Salaam aleikoum friends and Ramadan moubarak to all of you!
Welcome to the new “Itto’s living faith” with a fresh look and some changed pages and design. Take a moment, step in and enjoy, I hope you feel comfortable.
Thank you all for your ever faithful visit here, your lovely comments and thoughts, your dua’ and your support.
May Alah bless you all and grant you His mercy and may He make this Ramadan a month of consciousness, worship and growth for all of us.
Love and peace! Xxx
It is official – spring is here! And together with it comes so much beauty and new life everywhere. Alhamdulillah!
New energy, new ideas, new motivation can be felt everywhere, subhanallah!
No matter what was and now matter how you felt – now it is time for a new beginning.
Allah put so many blessings in everything around – can you see this wonder? Can you feel His mercy and love?
I wish you an open heart and an eye for all the blessings. I wish you a wonderful first spring weekend with plenty of colour, with lovely smells, warm kisses of sunrays and the singing of the birds! Salam aleikoum, friends !
Alhamdulillah, what a nice morning!
I had to go to the hospital to get baby vaccinated. I do not like to do this, but unfortunately it is obligatory for all newborns in Morocco (… the medicine system- a whole lot of things I could write pages about…)
So after having been treated, I went to the post office to check the mail… and see, I got three (!) parcels! Wow, I was so excited and quickly went home. I opened the packaging and was blessed with so many beautiful things, subhanallah:
From the US I got lovely postcards I won on Elizabeth’s blog,
From New Zealand I got beautiful baby shoes as a gift from Melissa,
And from Germany lovely goodies and hats from my friend Kathy!
Thanks to you friends, and thanks God – it is such a blessing to have friends and to know people all over the world; it is a blessing to have met so many nice women by blogging and I feel so grateful for all the love that comes along.
The boys are still at grandfather’s house and I am enjoying now some free hours alone (with baby) at home before I will go to have lunch with them, inchaallah.
Wishing you a blessed peaceful week friends!
Bismillah a Rachman a Rachim and Salamou alaikoum out there,
Sorry to all visitors who have tried to see my blog over the last days and thank you so much for the nice mails you wrote me, saying you missed this place – I had to close it for a while; I had to re-centre myself, to think about its purpose and to ask Allah for guidance.
During the 27th night of Ramadan, which maybe was “The night of Power” (Allahu aalem), I realized that I have to change things, I felt that this blog needs to take a new direction, cause I felt as if I have lost a true meaning over the last few months.
I made Istikhara (prayer for divine guidance) because I wasn’t sure whether to continue blogging or not, so I questioned all of it.
I realized that I do not want to play the main part on that little place here; I do not want to put myself nor my family in front; I do not want to show off; I do not want to provoke envy, jealousy, the evil eye or negative feelings in others. And I do not want to worship the readers, nor myself. Astafirghullah.
I want to worship God Almighty alone and I want to blog for His sake only. I want to make my whole writing and living a witness of my faith in Allah’s great religion – And to gain His pleasure is my biggest aim, inchaallah.
So things changed and will change around here and I call this place now “my living faith”, because that’s what it is: the journal of a life in faith, with all its beauty and struggles.
Maybe I will not post as often as before because time became very precious with three kids and I do not want to let the blog come over my life, it is so easy to get distracted by it.
And maybe the posts will become less personal, but I hope by being more focused on the beauty of Islam, I will be able to pay gratitude to the mercy and the blessings of God’s creation and to inspire others.
I will still enjoy your visits and comments here, although they will not be my intention to write. It is a great honour for me to count you as my readers and I hope the changes here will be beneficial for you as well, inchaallah.
’Id moubarak to all my Muslims brothers and sisters and may Allah accept your good deeds. Ameen.
Peace to you all,
yours itto
image and more on: http://www.insideyork.co.uk/
salamou alaikoum,
I am back in Marrakech from a real relaxing friend-visiting-weekend in the UK, subhanallah.
it was a great break and lots of new inspiration. I will share more later when I am back home, inchaallah.
see you soon, xxx
Happy 2009 to all my family, friends and readers!
Thank you for all the nice emails, comments and support and for sharing here pieces of our life with us!
May God bless you all with a beautiful new year!
Good evening friends, salam alaikoum,
Hope you had a nice weekend.
Here it was raining all Sunday and a little bit of snowing, too and we had no electricity in the valley since yesterday evening.
So I was happy to go to Marrakech today for some days.
After quickly haven drunken some tea with milk, eaten some bread with marmalade and waken up the little ones, the taxi picked us up this morning and the streets were nearly as snowy as last year on the picture. Now we are here, enjoying city-life…
See you in a couple of days with news from the red city, inchaallah.
Masalama and a blessed week to you!
Last week I was honoured by Linneanongrata with this “Honest Blog Award”.
I was really pleased to receive it and thought a lot about its meaning.
I think it probably means that someone honestly likes my blog – wow!! What an honest honour!
But what about the rules: you have to tell the world at least 10 honest things about yourself. So, what means “honesty” exactly to me? Am I always honest, with others, with myself?
Not so easy to respond, and this question is already a big thing in my mind since several months. Probably it is my age, or my family background, or the baby to come, or all together… I am thinking a lot about my honesty towards the world. So let’s accept the award…
Here are the rules that you agree to when you accept this award:
“When you receive the prize, you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in their content or design. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing that they were prized with ‘Honest Weblog’. List if you can and/or dare at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!”
So here you go with my personal sincerity…
1. Honestly, I am a closed person when it comes to my own personality, I do not like to share my feelings or to open and share my thoughts with others. I often have a hard time to name my needs and expectations and to ask for what I want. That’s a big thing I have to learn and to work on.
2. Honestly, I bite my nails, yes I do since I was a little child. Sometimes I am able to leave it for a certain period, but the moment I feel unbalanced, stressed or fearful, I immediately put my hand into my mouth and begin to bite, urgh I hate it…
3. Honestly, I love my religion, I am so grateful that Allah led me to this path, I am grateful to have the chance to live in a Muslim society, to share my religion with the people around, to be able to make it a real part (the biggest) of my life, to submit all my being to Allah, to feel the faith in everything, in every deed and in daily life, alhamdulillah! I really love my life here in this rural area of Morocco with this special tribe of Berber people, subhanallah.
But even though, …
4. Honestly, I still and truly love the atmosphere of Christmas. I love the beautifully decorated houses and shops; I love the colours, the lights, the bakery and the peaceful mood. No, not the hectic consumption of these modern days, it is more about a little girl’s dream of a white snowy world, of candles and sweets and all things good… – that leads me to the next point…
5. Honestly, I love the old romantic books and films of a happy perfect life, such as the stories of the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, especially “Madita” and “Noisy village” (Bullerbü), but also Romy Schneider as “Sissi” and tales like “Cinderella” (or the old Czech film “3 Nüsse für Aschenbrödel”)
6. Honestly, I wish that new baby to come will be a girl!! I love my boys and would be very happy with another one, and the most important is health I think; but a girl, how sweet would be a girl…
7. Honestly, I am in my thirties but I still like sweets and love to get gifts as when I was little. I always thought this will change as soon as I am an adult, but no, I am still happily nervous like a child about getting beautifully wrapped packages, a chocolate barn or a handwritten letter.
8. Honestly, I am so happy to have given up my office work recently. Subhanallah, since about a month I feel so much better, free, and able to use my time in a much better way. Even though that it means we will not have the same amount each month to live, but that’s secondary…. Being with the kids, having time to develop spiritually and to do things we like is so much better and more important to me.
9. Honestly, I am very happy at the moment, alhamdulillah. My husband is with us now after a long time of being apart and we are just enjoying being together, we re-nourish our family connections and we are thankful for what we have together.
10. Honestly, I like honesty and wished to be more honest and to be treated more honestly by others sometimes. Not to hurt people, but to sincerely tell the truth, even that it may be hard to say or to hear it sometimes….
Thanks for listening and here YOU go:
Melissa from Tiny Happy
Qalballah from Sew Q
Kate from Seeking Taqwa
Kate from Bird Nest
Blair from Wise Craft
Amanda from SouleMama
Jana from Anaj’s kreatives Tagebuch
My friend Julia from Linneanongrata does a very nice Advent calendar game this month.
So go and visit her arty-crafty blog and leave a comment to win, inchaallah.
Good luck!
No, I am not at all interested in politics. I know how to spend better my time with more important stuff than to follow political discussions and I do not like to be influenced by the Medias or by some bad news about this world. I do not like to follow a preconceived idea. Probably sometimes I even close my eyes to some horrible realities, but since I live here in the mountains far away from all this stuff, far away from all the news and influence around, I feel much better.
I do not neglect all the harsh realities some people have to live, I do not neglect the bad things existing in this world, masha’allah, but I try to do and to give my best in my local area and not to be manipulated or pushed down by the all day changing news about people fighting for power and money. That’s not for me.
The most important news I get nearly every day through the front page of my internet provider by logging into my web account, such as the news about Obama’s victory.
And even though that I am not at all informed about what was going on in America the last few months, I feel good about these news.
I want to thank all the American’s having voted for Barack and I wish your country a fresh new direction, I wish the world (especially the Muslim world) a better relationship with the US, good luck and may the new upcoming president be a blessing to all of us!!!
Congratulations to Obama, Congratulations to America!
