By Mike Finney

MILFORD — Rosemary Connelly once told her late husband, Bob, that all she wanted to do when she retired was to “live cheap and make art.”

Not only did that become the artist’s lifestyle choice — a simpler life — it also became the name of her art studio in downtown Milford.

Ms. Connelly and photographer Bob, who passed away in 2015, even took that philosophy with them when they traveled to Italy to live and experience a different culture for two years from 2005 to 2007.

Looking back on that remarkable experience, Ms. Connelly said she just knew that she had to turn what had been her journal/blog into a book for others who might want to seek a similar off the beaten path.

She recently accomplished this as her book “Two Years in Italy” was published.

“People go to Italy for two weeks or three weeks or maybe one week and they hit the highlights — Rome, Florence, Venice — and because we lived in four different regions for about six months in each region, we really got to explore the whole area,” Ms. Connelly said.

“And because we rented our apartments from the owners, the owners took us under their wings and made sure we saw the things we should see and took us on other adventures that locals know about, so it was a really special time for us to be able to really explore the country more than you do on a simple vacation.”

The couple started their adventure in Italy in Umbria. They also lived in a hill town known as Perugia, and then went to Sicily — where her grandparents originated — and Verona, a town near Venice. Their final stop was off the Amalfi Coast, staying in a town called Vietri Sul Mare.

“Oh, my goodness, it was just an incredibly amazing experience,” she said. “Italy is so beautiful, and we got to see and do things that most people don’t.”

The Connellys lived cheaply and simply, renting small furnished apartments in four different regions of Italy.

While they weren’t completely fluent in Italian, they studied hard and were able to communicate and make friends. They drank cheap wine and ate fresh cheeses, pastas, and pizzas.

Ms. Connelly sought her Italian roots and found ancestors dating back centuries. They also discovered markets, cooked in tiny kitchens and attended festivals.

“We traveled by car, bus, train, plane, and ferry, exploring every region with enthusiasm and a willingness to say, ‘yes,’ to what each day brought,” she said,

In those two years in Italy, Ms. Connelly wrote almost daily of the couple’s experiences or even looking forward to new things.

“I was very thorough in what I was writing because it was so fresh and I always wanted to have that in book format that I could hold in my hand and flip through and have the story of our adventure in a book,” she said.

“Maybe it’s because I’m older ... but I just wanted to have that in book format, so it was then a process of taking that enormous amount of copy and transferring it into a book format.”

She also had to reverse the order or events, since in a blog they start from the present and go back to the older posts.

“I had to take all of that and copy all these posts, put them in the right order and then go through it and edit it and clean up my stream of consciousness writing,” she said, “and kind of make it more concise and just focusing on the things that I really wanted to remember and that I wanted to share.”

With over 60 color photographs and watercolors, “Two Years in Italy” is the story of how the Connellys retired, sold their home in Phoenix, put their things in storage, got a visa and went to live in Italy on a firefighter’s pension.

It is written in journal format, describing their adventures in detail, sometimes looking forward, sometimes looking back, but always with excitement, joy, some frustration, and a little heartache.

Ms. Connelly said revisiting all those memories really brought a lot of wonderful memories back to life.

“It really did,” she said. “It was cathartic in a way just going through that whole process and reading about all the things we had done together and just having that appreciation for having taken that time to do it.”

Ms. Connelly’s book is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle eBook formats. She is holding a reading at the Mispillion Art League on Thursday, May 26, at 6:30 p.m. Books will be available for sale at the reading.

Oh, and Ms. Connelly also made it clear that she is still living cheaply and making art.

“I live in a condo, so my expenses are fairly reasonable,” she said. “I live on (Mr. Connelly’s) firefighter pension and I’m pretty happy,” she said. “I do live as cheaply as possible. Just being in Delaware is a savings right there because it’s more affordable than living in other places would be.

“I’m a board member of the Mispillion Art League and I continue to paint and teach workshops. I travel a lot and I draw and paint when I travel, so yes, art and living cheaply is very much a part of my life.”