GETTING READY FOR OUR FIRST GUESTS & A HUGE SURPRISE| Tuscan Diaries EP 6

GETTING READY FOR OUR FIRST GUESTS & A HUGE SURPRISE| Tuscan Diaries EP 6

We’re Nikki and Carlo and we live in patano Italy except we also just bought a house in Tuscany which we’re currently renovating so we live there too join us as we turn this house and Olive Grove into a dream home and get to grips with living in two different parts of

Italy we have our first guest arriving in 2 days time and we’re not quite ready we’ve realized that we don’t have enough space in the kitchen to cook and prepare for six possibly eight people if everybody turns up at the own time and there’s a couple of things missing in

The bedroom so we need to pop out we’re going to go to the cheapest secondhand place that we know where we got our €25 sink and our 20 table and see if we can find anything appropriate we also need a few other things like bedside lamps and

A little mirror and maybe more I don’t know even but we’re going to try and get what we need today the shop opening times here are quite narrow Windows you’ve got from 10: till half2 and then everything shuts and then from half 3 till 7:00 so it is now4 to 10 so we’re

Going to get over to the shops now and we’ve got a good 2 and 1/ half hours before everything shuts down for lunch I found something for you just in case you miss home I know it’s really old I don’t think I’ve seen that photo before 6 year old okay

Okay somebody else can have it what I thought we could do was have something coming out from here so like sticking out a bit so we’ve got a bit more counter space cuz I’m not used to having just that to prepare all my meals on it’s just not quite enough especially

As there’s going to be about six to eight of us in the next few days obviously this is not our finished kitchen this is just a temporary kitchen while we are having a kitchen made by a nearby Carpenter uh who says it’ll be ready at the end of March baby

So this is how we get our gas in Tuscany we have a big gas tank over there somewhere baby I feel everything’s all right with so this is obviously something that we don’t have to do very often for okay okay today we have our first guests arriving

We’ve got four people and two dogs coming can you guess who’s coming to stay anyhow we’ve got a lot to do I need to get to the supermarket we’ve suddenly realized we haven’t got any chairs yet we’ve got the these wonderful chairs that were left here but they’re not very

Comfortable um so we’re going to see if we can quickly pick up some chairs I need to go to the supermarket I’ve got a couple other shops I need to go to it is pouring with rain it is the worst weather it could possibly be for the

First time people come and visit not much I can do about that so we need to get cracking also as you can see our white sofas have changed color I bought a protective sofa cover because they were just even though we had one white sheets white blankets on the sofas they

Were getting filthy with the dog’s muddy feet so I brought these anti uh stain covers on well just one the red one that’s actually a tablecloth and I’m wondering whether I should go back and pick up another one for that sofa and I’m wondering whether I should get the

Same color or I could get a yellow one or a green one or a blue one or a bathe one or a cream one just not quite sure but they were very good value and definitely worth it so I think I will pick up another one of those

Yeah you have to come and help with the chairs what about the dogs going to get muddy all right okay we will see you in the in the first shop I’m back from the shopping it was a half failure so I went I wanted to get a couple of little coloring books and

Games for kids to play and so I went to a toy shop and I had to look up where the nearest toy shop was and I got there and I asked them if they had games for kids and they said oh no oh no no no no

We don’t have things like that here and they didn’t have coloring books either so I’m not so sure what sort of toy shop it was but it definitely wasn’t one that had toys in it so and I couldn’t find them anywhere else I was told to go to a

News agent couldn’t find anything there I in the supermarket or I could get with some colored pens so that’s going to have to do but I did get another sofa cover so we’ve got two matching red sofas now which I think look quite smart I think I almost prefer it to the white

Ones anyhow those sofas are temporary at the end of the month my sofa for this room is going to be arriving and these will go elsewhere um our guests are going to be arriving in about an hour’s time so Carla’s just getting things SP and span upstairs of course it’s still

Pouring with rain outside um it’s a really miserable day and um it hasn’t stopped at all and of course that means the dogs are very muddy every time they go out and our friends are bringing two dogs as well so there going to be four muddy dogs in

Here it’s going to be absolutely filthy within the next 2 hours I’m sure but it doesn’t matter because it’s all cleanable and it’d be really really nice to see our friends have you figured out who’s coming yet and we’ve also put those chairs around the table they look

Much better than the white ones and I also found this plant stand over in the corner here which which is quite fun I probably will paint that they should be here any minute let’s walk up the driveway and meet them here they come Indy right we’re not sure how the dogs

Going to react with each other going to be friendly there you go we’re having easy meal roast chicken and roast potatoes and I might do some red peppers and onions too some Rosemary from the garden and olive oil wow easy w’t take up too much time just

Chop it all up stick it all in the oven and carry on chatting I’m very grateful that you made this little extra kitchen bench because I don’t know how I would have prepared all of this stuff without it much room to I to is beautiful the area where

You are with the heels is great but I have to have a better look tomorrow morning because when we arrived I was so nervous and happy because I saw at the End of the Street Nikki and I haven’t seen her for what since the 10th of December which is really a long period

Because when we arrived back from our Winter holidays you already had left two days before yeah so so I saw only the little red hair Angel and no it’s beautiful here it’s really nice it’s even with rain beautiful some people think I’m blonde but if you’ve known me for long enough

You’d know that I’m not blonde I’m my red head it’s just faded so that’s why and it’s beautiful I love that there is no neighbors this is what I yeah what for me is like a house you know when I buy a house there is Garden

And there’s space and maybe you have a neighbor after like five five minutes yeah when we speak in positan about house it’s always like an apartment because it’s true we all have houses but we have one above one down on the right and on the left in general in Positano

You were already Lucky in Positano because you were up yeah somewhere but in the center of Positano you don’t have a house you live like in an apartment yeah it is a different thing and then I like the nature for the dogs it’s perfect immediately we had this

Beautiful walk although it was raining all L it was lovely to walk around the house is perfect but it will be even better when you finish but already now it’s perfect it’s lovely too for you to it’s perfect thank you I’m not retired sorry I hope I

Hope need to get some smaller glasses PLS of wine is not cool it’s the next morning it has finally stopped raining for a bit and we’ve come to the ano because it is the monthly Antiques Market so we’ve got a weird mixture of patano and Tuscan Elizabeth and pepe Maria

Lorenzo um Elizabeth’s over there with the girls and we’re all here having a wand around the market we’ve already bought one thing which of course I forgot to film we’ve bought the most beautiful lamp it’s one of those big green glass dami janas Demi John’s with

A pink and orange lamp shade over the top of it it’s beautiful and it was €40 so we’ve already snapped that up and taking it back to the car so to show you later a here’s the basket man he bought this for forano for the B to put the eggs in yeah

Perfect and fire it’s just started pouring with rain again and I have lost everybody and I’m just presuming that they will all be in the bar so that’s where I’m going I’ve bought some thing I’ve bought two little gold leaf mirrors which will go on my picture wall eventually when I start

Hanging things and I’m very pleased with them I got a good discount and now I must find everybody else here we are and it’s actually stopped raining already so I think this is the third time that I’ve been to the market in and this has happened every time we have a

Very very quick walk around the market and then spend the the rest of the day sitting at the bar chatting to people that we’ve met in the stools around the market and now the sun has come out and we’ve had a quick wander around kasak

Colomba and we are off to go and see the Tower of pza saying as we’re in this area we’re all a little bit squished in the car but Peppa is head the lamp shade that we bought and the base as well which is on his lap so

Here we are lunchtime on a Sunday so it’s not too busy it’s probably the best time to come foree spee speech so this is what it’s really like at the tower of P basically all sorts of people standing around in weird positions trying to get the photo of them holding up the

Tower so lucky it’s forecast thunderstorms all afternoon look at it we’ve got blue sky in Sun we’re very very lucky today it’s much quieter around the other side we’re just outside the ticket office and there’s a lovely grass that you’re not allowed to walk on

But you get a clear view of the Tower and the Dome without people in front ofos s so me managed we are up and although we are used to stairs in Positano it’s quite a walk yeah so be prepared this is the Italian Marine flag in the

Middle there are four symbol to remember the four bigger beautiful ancient sea Republic of the Mediterranean Sea Genova Venetia Pisa and the malfi a might the view is stunning up here it’s really beautiful you can see the clouds cruising around and the whole Panorama of the town is really beautiful spee eleth

He my get ey no Indie Indie stay with us voice but hasn’t literally I’ve read yeah I not that just know nice and then I think tomorrow it’s Friday so normally on Friday evening meet up in the PB I’ve decided to paint the chairs that we B the other

Day they were a little bit too orangy Brown and there is going to be a lot of wood in our kitchen because the actual kitchen is a wooden kitchen as well so I didn’t want it be too Brown in there so I’ve decided to paint these chairs that

We picked up the other day and the color I’ve chosen is vers by Annie Sloan so I’m using a chalk paint uh I love I love using chalk paint it just takes out the whole process of uh sanding you don’t need to sand anything before you paint

It and you need to put a couple of coats of chalk paint on it completely covers up anything no matter how dark it is and then you just need to wax it so what I’ve actually been doing is this is the last chair that I’m painting right now

I’ve done the other three already I spent most of the time painting them on the on FaceTime with my brother martin and forgot to film anything so when I finished they look really really perfect and brand new so I decided to rough them up a little bit so

What I did was I went to the hardware store and I bought two little bottles of paint color so this is like this is like color that you add into white paint and you can put a few drops in and it’ll become a pale color or you can put a

Whole load in it’ll become a bright color so I bought a black one and a brown one and I scooped out some of the clear wax into a little pot and I’ve put some drops of that in mixed it together in a saucepan and made myself a dark wax

So what I’ve done with a dark wax is that I I get a use a brush like a round brush like this dip it into the dark wax wax and then just go over the clear wax with it and then rub it off with a cloth and it just gives you that used

Lived in look so the furniture doesn’t look brand spanking new a couple of days ago it was my birthday so I was expecting a very relaxed day this was my plan for my birthday I was going to finish off these chairs um maybe go out for lunch with

Seline and sky and Carlo and that was it that’s all I had planned it was a day full of surprises starting with the first surprise being that Carlo had to leave unfortunately he had to go back to patano for family reasons and couldn’t be here but at least we got a couple of

Hours in the morning together before he left then Seline came over and took me out for lunch which was a total surprise and Marie did film a little bit of the preparation so I’m going to show you that now okay so here we are preparing for Nikki’s birthday we’re getting all the

Balloons up just managed to put the five up I need to put the zero up now so we’re all here Lorenzo unfortunately has uh popped a balloon already but it doesn’t matter how does that look so that’s it we’re ready we’re just waiting for Nikki and car now so

Um yeah it’s going to be great fun covert operation hello here I wondered why you were strangely quiet happy birday we didn’t film much more during lunch I totally was not expecting it so it was all about of a shock for me and I just enjoyed the day and it was a really

Really lovely day I had so many wonderful comments and messages from so many people I mean thousands and I obviously haven’t been able to reply to them all but I am so incredibly grateful for everybody who sent me best wishes it was just it was just such a special day

For me we went for a little walk to the the silencio which is the amphitheater of Andrea belli out on the Tuscan Hillside near latico and that was lovely and then we came home with Selena Marie we had some tea and we relaxed for a

While on the sofas and that was fun too what else do I need to tell you oh I know you all know my friend Elizabeth of course you do she was in this video I filmed bits on certain days so I’d forgotten but yes she was in this video

She started up her own YouTube channel finally after many many uh people asking and years of her uming and aing about it she’s finally taken the plunge and started up a YouTube channel it is called goat morning A M feet Coast if you didn’t know Elizabeth has over 20

Goats now I’ve lost count of how many she’s got now but over 20 so that is a big part of her life and I think her YouTube channel is going to be great because it’s very different her life is very different from mine obviously she’s got the two younger kids she’s got over

20 goats she’s got Boat Company so I’m really curious to see what she’s going to do I think it’s going to be great forun fun we can do all sorts of collaborations together and I think you should all pop over and say hello to her there and watch her first video which

Has just come out anyway thank you very much for watching I hope you all have a wonderful week whether you’re painting moving doing nothing just having a normal working day or celebrating a birthday or whatever thank you very much for watching see you next week

We have guests arriving and we have no kitchen chairs, no counter space and it’s pouring with rain! Will we manage to get everything ready on time?

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Thanks for watching the video GETTING THE NEW HOUSE READY FOR OUR FIRST GUESTS