Finally! After toying with the idea for some time and after a couple of failed attempts via free on line websites, I decided I would make my dream come true. During my free trials and errors, I’d let life take control, therefore putting my wants and needs last. I kept postponing a professional website. I’d always find excuses; that I don’t have free time, that I have nothing to share with the world. I thought that people wouldn’t be interested in what I have to write (lack of self confidence) and initially I suppose I had a sense of fear.
Eleni, my youngest daughter, always urged me on. “do it”, “why don’t you do it?” Her voice still plays in my head!
Initially it was going to be, “I” – my blog, but it soon materialized into “we” – our blog. Our decision to start this project with Yiannos, my husband of 33 years, made sense immediately. He is an architect and a ceramist and I am a crafter and diyer. Together we both love cooking and traveling. This combination of our interests allows us to share our ideas, our likes, and our experiences with you.
We take pleasure in entertaining at home be it with friends or family (that is where all the cooking came from) and we also share a small Agrotourism business which is very close to our hearts. Our three children have fled, stretched their wings to find their own path, so, we are left to ourselves, free to create, explore, reveal and write!
We hope you enjoy this new journey we are embarking with you.
About Christianna & Yiannos
Christiana Anastassiou
Hi, my name is Christiana and I love making things. I want to live in a world where living spaces are exactly that; living. Filled with tasteful handmade and homemade objects (and food). I choose to be surrounded by smiling faces and love to be where the sun is always shining.I have been working to create this lifestyle for a long time and I recently decided to share it with you. My husband and I managed to create what we think are beautiful homes for our family, we travel a lot and our daily routine is filled with creativity, art, fashion, cooking and entertainment. I like to count experiences not possessions, that is where true knowledge and intelligence comes from. We have three children, all grown up now, that are slowly taking their own paths in life. We are very excited and proud of them and can’t wait to see where they go next.Being married to Yiannos (an architect) for 33 years, we’ve had a lot of influence on each other. His taste, style and eye for that something different definitely rubs off on to me! But then, on the other hand, my practical mind and organizational skills is what generally makes things happen! We are definitely a partnership, an undefeated team. Our tastes have kind of gelled together!I graduated from the “Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne” (Lausanne Hotel School) but it was years later that I had the opportunity to practice my “Hospitality” skills at our small Agrotourism complex that we own with my husband in a small village in Cyprus. www.modusvivendiholidays.com.cy
Moreover, the past eight years I have been managing a private kindergarten in Limassol, and I am part of an amazing team of which I am very proud of. Children are full of imagination, creative energy and it is truly amazing how much knowledge and information such a small brain can store! Being around little kids on a daily basis, I find myself lost in memories that awaken my imagination and motivate me to create something new, something fresh.
Since my early years you would often find me sewing, knitting or crocheting next to my craft-mentors, my mother and grandmother, who pleasantly introduced me to the world of handmade colourful crafts.
I live by the philosophy of having more wrinkles only confirms all the laughter you’ve had in your life.
We have created, we have imagined, we have established homes, ideas and traditions, and now we would like to share “Our Modus Vivendi” in this Blog!
Enjoy!
Yiannos Anastassiou
Yiannos keeps procrastinating writing about himself so I have decided to take over! Living with him for 33 years, I think I am capable in assisting him since I know enough about him. He has never stopped being the spontaneously crazy person he once was and inspiration flows through his mind every second of each, passing day. Hopefully when he is ready, inspired and in the mood he will write his own “bio”.
Yiannos is a loving husband and father and a successful architect who has his own practice in Limassol, our home town. He is a person with great sense of taste and his living environment is always well thought and beautifully designed. Since he is a very creative man, art plays a huge role in both his personal and professional life and I am blessed to have found him and be included in that. Yiannos graduated from Canterbury School of Architecture (which is now called UCA) and spent his time practicing his field in London and Boston before settling in Cyprus. He himself is a potter, a hobby that he has been enjoying for more than 25 years with the professional help of Valentinos Charalambous, a famous Ceramic artist in Cyprus.
He also loves cooking and thinks of this hobby as a very relaxing way of practicing his creativity and establishing his family’s traditional tastes through his own innovative alchemies. He always says that cooking is a form of expression, an art. You need imagination and good taste to create a dish that pleases both the eyes and the “stomach”. His dream is to publish a cook book in the future but at the moment he will be sharing his recipes in our blog.
I almost forgot to mention that, unlike me, Yiannos has “green fingers”. He cares about his plants and it shows since our apartment veranda and big garden at the village are always healthy and full of fresh colourful blooms. Gardening is a way for him to relax after a stressful day at the office!
His consecutive, non-stop, unlimited creativity is blissfully shown in the results of his hard work, whether that is design, cooking, gardening, pottery or just the love he is constantly radiating. His special bond with his concrete work, his green garden, his tasteful recipes and the blue-coloured sea are always going to be a part of our daily lives yet never a burden to our dreams.