May 17, 2012
In Italy I find myself whispering—for I haven’t stopped talking to my mother—”Are you living this too, madre mia?”
It feels as if I’m picking up where she left off. A leitmotif of my life has been actually doing the things she talked about doing but didn’t because she was saddled with four kids. My mother deposited her dreams into me, like moms always do to daughters.
Gradually the house has become a home. The decision was long, and so far it seems right. Je ne regrette rien. Non mi pento di nulla.
Here are snippets from my new world (yes, I have a thing about green):
 
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March 9, 2012
Near the end of my house renovation in Sicily, I was so broke that I begged chairs that friends and acquaintances were tossing out and shopped the Modica flea market (the last Sunday morning of every month on Corso Umberto I) for doorknobs, lamps, and dishes. Even my garbage men knew to sift through their trash for the American lady.
I furnished the salone last. Its centerpiece is a skid. As in Skid Row.
Shamelessly scavenged from la strada.
(Brutta figura, Sicilians would say.)
I lugged it down to Giuseppe, my neighborhood carpenter, and asked him to give it a real good sanding. He did, and it shines.
Then I threw down a couple o’ cushions, filled up a bowl with oranges, added two found objects (Grim Reaper scythes), a pile of books, et voilà.
A bona-fide living room.
At night I light swarms of candles, and the skid looks like a million bucks.
Do you decorate with found objects?
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Read more about my life on a shoestring in Sicily here.
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 Giuseppe, a fine Sicilian carpenter Click to subscribe to BaroqueSicily.
November 20, 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve had a giveaway, so here’s today’s deal.
The early bird gets the worm. Between now and 12 midnight EST on Nov 22, leave a comment on this or any of my last 5 posts, and you’ll be entered into the drawing to win this touch of Sicily. (The winner will need a mailing address either in North America or Italy.)
The tile from Caltagirone is 4 inches square and a half inch thick. Use as a trivet on your holiday table or give as a gift.
Caltagirone is famous for its ceramics and grand tiled staircase, which I copied in miniature in my house.
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August 19, 2010
I’m furnishing my home with trash.
The orange trash guys drop by on a daily basis. One day they’ll cart away secco, dry stuff. The next day it’s umido, wet stuff. Another day it might be plastica or carta or lattine. I still can’t figure out what the last thing is. To make matters worse, each kind of rubbish must be tightly wound up in a different-hued bag: lava-black for secco, pistachio-green for umido, and so on. I don’t expect to ever really catch on to a system that’s as complicated, in its own way, as Sicilian codes of honor.
But all that’s beside the point. What matters is not the debris they haul away from the house, but what they bring in. Last week one of them, eyes ablaze, said, “I hear you like old stuff, Signora.”
“You heard right, Signore.”
“Well, I have a piece of an old Sicilian cart. Do you want it?”
I took it, of course, along with his picture in the too-bright sun.
Then the next day along comes this: a rusted grinder, still smelling seductively of caffè.
So we’re in business, me and the garbage guys. Will the house soon look like a moldering antiques bazaar?
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July 15, 2010
A working kitchen has finally emerged from the rubble like a phoenix rising. After two nail-biting years. No longer do I boil up boxed soup on a hot plate, despair, mix paint around with a carrot stick, despair, write on a plaster-encrusted sawhorse lit by a bare bulb. I have a real table, lights, a working stovetop. Not just any stovetop, amici, but a Renzo Piano one. (Renzo Piano is the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Center, the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, etc.) The stovetop is a piece of impeccable Italian design, though tricky to light and hard to clean (makes perfect sense as form usually trumps function in Italy).
Flies buzz in tight circles. The Iblean light beats in every morning, shining off the mirror-like floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen is the cathedral dome out the window, and the soundtrack to my life are the bells, scaring me out of bed at 7am, marking the passing of each quarter hour, ringing for the dead, for weddings, for evening vespers, for morning mass, and for festa—four crazy-making days straight.
I love my Sicilian kitchen, and I’m grateful for each day I spend there. (What are you grateful for? Come on, tell us.)
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All photos and text on BaroqueSicily are Copyright of Jann Huizenga ©2009-2015, unless otherwise noted. Material may not be copied or re-published without written permission. All rights reserved.
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