5 interesting facts about us

We’ve been sharing interesting facts about amazing people (like Coco Chanel or Salvador Dali) and I wanted to do the same this week. While I was thinking about who to choose, it ding donget on me – why not share something about us?! It’s time to get closer to you guys and tell you a bit more about our site and who exactly is behind it. So, here it comes, silly interesting facts about The Smoke Detector and your girls, Ivona and Doina, that are the fantastic duo hiding on the other side of the screen.

The Smoke Detector was “born” in Milan, Italy. It was back in 2012 and Doina and I were doing our masters studies. At some point, we decided to join forces and launch a website that would mainly be used for sharing stories about cool people and places (as well as cool art, fashion, music). I still think of it as our little Italian baby haha, only that this is its second edition. We had a little break in-between, focusing on some other commitments. However, we missed TSD so much that we decided to relaunch and make it even more awesome!

The name is a story in itself. We wanted something cool and rememberable that would reflect the idea behind it. After a lot of brainstorming (that included a bottle of white wine, that was cheap but still good because it’s really hard to get bad wine in Italy, but that’s another story) and a bad Tom Cruise movie in the background it came to me. It is not obvious at first sight, but since we are about discovering your inner flame, The Smoke Detector (or TSD in short) was just perfect.

Doina and I celebrate our birthdays soon and what is interesting is that they are only 3 days apart. Great for a combined bday celebration, right? So, we are both scorpions and get along very well. I mention the horoscope sign because we both get out phases with obsessively reading the horoscope from Astrology Zone. I managed to cure myself from it when I realised that checking the app every morning after waking up is a tad too much. I must say I’m not sure how Doina is doing with her horoscope fever, but she was never as bad as me.

If our names got you wondering, let me explain that Doina is from Romania while I am from Bosnia. We don’t live in our home countries anymore, as I am based in Sweden and she is in Italy, so we are quite an international mix I guess. We talk in English, and are also both fluent in Italian (well, mine is getting a bit rusty but D is doing great). Oh, and I should mention that my nickname for her is D, and she calls me Iv so if you see us sign posts like that on social networks now you know the deal 😉

Doina has a dog called Zeus that is super cute and likes to mess with her a lot. He is a mix of dogo argentino on not sure what else. He is also a regular member of our Skype meetings where he often expresses his opinion with some “woof, woof”. I don’t have a pet right now, but my parents have a rabbit and I thought that cute little fluffy thing like her deserves to be mentioned here. Beware, I am visiting my parents soon, so she will probably be all over our Instagram profile.

That’s already five? Wow, it turns out I could babble about us for days. I will stop myself here and save the rest of the stories for another time. Hope you enjoyed getting to know us a bit better! You can also join us on Facebook and Instagram for daily doses of inspiration. xoxo