Webkinz world

This is Pinga, my daughter's Webkinz pet. Have you heard of Webkinz? If you don't have children, most probably you haven't, or if you live outside of northern America, again, it is most probable that you don't know anything about this virtual world of kids. I didn't know anything about it until we went to Canada. Our friends had bought a Webkinz pet for our daughter and that is how we entered the Webkinz world.

Webkinz pets are little plush pets that come with a secret code. You go to the Webkinz website, enter your code (entering the code means adopting a virtual pet) and your plush pet becomes a virtual friend. Your virtual friend is given a virtual room that you should decorate using virtual money, Kinzcash, which you should earn in the Webkinz world. There are different ways of earning money. You can go to the employment center and get a job, or you can play different types of games and make money. With your money you can buy furniture, clothes, food and extra room, even a garden for your pet. You are responsible from his health and cleanliness, too. You should give him his fruit and milk everyday to have a healthy pet. You should let him play with some toys so that he is happy. You should also enroll him at the academy and let him take some courses to give him a good education.

That is not all. There is also an area where the Webkinz pet owners can meet and chat. It is a totally controlled chat environment where the kids can use only fixed phrases in their chats.

If you have bought a garden for your pet, you can also plant your own plants, take care of them everyday and harvest your produce when they are ready. You can give this produce raw to your pet or you can buy a grill and cook them!

The members have also a post system. If you know the user name of a fellow Webkinz pet-owner you can send him/her a post or even a gift.

As you see it is a virtual world for kids and my daughter is addicted to it now. The problem is, when she is at school it is me who has to give food to her pet, or take care of her garden, and even go to work or play games to earn some money! :-)

I like the fact that my daughter is using her English while playing in Webkinz world, but I am a bit scared that she is only 6 and already a net-addict. Not only her, the little boy also enjoys watching the pet and the games we play in Webkinz world...

Oh, well, we are a family of nerds.. Nothing to do about it...

Xmas objects everywhere in the living-room

We are ready for Xmas in our house. Last Saturday, December 8th, Iris and I decorated our tree as we do every year exactly on December 8th. It is a holiday here in Italy and it seems to be the right day to begin decorating the house and mounting the tree. I said 'mounting' the tree because some years ago we decided to be environment-friendly and bought a plastic tree which looks quite good in fact. Of course the smell and the real green of a little pine tree is more beautiful but it is a pity to throw it away after the holidays are over. We have tried to plant our trees after the holidays in the past, but none of them survived, so we gave up.

In addition to the tree we have other objects that we take out only at Xmas time. This is our electrical '7-candles light' that we have bought in Norway in 1998. I saw on hedikliev that the same light exists also in Sweden. In Norway they usually place this light in their windows and that was what we used to do in our other house. Unfortunately, in this house we don't have a proper place in the windows so we place it over one of the furniture in our living room.



Over the fireplace and on our coffee table we place different candle holders. The Santa-figured candle holder was a gift from our gasoline station a few years ago. The Santa-hat on the coffee table belongs to Iris.



The candle holder on the left is one of my favorites. It was a gift from a friend of ours some years ago. The snow ball shaped tea-light holder is from Norway, we bought it in 1998. The other tea-light holder below is Swedish and it was a gift from a friend who visited us in 2003. I love these Scandinavian design objects.

As is the tradition Iris has written her wish-list for Santa and placed it over the fireplace. She began writing it in early October and every week one or two new things are added to the list :-) This year she wants objects of Winx Club, different games of Winx, computer of Winx etc. There is a Winx mania in Italy among little girls, and of course, my little one is also a part of it :-) There are some electronic toys, dolls and few innocent stuff like colored pens, a new pencil holder on the list as well. My favorite on the list is: computer come quello della mamma, a computer like my mother's :-) Eh, I know that also the father would love to get a computer like mine (a MacBook Pro), but my little one, I guess you should wait some more years before you can get that wish granted ;-)



Iris likes Xmas and Xmas decorations a lot. She also likes making drawings of the Xmas tree. For now, we have only two drawings in the living room: one over the fireplace and one on the Xmas tree itself :-)



The decorations on our tree increase every year with the edition of new pieces. The two pieces in the photos above were Xmas presents from one of my husband's assistants a couple of years ago.



These two were products of the tiny hands of my Iris. The first one she made in kindergarten, the second one even before, when she was still in daycare.

I think that this is one of the most beautiful decorations we have. It was a gift from my Norwegian professor Trond. He sent it with his Xmas card in 2004, saying that the minute he saw it he thought about Iris :-) The little girl sitting under the tree with black braided hair does look quite much like Iris :-)








These five figures above are my traditional Norwegian Santa Claus, 'nisse' (click the link and read the story of nisse in Wikipedia, really nice), that protect our tree :-) I bought them in 2003 in Bergen at the Christmas Shop, Julehuset, an all-year open traditional Xmas decorations shop, along with some other decorations. One of them was broken, but I didn't have the heart to throw it away, so it has been glued (as can be seen in the photo).

The last important Xmas item in our living-room is the tree mat. When we bought this plastic tree I also looked for a nice tree mat to put under it, but didn't like the items in the market. Hence, I went to a shop that sold beautiful cloths with traditional Xmas figures and bought two different textiles and made my own tree mat using one textile as the border and one as the center piece. I even used an old bed sheet as lining under the mat ;-) I am very happy with the result.