A painful week!

This week was...how can I describe it...difficult for me! Everything started the previous weekend...

Friday morning: As I was dressing up my daughter noticed that I had some grains at my waist. I thought that something had bite me and continued unabated
my schedule : I had to get my oldest to the dentist and prepare her birthday party for the next day!

Saturday: Panic in my house! The party was a carnival one, so we had to decorate properly,

prepare food for thirty teenagers

and move away the furnitures to make enough space for them to dance.
I was so busy that I totally forgot about my grains.
Despite everything, the party was great!


Sunday: My waist was enoying me and I was scratching it . I took a mirror and looked at it.
"Ow, my God, what's this?"

Monday morning: My dermatologist said that I had herpes zoster. That meant that I had the virus of chickenpox for the second time in my life -I had caught this disease when I was a college student. The BIG difference was that it was painful now, but luckily for me not so painful as other people had felt.

Now: I still take my medication and try not to think about it. It'll pass...!

Maria's Vienna...

A cold afternoon, a few days ago, I made a hot chocolate and sat down in front of my computer. There was a Sunday magazine in front of me. As I was browsing the magazine I fell over an article about Vienna, Austria. Then I closed my eyes and imagined that I was there...
I got on a curricle and travelled through the town with the company of a kind coachman.


During my ramble I saw the Belvedere palace, the two big operas (Volkosoper and Staatsoper) and the Museums-quartier ( former imperial stables which nowadays are used as a cultural and shopping centre ).


I enjoyed the full of flowers parks and I admired the St Stefanos Church.


Finally I stopped at the Nashmarkt were I bought a souvenir. Ofcourse I tasted the famous zahertorte, the wellknown Vienna's chocolate cake at the "Demel". It was amazing.

When I opened my eyes I still had that taste in my mouth! I wish it wasn't just my imagination!

HAPPY VALENTINE!!!

VIRUS ALERT FOR EVERY BLOGGER!!!

I recieved the follow from Kostas and I believe you all have to do something before it's too late!

Hi All,
I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus! I checked Snopes , and it is for real!! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD T HIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS! You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open i t. If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a Friend, do not open it! Shut down your computer immediately.. This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept. COPY THIS AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM , YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.

Marina, the nurse!

My babies are both ill. They have high fever and headache for the last seven days. The doctor said that it's a virus which strikes especially the children and lasts many days. We were planning a carnival party for my daughter's birthday this Saturday but things changed and she's very sad for it. I promised her that we'll have it next Saturday and she seemed less unhappy.

By the way, don't I look like Mini as a nurse or it's just my idea?

Dolmadakia with (stuffed) vine leaves.

If you decide to cook this food, you must have some vine leaves, a stuffing of minced beef, onion, dill,garlic, parsley and...a lot of spare time!

It took me two hours to roll all of them!

Ofcourse the result made me forget all my labour...
By the end of the day the pan was empty but I was full
of the sweet words I heard for my cooking!

Clean and healthy at last ...

Hi everybody! Did you miss me?

My computer had LOTS of viruses and we had to clean it up! Someone between us- four opened a site that effected our P/C. I hope it won't happen again cause we all lost some of our files and we couldn't use the computer at all. So I'm happy to announce...

I'M BACK!!!

Wild herbs: my family's favourite food...

My parents taught me and my sister to love nature and its goods. We used to go for pic-nics to the counrty with other families. The air there was clean and fresh and brought us laughs and happiness. The children were playing and running or making bunches of wild flowers and the parents were collecting wild herbs. I felt really grown up when my mom gave me one day a knife and a plastic bag and told me that I was ready to join the adults!
Many years have passed since that day but I still like to collect and eat wild herbs! And my family too! I cook them with many ways: boiled, in a pie, fricassee with a meat...
Two days ago, we went to the country and we found many of them.

As soon as I got home, I boiled some and that was my supper:
wild herbs with Cretian olive oil and lots of lemon!

A light and healthy dish!

I even collected some beautiful anemones and put them in a small vase!


Ow! I LOVE NATURE AND ITS GOODIES!!!

The first days of the New Year - Part Three...

##$%^*!@&))+(%$#@^%^&_)+)*&$%##
...those are my nerves about my internet connection...
*
...Back to my story...
Our first day at Tsepelovo (a village on the Pindos mountain) started with a full breakfast! Our apartment was great.

I opened the curtains waiting to see the snow...Instead of it there was fog and rain! It was raining heavily from the first day we arrived since... the last night!

We could see the snow at the top of the mountain and so we decided to go and found it! Yes, we were after it! LOL!!!
Finally we found it! It was little and dirty but we managed to play with the snow.

Our shocks were so wet that we put them on the heat of the car to dry them!


Tsepelovo, our company of nineteen people stayed at, was a tipical Epirotic one: with houses with stoned roof and walls. They have much of that stone there.


We visited many amazing places like
traditional and old bridges...

the canyon of Vikos...

the river of Voidomatis (means bull's eye) famous for its canoe kayac races ...


Ali Pasa's house (I'll narrate his story some day)
in the middle of the lake of Ioannina...


the cave of Ioannina which is rich of stalactites and stalagmites...


and last but not least the museum of Vrelli's Greek History Wax Museum...


I'll finish my narration with a video of my little one, who skated for the first time in her life! Despite her three purlers, she had a very good time!

MY WORLD TUESDAY: The first days of the New Year - Part Two...

The Trip to Zagoroxoria.

It was early in the morning on 2nd of Jenuary when our trip started.
My girls had a sleepy look because they had gone to bed late the previous night.
That's why they fell asleep during the trip after they studied the map and relized that we had to drive for 470km.


It was raining all the way long and when it stopped for some minutes we saw a beautiful rainbow.


We passed through the bridge of Rio...


mountains...


and champaigns.


Finally we arrived at Ioannina.
It's a big city at the roots of the Pindos mountain,
with a big lake and a small island in it.
In front of us, up there at that snowy aiguilles were the villages of Zagori or Zagoroxoria as we use to say them.


We would be staying at one of those villages, in a traditional house, among the snow.

We had an extraordinary lunch and then we continued our way up to the mountain.
It was already dark when we arrived at the Tsepelovo village and we couldn't see much. What we saw in the day light the next day made us stay stumped...

TO BE CONTINUED...


Visit the world of the...world at

The first days of the New Year - Part One...

Ow, what a mess!!! How will I put my house in order again? I hadn't realized that I had so many ornaments until I had to put them again in boxes.


Anyway I've almost finished, that's why I've sat down for a few minutes (I hope it won't be hours because as soon as I sit down on this chair and I blog, I forget about everything...).
These days passed so quickly...especially the days after New Year's Eve...

*

New Year's Eve was a very busy day: my father went his car to the mechanic because it had an engine problem and I had to do all my parents' jobs . I returned home at 3 pm and I found my hubby cooking for the first time in his life: spaggetti with cheese.

A present was waiting for me in the mail box. It was from my blogging friend Aya from Japan. I was very pleased to see that she had written me some very sweet words with the presents she sent to us all.


(I'm very glad that in the last few months I'm blogging I have met some great people who deserve to be my friends because of their pure hearts, things so rare these days.)

Then I cooked a cheese pie for my sister's New Year's Eve party. I made a profiterole for desert, too. Last but not least I made our Santa Claus' pie.

The party was great but I won't tell you much about it, except that I won the coin at my sister's Santa Claus' pie.


If you're interested to know what happened at that party visit my sister's blog at http://antigonisdiary.blogspot.com.

*

The first day of the year find me very tensed. I had to prepare our suitcases for a five days trip to north Greece, at Zagoroxoria...But first we cut my family's Santa Claus' pie. Guess who found the coin...

Yes, you're right me again...This must be MY lucky year!!!

TO BE CONTINUED...

SkyWatch : The first sunset of 2009

1st January 2009:

Although I was preparing our suitcases for a five days trip,
I couldn't resist of that beauty!
Nature and sun are drawing...

Join Skywatch for more...

Happy New Year!!!