RENOVATING A RUIN: Hosting Friends for My Birthday in Tuscany & Bathroom Renovation Update

foreign thank you [Applause] foreign I filmed this so many times about three times on different days I've been waiting until a moment when I'm a little bit less sick because I'm quite blocked up and my nose is running but hopefully uh the sniffles I can edit them out the reason I didn't publish last week was because we had guests staying with us for most of the week my friends came to stay with their children and to celebrate my birthday so I was filming but I didn't get to edit and I baked a whole lot of goodies for for them and for their children it was sort of preparing breakfast lunch and dinner because we're we're you know there are cute little towns and Villages and we did go out once but we sort of like to just have people come and not have to get in the car and then we can just have every every meal out here in the sunshine or inside and after all of these months or years of working on the house and sort of get it trying to get it to the stage where we could host guests it feels uh quite exciting to finally be at the stage where we can use these rooms the kitchen and the and the big sitting room now that I that I renovated so uh and then we've also the garden as well it was just so it was so fun to have uh have friends and and just be able to use all these spaces that we've been working so hard on uh so the first thing I do when I have guests is uh to prepare the rooms and I like to just we've got this um these guest rooms which I we're yet to renovate when we have some more time and uh and maybe uh money uh we will be able to to do them up a little bit more but right now I just needed to make them feel a little bit more cozy and and uh and special and so the best way to do that I always think is with flowers it's so lovely when you feel like you're bringing the fields into the room and you know when you wake up in a new house and you look around and you sort of half asleep and you think oh yes I'm in Tuscany so I wanted something that could could make my guests feel like that my friends feel like that even though um they're Italian it's just so so lovely because you just gather what you can see what what nature is giving you and uh and you get this really beautiful uh bouquet of of uh of of Tuscany of Tuscany in springtime and it's so rustic it's not like roses or or anything as perfect and precise as that it's sort of more just uh what what are essentially weeds but beautiful weeds [Music] can it be true blow out the candles and make all my wishes come true what if all of the hardships had some things to prove in my weakness I was Stronger than what I had to lose because [Music] right there so I started off when guests arrive I like to just serve them something so they're not hungry while I'm preparing dinner so uh this is just a very simple antipasto that I did with some puff pastry I fry up some vegetables or some onion or asparagus or things like that and then put that in the little mix of little mini quiches I suppose and I pushed a little bit of Ricotta and then some whisk some egg and pour that in and these just cook and become lovely and crunchy and salty and and delicious and that's great for people to snack on kids and and adults while I'm preparing dinner uh one of the things that I needed I was thinking how can I do sort of because I was serving desserts for lunch and dinner so I was like how can I prepare desserts ahead of time but that will not have them go stale because a lot of cakes are really great uh that day or the next day but they were staying for several days so I decided to do those you know those little chocolate um puddings that I made with the with the soft Center the good thing about the the chocolate uh puddings is that I made them and then froze them and so I just took them out when uh that we were having dinner and then put them in the oven for seven ten minutes and uh and that was great because it's the only dessert I could do that really ahead of time and make sure that it was just completely finished and ready to go and this time I grated in uh the zest of a whole orange and it was so delicious I actually didn't have them because they didn't want to have the chocolate Disturbed on Franco see come come here we happen to have someone who who tasted they were delicious it was good with the orange you know it's like your favorite chocolate orange chocolate thing yeah they're meant to be together yeah orange and chocolate meant to be together yeah that you got him to sleep and then I served these with raspberries just a nice little tart contrast with the rich chocolate and then what else do we do ah then I did what was um what was that basically our wedding cake which was at the lemonade ricotta which many of you delicious many of you have had but this time I added strawberries and uh just whisked some uh some icing sugar and and lemon zest and vanilla into the mascarpone and this was so yummy [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] then what I wanted to do is make a special cake just for the girls because there were these well there were four girls four little um girls were sort of like three four five years old six and uh and then there were some boys that came after that as well three boys but the girls love princesses and so I wanted to make them like a princess cake I had in my head I was thinking oh I just love to I wasn't really following a proper tutorial in fact if I did it probably would have turned out better but but I think it was quite I was quite happy with the result so what I did was just bake three cakes of varying sizes and I I mixed some some little colored sprinkles ins or Funfetti I think it's called um so that it could be a little bit more exciting for the girls when they bite into it [Music] thank you thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] here she is [Music] oh okay maybe I can cut her legs is it wrong to cut Bobby's legs or with the bits that I cut off I could put that powder up here yeah that's an idea [Music] Guido saw the cake at that point and said oh isn't that a bit risque for the Bambina but it wasn't finished yet because I made a lot of icing pink icing [Music] oh what I would love to have done is done a crumb coat which is where you basically just sort of put a layer of the icing around and then put it in the fridge so that it firms up and then it's easier and just much more polished when you're when you're piping on uh on your your patterns or anything on the top however we had the fridge which was completely chocolate full with with Seafood and Meat and fruit and vegetables and everything for these these four days of of festivities so there was just no room in the fridge and also no time I had to sort of time it so that I was doing it when Jennifer Franco was napping which is just very unpredictable and so uh yeah I didn't get to do the crumb coat but it still seemed to work I just had to put on a lot of icing or frosting as North Americans say foreign [Music] foreign [Music] then I also made a lemon tart which is just a staple that I just love to make in springtime and it's also that also lasts really well um so we had it on the last day and it just that their lemon tart gets better and better with time so and that was a little not as not as much room to take up in the fridge living here I'm not as close to friends as I would like to be but sometimes I feel like you can I've lived in cities where I live next door to friends and you get so busy and you don't spend quality time with each other maybe you see each other briefly for a night out but when we have friends come stay they stay for a week and we really just get time to sit around and and talk about life and and the the big things and the the trivial things and and have a laugh and and just share meals together which is just my favorite favorite uh way to spend time with friends it's just not rushed and and we're all just lying around in the garden making little uh Gathering flowers with the girls and and putting them in our hair and and uh and then all the girls were around John Franco singing to him um it was so so beautiful and so many little moments that I would have loved to have captured on film but I don't like to film my friends because I just think that's a bit you know it's not I like to just respect their privacy I mean I think sometimes they've said they wouldn't mind but but I think it's nice just to also be present and for me not to be behind the camera for my birthday my friend gave me this beautiful uh necklace with a pendant that has a g engraved on one side and the date of John Franco's birth on the other side I think it's so so pretty and and uh and uh yeah it's just such a such a thoughtful gift then it is artichoke season and so Guido came just down here to our uh artichoke field to to pick the first artichokes of the season Alora this is the first picking of the year so the laboratory oh look how beautiful they are yeah and this is the first picking you can see it because the central one is still in and then you have the secondary second production yeah so the main artichoke is this one so I like to pick also some of the stock because it will last more and you can also eat it so I can leave the little children and we can have picked them next time he's a bit small but it will be more tender how are we going to cook them I think we could do a sauce for the pasta that's the plan for Sundays first course if anybody wanted and look at what that looks I'll link a video on screen mode Simon to have to explain what that means it's like it's a manjari oh dear so it's the Raw vegetable just dipped in oil salt pepper and if you want some vinegar and obviously if you have fresh produce like this it's very very good especially with a good oil and you can have artichokes carrots fennel celery cat 35 pinsimonial but like yeah these artichokes are here probably they have 50 years or whatever because they just regrow from The Roots every year and as you can see it's not correctly planted because what comes out comes out no no any any chemicals or anything else they just pop out from the ground this is the demonstration there's no chemicals because there's a bug that started eating it when they start opening like this like a flower means that would you like a flower when they start like opening like this it means that they're a bit too ripe if you can say so for an artichoke but still good this is the champion look at this one foreign [Music] part but I'm sure it's delicious [Music] foreign I've also been working on the bathroom so much needed to be done to the Terracotta the hand cut handmade terracotta tiles first of all I needed to sand them because apparently the man who laid them said it's just a little bit better underfoot if you sand them off just so that they're not as not so rough if you're walking around a bathroom in in bare feet and so I did try that doing that by hand and then quickly decided that I definitely needed to use the sanding the electric sander [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] ATO I don't know what that is in English it's like a sort of acid that really cleans them really well and then I mopped them to clean all of that off twice so that they were really lovely and clean and free of dust thank you foreign [Music] foreign and then finally I got to putting on the chair the the wax unfortunately I just only got a little bit just to test it just a liter and it wasn't nearly enough but I did just start just to to get an idea and uh and see how it was and in fact it's because it's this this just uh untreated terracotta it just absorbs all the wax and [Music] foreign the episode where I was doing the entire sitting room which was a much bigger space a lot more ambitious but I did that I think with linseed oil and some tractor oil but this time I was using wax as just uh something as an alternative and uh the reason you do it is because the Terracotta is so porous and it absorbs everything so if you spill something even like coffee or anything really um it will stain because it's just it all it just sucks up anything any liquid that goes onto it whereas if you put the wax in then it sort of clogs up all of those pores and uh you can you have to keep giving it a wax every every sort of six months to a year or so but um basically what it means is that you can just wipe off stains quite easily and so this is a very important part and it's why I sort of left the finishing touches of the painting to the last minute because I want to get the wax on the on the Terracotta water and then I can I just do all the little edges see I also got a beautiful artisanal brass lamp to go above the mirror and that was handmade in Rome and it's beautiful it's got all these little ornate details on it and it's going to go above the sink above the mirror oh wow oh wow beautiful look at this yeah the plumbers came from Florence because yes it's extraordinary but we cannot get our plumbers in this area because they're either busy or unreliable so we had to wait to get the plumbers from Florence but then there was a problem with the parts so they didn't get to finish the whole bathroom but they did put in the sanitary the toilet and the video and oh my goodness it's just the most beautiful toilet chain that you could imagine I can't wait to flush the toilet it's so so elegant and and uh and and exactly what we'd hoped it would be so we spent so long choosing them so we're really really happy with those and of course once everything you know once the terracottes is uh is sort of a little bit darker in color it's going to be I think it's going to be even more beautiful we put up the towel racks that my father actually made before he left the week a day before he left I think he we were I was with him and we were cutting out the shapes just to make uh some handmade towel racks but they still haven't done the shower because that we were still missing a piece for that so it's a long process but oh my goodness this bathroom is going to be so spectacular once it's finished