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To tell someone we love them in Italian, we must first learn how to use the verb amare, which means “to love.”  But be careful!  Because this is the Italian verb of romantic love! In fact, Italians often address their romantic love simply as “amore,” which is the noun that means “love.”  Italians also address loved ones as “amore mio,” which means “my love.” Beautiful, isn’t it?  The full conjugation of this important verb is given below, with the stressed syllables underlined. Amare – to love io amo I love tu ami you (familiar) love Lei/lei/lui ama you (polite) she/he loves       noi amiamo we love …

Buying and selling a home is often the biggest financial transaction of your entire life, and there’s so much more to the overall cost than the asking price. It’s important to understand ALL of the costs associated with the transaction, whether you’re on the buying or selling end of it. Many people do not understand what they are actually paying for. You are sitting at the closing table sipping your coffee and reviewing the closing statement with your attorney before you sign it and you encounter so many different line items. Let’s talk the ones that will cost you the …

Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made buying single-family homes and small multi-unit residential properties easier with their new products: HomeReady from Fannie Mae and Home Possible from Freddie Mac. Buying a single-family home with each of these products can be done with as little as 3 percent down and the private mortgage insurance is priced as if you were putting down 10 percent, which makes the monthly payment lower. Also the minimum credit FICO score for these is down to 640, also allows borrowers who do not have perfect credit to use this product. The Freddie Mac …

We’ve entered into the tail end of the holiday season and what, to my reckoning, has always been the toughest part of the winter season. We’re never certain if the winter winds will be howling through like Lou Rawls’ “Hawk” or if the snow will be dwindling down to inches instead of feet. Regardless, we are left with personal space to look back and ahead as we await the warming of the seasons. Pullman is making its way through its 138th winter and, as usual things, there’s quite a bit to look back on and forward to, as might be …

Many, many Italian expressions use the verb pensare, which is most often translated as “to think.” You can imagine how this verb will come up often in conversation – with family and friends, of course, but also with acquaintances. In fact, the verb pensare has so many uses in Italian, many of which do not translate directly into English that we must really learn to think in Italian to master the use of this verb. But, once mastered, speaking with these phrases will truly help one to sound like a native! Because this verb is so important, we will give …

More than 20 years ago, a woman named Cyndi Howells decided that she needed a set of links to her favorite genealogy sites. As with most genealogists who start a simple project, it got out of hand and became much larger and more time-consuming than originally intended. (I can speak with experience on this as well!) She ended up creating her own site called “Cyndi’s List” www.cyndislist.com, which connects to over 300,000 links to genealogy web sites all over the world. What started as a small personal project has become 8-12 hours a day, seven days a week! For free! …

I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’m always looking to improve myself, and the leap from one year to the next is as good a springboard as any to spread my wings and at least try to soar. In the past, my to-do list has centered mostly on taking better care of myself — exercising, eating better, learning to relax — with my resolve typically melting well before the spring thaw. With the clock winding down on 2018, I was on the hunt for a new sort of resolution — the kind …

You have been searching for the right home for yourself and nothing seems to be meeting your needs. Many homebuyers will see roughly 10 homes prior to making an offer on one, but if you are on your 40th home, you may be paying attention to the wrong things when previewing a property. Paint colors can turn anyone off when entering a home and the same goes for wallpaper. Even if the paint color is on the outside of the home, that can easily be changed and could give you the opportunity to personalize the property to your likes by …

Everyone who grew up in Roseland, Pullman or Kensington has experience change. We have many fond memories of growing from childhood to adulthood there. Although many of us cling to those memories and mourn what we stubbornly regarded as a major loss to our lives, those changes and more have inevitably occurred regardless of how much they affect us. “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” — Frida Kahlo Many of us have gotten married — a ceremony that is meant to bind two people together for a lifetime — and then found …

When an Italian wants to describe a hope or a wish he has, either for himself or someone else, he must use the verb sperare, and this is the verb that will be the topic of our blog today. Sperare works a bit differently from the “typical” Italian -are verb. To review what we’ve learned in our last blog about sperare: When using the verb sperare to express a hope or a wish one person or a group has for themselves, sperare must be followed by the preposition “di”. “Di” will often be followed by a verb in the infinitive …