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October 2013 Newsletter

In This Issue

October Update
October Special Offer!
Story: Interesting things you find if you buy an Italian house!
Italian Recipe: Aubergine Involtini

October Update

Alan and Kathy

We've been busy in October!

Firstly, we thoroughly enjoyed the Auckland Italian Festival again this year and it was great to catch up with some of our Auckland customers. The change to the Newmarket venue really worked well and it was a great celebration of all things Italian. We noticed as usual a great interest in some of our large Joker Masks, so we have an October special just for our email customers in case you missed us at the Festival, with an unprecedented offer of a $100 reduction on our luxury Joker Masks.

Also this month, we have produced what we think is a world first! We are now ready to reveal to you our new 'Masquerade Style Guide', which is a complete guide on what to wear to a Masquerade Ball or masked event, including mask choice, make up and clothing and accessories. Masquerade events are becoming more and more popular, but many people have either never attended one before or are unsure of what might be required. This style guide provides the answers. We would love to include your feedback based on your experiences!

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October Special Offers!

This month we are featuring something a little extraordinary in terms of saving - $100 off our Luxury range of Joker Masks!

They come in gold, blue and red as you can see below, and will most assuredly make a spectacular home decoration. But act now, the offer ends on the 22nd and stocks are very limited!

Remember, delivery within New Zealand is absolutely FREE!

Selected Joker Masks Reduced by $100!

Offer expires 22nd October!

To claim the discount you will need to be logged in on our site, so in case you have forgotten your log-in details, they will be in the email specific to you.

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Italian Story- Interesting things you find if you buy an Italian house!

Many of you have told us you're enjoying our stories about buying a property in Italy - here's some more detail of our adventures earlier this year in our new home in Abruzzo.

When we bought our house in Italy this year, we hadn’t fully realised that we would be buying not only an ancient building but also many of the possessions of the previous owners. We arrived to find the house fully furnished, right down to the contents of the kitchen cupboards.

The old bedroom

When we started cleaning out the bedroom of the house that had not been lived in for at least 50 years, we were pleased to have found some old light bulbs which we thought we could use to provide some light (once we finally got power). When we did get power, we could not figure out why the light bulb in this room would glow brightly for a day or so, then … “BANG”, it would explode. After some time, our Italian tradesmen pointed out the stash of unused bulbs I had found were ‘molto vecchi’ (very old) and should be thrown out. It seemed such a shame. Then we found out that these old bulbs were rated at 115 volts - relics from just after the Second World War, we think!

So, with a single new 220 volt bulb dangling from the ceiling we gingerly prepared to clean out 50 years of dust and spider webs. As Alan swept under the old double bed, he struck something solid with the broom head. Thud. There seemed to be an old plastic bucket under there. It was heavy. He dragged it across the floor and the top was covered in plastic. Rather than fossick in this with bare hands in the semi-darkness, he chose to lug it down stairs and open it in broad day light. We were amazed – it was FULL of ........

Italian Recipe - Aubergine Involtini

Pesto has always been a personal favorite ingredient of mine. Whether it is the classic basil-garlic-parmesan-pine nut recipe, or whether it is spruced up by using rocket instead of basil or almonds instead of pine nuts. This months recipe combines plenty of pesto, grateful amounts of goats cheese, aubergine and capsicum to make a filling and overwhelmingly tasty dish.

Recipe courtesy of Jo Seagar in her book,Italia

which we have for sale right here

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 have been doing quite a bit of work with Pinterest recently. If you check our Pinterest Boards you will see we have a lot of interesting material there now about Italy and our products. We are finding a lot of people all over the world are responding to our Pinterest boards in particular. We also have been trialing a Facebook shop. It has some of our brand new crystal in it. Let us know what you think.....

Have you been to Assisi in Umbria where our photo of the month was taken? The interesting thing about this photo is that this statue of St Francis as a young man is in a semi 'inside' passage associated with the little chapel that he frequented and as we walked up to it I thought "how nice - a statue of St Francis with white doves...." And then, one of the doves started cooing! There were real live doves on the statue!