful (and addictive!). "Toof cleaning" is one of our fave! "Private matter" is just hilarious, and "Oh, Monday…" is delightful.

Photo © Inhae

The ones of you on Facebook can follow ickle and Lardee there, too. We're glad Inhae is planning a book out of it, it's gonna be a perfect gift for little kids!

Yesterday my sweet Kia and I spent a nice evening out with some of my colleagues. We had dinner in a place recommended by my local colleagues. The place was nice, even though the music was too loud, and the food was good. We also got a pint of Pear Cider each for free, because they're trying to launch this new product. We've been chatting till almost midnight and had lots of fun.

Kia and I spent some time on YouTube looking at small pieces of the TV series The Big Bang Theory. It was recommended to us by my brother who is a physicist like the main characters of this show. We really liked it. It seems a really funny series, something difficult to find lately. If you never watched it, you can have a look HERE and HERE, Kia and I like these clips very much.

After my "litter fight between birds" post (June 24th) I have read an interesting article on recycling rubbish. June 22nd-28th has been Recycle Week here in UK. This was an initiative run by Recycle Now, the government's official recycling campaign. The aim of this whole thing was to make British people more involved in recycling and more aware of what they can do to help the world being a better place. In fact, according to recent statistics, Great Britain recycles only the 34% of waste. Germany is the best with 64% of waste recycled. Italy, with 44% of waste recycled, is not bad, but could do much better. Also France is surprising low with 30% of waste recycled. Here are the first six in the chart: 1. Germany 64%, 2. Belgium 62%, 3. Netherlands 60%, 4. Austria 59%, 5. Sweden 49%, 6. Italy 44%.

We noticed that our Playlist is not working anymore, but only for those accessing the Net from the UK. Some friends from other countries told us that it still works for them, so we hope it works for the most of you and you can still enjoy it.

It has been quite a sad day for the entertainment world, with the departure just a few hours apart of Farrah Fawcett (for cancer) and Michael Jackson (cardiac arrest).

We have known Farrah Fawcett thanks to "Charlie's Angels". We used to watch that series with our moms and grandmas. Michael Jackson was one of the first international singers whose songs we started listening to thanks to his album "Bad". We really liked him as an artist even though is personal life was getting very extravagant in recent times. In our opinion, he will remain the King of Pop music and "Billie Jean" and his moonwalk will always have a special place in our memories.

People like them who give us emotions through their films/songs somehow become part of our lives. And when they're gone, they leave a void.

On a happier note, we have found a very nice site while surfing the Net. Have a look HERE. We like the way she defines herself: "hopeless dreamer and freelance illustrator". Her name is Alessandra Fusi, she's from Rome and you can find pieces of her art work on Etsy, too. Her work will be exposed for the first time across the ocean in Venice, California, starting from July 3rd. Who knows, maybe someone of you will be able to pass by…

Do you have any special plan for the weekend? We don't know yet, maybe we'll just stay home catching some ZzzZzz, or maybe we'll go out with some friends.

First of all, thanks for your comments about the "book scenario", ladies! I enjoyed reading when and where you like to read a good book. About me… well, I like to stay cozy on the sofa sipping coffee or hot chocolate on a rainy day, but also sit under a tree sipping ice-tea in a sunny one. And now, the time has come to pick up a name. The WINNER of our first Book Giveaway is… Suzanne! Congrats, sweetie! Hope you'll like the book. Thanks everyone and I can't wait to find some time to host a new giveaway for you all.

There is something special about a rainbow. It makes you stop and stare, in awe and wonder. It is such a magnificent show that Mother Nature prepares for you to enjoy after a gray storm.

Sometimes rainbows can surprise you with a double arch...

...or being unexpectedly flat.

My sweetheart and I didn't find a pot of gold at the end of these rainbows. Hum… maybe we were at the wrong end, huh?

Hey, it's been very quiet in here. My sweet Kia and I have shamelessly neglected not only our own blog, but also all those blogs that we love to visit regularly. I've been terribly busy at work and things around the house have also been hectic. I'll try to sum-up the weekend and other bits. Grab a chocolate bar and follow me…

4-DAY TRIP TO DUBLIN: I was supposed to go to Dublin for a work trip, but that was cancelled. At that time, I've been reading a bit about Dublin and it seemed a nice city to visit, so my sweet Kia and I decided to go there on holidays. We won't visit other places beside Dublin, because neither of us feels like driving on the wrong side of the road… yet! This weekend we spent some time booking a hotel room and getting our flight tickets.

TV: Last year, shortly after we moved to Scotland, we received a letter from TV Licensing asking whether we had a TV. We called the number reported on the letter to confirm we did not have any TV. On Sunday around noon, about a year later, a guy from TV Licensing knocked on our door asking to come in to verify that we actually did not have any TV. We let him in, he gave a quick look into our living room, took some notes, then left, mentioning that we will not receive any other visit for the next three years. Does it sound so strange that nowadays somebody does not have a TV?

SUMMER SOLSTICE: The longest day of the year. Here in Paisley we had the following light span: sunrise: 04:27 - sunset: 22:09. That gives us a whole 17 hours and 42 minutes of light, and 6 hours and 18 minutes of dark. But actually the night does not get that dark, because if we look west the sky never gets completely dark. This day pays us back for the desolately dark and dull days of Winter! And also, what a difference compared to Italy! In Kia's hometown: sunrise: 05:36 - sunset: 21:17. In my hometown: sunrise: 05:31 - sunset: 20:37.

SUN: today we had a shining sun after a long gray weekend. And temps were also warm, about 22°C. I'm so grateful Summer is back again! Today was one of those most rare days when I got home all sweat. We decided to prepare a refreshing strawberry mousse to chill out.

SUNSET: Lately, when the weather is nice after dinner, we've been climbing the hill that is near our building just to enjoy a nice sunset and to take some nice shots, of course!

You can spot our condo in the middle of the shot above.

As you can see for the photo below, there is still a glimmer of light at 11 PM. Isn't it cool?

HUMIDITY: a friend that lives in Sicily asked us if it's very humid here. Humid? It's not even hot! LOL! The good point is that we do not need air conditioning as temps rarely go above 20°C.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION: It's been a rainy and grey weekend, but on Saturday we had the chance to go out to the Paisley Abbey to have a look at the photographic exhibition set up by local college students from the photography course. On the way home, not far from the Abbey, we saw a duck with a bunch of little ones.

ORGANIZING: we decided that it was time for us to do some organizing! We have been in this lovely flat for one year and we still haven't unpacked a few of our things 'cos of the lack of space. Lately, we got some shelves and side pieces from IKEA to build a couple cases in our storage room. Now the structure is up and we have to distribute things on the shelves.

LITTER: On Sunday afternoon, while my sweet Kia was working on our computer, I happened to watch outside from a window of our flat and I witnessed a demonstration of what local young people (not that adults are much different) think of recycling garbage. A bunch of youngsters was passing by our building. One of them was carrying a carton with Chinese food and they were all eating from it. When the food was finished, all of a sudden the carton must have become unbearably heavy (against every known law of physics), so heavy that they could not carry it for the 3 meters missing from the next trash bin, but they had to drop it on the street. A few minutes after the youngsters were gone, a magpie came and started eating from the carton. Then a crow came and scared the magpie away. Right after that, a seagull showed up, bulling around to steal the food. When all the birds had flown away, all that was left was an empty carton, that was smashed later on by a passing car. This is the local recycling system: Mother Nature will take care of it!

RSS: since we got an e-mail asking us if we have a RSS link for our site/journal, we tried to figure out how to add such a link. If you, like us, don't know what RSS is, read HERE. Why it doesn't seem simple at all to me?!

PHOTOS: We still haven't edited the tons of pictures from our Isle of Mull trip! We're going to stop mentioning it and stop feeling so guilty and just get to it as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience. Talking about photos, Kia is so excited about her project with Jaana. You should see her face when she is all focused into capturing a subject.

Well, enough of my rants 'cos I can hear a few ZzzzZzzzZzzzz coming for your 'puter screens, LOL! Have a good night and sweet dreams! Ta ta for now!

Yikes, I feel like a kid who didn't do her homework. I'm officially the Queen of procrastination! I wanted to do this weeks ago, but never came to it. So…

What about a BOOK GIVEAWAY? The book is "Missing" by Susan Lewis. You can check out the author's site HERE. It is an intricate story, with many twists and turns. I really wanted to find out what had happened … well, I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say anything about it. … huh? Are you curious? Well, if you want HERE you can read an extract of the book.

As you can see, the book is not brand new. I have brought it around with me for days. Anyway, this contest is for every bookworm out there. International participants are welcome. The winner will be selected in a random drawing, which will be announced next week.

All you have to do to enter is:

1) leaving a comment on our blog with these words: "Book, please";
2) answering the following question in your comment: "Which is the best scenario for reading a good book?";
3) complete step 1 and 2 by Wednesday 24th of June.

Thanks for entering our book giveaway! One more thing… good luck!

Warning: extreme cuteness content ahead…

Isn't this little lamb the cutest thing? Just precious. You can click on the photo to see it full size.

Wherever you go in Scotland, you will find sheep. It is very difficult to find unmarked sheep, though. Most sheep carry a blue or red dot on their fluffy fur in order to identify the owner.

As you can see, I've been playing a bit in Photoshop, trying new effects. Ok, I'm off to hug my hubby now, I hope you have a stunning evening and I'll chat again soon.

What a gorgeous weekend! We had a spell of beautiful weather, so my sweetheart and I have been making the most of it by walking around and enjoying the peace on the hill near our home.

It was quite unexpected 'cos the weather forecast had predicted rain for the whole weekend. Temps arrived to 20°C/68°F and we could use a t-shirt for the first time this Spring. We also made ourselves a creamy and chilly glass of "caffe freddo all'amaretto" (coffee shaken with ice cubes and Amaretto liquor).

Zeno and I have also been to Ikea to buy some shelves. We want to reorganize our storage room, but we are still at the first steps of the process.

Before bed I had the chance to read your comments. I'd like to be able to say that I'm always optimistic, but sometimes I fail miserably and I am not able to see the positive side or the good in people. Take, for example, a few days ago: a friend of mine said lies shamelessly in my presence, even though she knew I was aware of it. Well, she already did lie in the past, but just minor things (in Italy we call them "bugie bianche", white lies), those lies you may say to appear more interesting. But this time it was a big one. I didn't say anything in front of the other people there, or to her lately, but… I don't think I'll be able to look at her with the same eyes ever again. I failed in my positive thinking also when we moved here. I was excited for being in a new beautiful country, for Zeno's new job and 'cos we were going to meet new people, but every now and then I have not been able to see it as the amazing growth experience it was. Read: three months without phone and Internet connection, lots of problems in opening a new bank account and so on… I was quite annoyed by all this, believe me.

Ok, back to our weekend. Saturday was a very pleasant day. We went to a Greek restaurant in Glasgow with a few friends. I love Greek food! Everything was really good and I'm looking forward to go back again soon. The place was cozy, the room was decorated in traditional style, with big photos of Greece on the walls surrounding the small tables. We had dolmades, grilled Haloumi (a Cypriot cheese), hummus and tzatziki with plenty of warm pittas, a delicious lamb souvlaki with pilaf. At a certain point Dimitri (the owner) started dancing the Sirtaki dragging in a few girls that were there for a birthday party. The music was way too high, but we had a good time. We arrived home at 3:15 in the morning, right on time to capture this on the camera…

Great colors at 3:21 in the morning, don't you think?

Today we are back to rain. It's much cooler now than the past couple of days and I'm craving a cup of hot chocolate. We should have rain all week, so I'll probably spend a lot of time on the sofa reading books.

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend! Did you do anything fun and exciting? Or did you take a nice relaxing break from real life? Any exciting plan for this week?

As I grow older, I try to pay less attention to what people say. I prefer to watch what they do. Taking a positive look isn't always easy, but I try to concentrate on keeping a peaceful state of mind. Let's call it "the art of productive thinking", or in a easier way: optimism.

When the weather is bright like today, positive thinking is a lot easier. It's a warm afternoon (18°C/64.5°F), the sun is out and the birds are chirping. It's a perfect day for a walk in the park.

That's all for today, my friends! I hope you all have a happy and sunny weekend ahead.

Good afternoon, blog buddies. Not much is happening at our neck of the woods. Just having fun with our digital camera…

As one brilliant person once said: "There are four basic food groups: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate and chocolate truffles". As self-proclaimed chocoholics, we couldn't agree more. Enjoy and don't drool over your keyboard, LOL!

Handmade chocolate candy (cioccolatini) anyone?

Thanks for your support on our new photo-adventure. Together with Jaana, we decided to do Happy Snappy twice a week, every Wednesday and Sunday. Hope you'll keep checking it. TTFN!

Here I am again, with a piece of baklava and a cup of tea. Not a very healthy dinner, I know... but yummy, for sure!

Why weekends have to fly away so fast? There never seems to be enough time to do all the things I should do and the things I want to do. Zeno had to work almost the entire weekend, so I went to the library and borrowed a bunch of books to keep me company. Today I've been catching up on my friends blogs and everyone seems to have been busy. I've been busy doing a whole lot of nothing, LOL! Just spent a lot of time on the Net and over the phone with a special lady that celebrates her birthday today. Buon compleanno, Franca!

Lately, Zeno and I spent an embarrassing amount of time watching True Blood on DVD. We have seen the first 10 episodes so far, and are quite curious to see how things are gonna end up in the last one. We are both hooked. Give us anything with vampires and (almost) definitely we are gonna like it. But I was wondering… is all that nudity really necessary? Oh, well, needless to say that I will look for the "Sookie Stackhouse" book series (known as "The Southern Vampire Mysteries") by Charlaine Harris at the library. Also the main theme is not bad. I think the video is disgusting, but the music is not bad at all. The song is "Bad Things" by country music artist Jace Everett. What about you? Are you looking forward to True Blood's second season (out on June 14th in the US)?

Here I am again. It seems like I survived the first year here in Scotland. Yep, a whole year has passed. Looking back, I can say that it has been a pretty good year, with many things happening. We sure didn't get bored!

Lately I did not post very much since I've been very busy at work. In May, my colleagues and I had a lot of work to do and also lots of trainings to give and receive. June is going to be as busy as May, if not more. Last week, two of my colleagues announced they are going to leave by the end of July, since they have found a new job. One of them is going to move to Australia. They are very experienced people (irreplaceable, I dare to say), so it is going to be a big loss. They are also fun to go out with. Three new hire started working in the past few weeks and very soon they will be ready for the working routine.

Today we had a typical Scottish weather, with sun and rain swapping every 15-20 minutes. Nonetheless, we had to go out since we had some errands to run. Luckily, we picked the right time frame and the weather has been fairly nice while we were out. There was a small "European Market" in the square near the train station and we bought some baklava at the Greek stand.

Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts (pistachio, almonds, cashew...) and sweetened with honey. It's very yummy and, of course, quite fattening, but who counts calories when eating good food!?

Gotta go now. Tonight and tomorrow I have to prepare a presentation for Monday.

Peek-a-boo! How are you all? Some of you may have wondered if I fell off the planet. Well, here I am, at last, procrastinating my daily chores over a cup of coffee. Can you believe it's June already? It's difficult to conceive how rapidly 2009 is going so far, that's for sure!

First, before I say anything else, I want to thank everyone who left such nice and cheering comments during our absence. Zeno and I appreciate each and every visit and comment. Said that, I have to pass to everyone of you this sweet award I got from Rachel before we left for Isle of Mull. Thank you for the nomination, Rach, you are so nice! I truly appreciate!

Visiting blogs and commenting take a lot of time, I know, and I enjoy visiting my friends blog as often as I can. Thank you all so much for reading and following this blog! Left click to grab the award.

My sweetheart and I are both fine, thanks for asking. The last couple of weeks we have been extremely busy. Along with my parents' visit, our little trip, Zeno's work and a bunch of sunny days, we have barely had time to breathe.

We had five glorious sunny days in a row, with temps around 25°C, a lovely blue sky and a gentle breeze. I'm not a sunbather, so I'm still pale, but you never know how long the sun will stay out here in Scotland and you have to take any chance to enjoy being outside. Needless to say, we are back to rain today and my sweater and socks are out from the wardrobe once again (it's 10°C now). I wasn't going to complain, but it's raining on my windows right now. I cleaned them only a couples of days day ago, it's so unfair!

I will tell you about our trip later, we still have to check out the tons of photos Zeno took in those 5 days. Isle of Mull, Iona and Staffa were amazing and we had a blast with my parents.

Can you believe that Zeno monopolized our new digital camera and did not even take a decent shot of the four of us?! At some point my Mom even commented: "We are no cow, or sheep or bird, so we are not interesting subjects for him at all", LOL! I'm still not very good at using our DSRL (maybe 'cos it's in Zeno's clutch all the time?!), as you can see from this self-portrait attempt of mine.

It's already that period of the year when it's difficult to rest at night. The sun is up at 4:30 in the morning and it wakes me up. On the other end, evenings are long and pleasant and it's bright till 10 PM tempting you to go out for a walk after dinner.

Have to make dinner now. In my next post I will tell you about a cool little project a friend and I have been working on (well, mostly her, but I will try to catch up!). Take care and have a stunning weekend! Hope to be back with a more interesting post soon. Until we blog again…