Nighty night...

Ok, way past my bedtime and I am definitely off to my leaba after I post this.

I have everything crossed that we'll get to see Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince tomorrow night (or should that be tonight night? One more sleeps to go, anyway.) I may have to dig out my Gryffindor t-shirt in honour of the occasion.

I came across this e-card on someecards.com while I should have been upstairs taking my make-up off, and thought it was too timely and titter-worthy not to post.


Heh heh. Indeed.

What a corker...

I'm an absolute terror for ripping things out of magazines.

Must-try recipes, decorating ideas, make-up looks, cleaning tips, gardening how-tos, oooh-lovely clothes & accessories: nothing is safe from my tearing talons.

I always have BIG plans for organising this stash of miscellaneous clippings, and have put some of them into practice. I have one big scrapbook full of house-y stuff, and another (bigger - too big to fit in the flipping bookcase, d'oh) one that's about half full. However, I also have plastic folders crammed to bursting point with lots and lots of other bits and bobs. They're stashed in a pile about a foot high that's only getting taller, and really needs to be gone through toot sweet.

When IKEA opens in Dublin on 27^th July, I plan to get kitted out with some gear to at least get the recipes organised. My plan is to pick up this cheap-o corkboard:

It's £2.73 in their UK stores, so hopefully they won't try to take the mick and charge a tenner for it here.

We'll see.

Once I've gotten lots of change back out of my five Euro note, I'm going to take it home and carve it up into three sections, each 21cm wide. Then, I'm going to whack them up inside the door of one of the kitchen presses, pin my recipe cut-outs to them, and reduce my clippings pile by, oooooh, about ½ a millimetre.

But sure every little helps. And maybe if I can actually see the flippin' recipes in front of my face every time I open the press, I might be reminded to cook something printed on them.

That's a plan shamelessly ripped off from the Petersik's kitchen (yoink!) and hopefully when I'm through, the inside my cupboard door will look as neat 'n' tidy as theirs:



Yeh, I know.

We'll see about that too!

Bargain alert! Black wedge sandals from Office

In the market for a new pair of cork-soled black wedge sandals? Then hotfoot (ho ho) it over to the Office website, where these bad boys are down to a mere £18.

They started life at 55 quid and came down to 25 of The Queen's Finest before being their price was slashed good and proper, so at this stage it's probably fair to call them a birrova steal.

I'm waiting for their tan counterparts to come on sale...

Office charge £10 for shipping to Ireland (North or South).
Office, in their - ehem - infinite wisdom, are refusing to ship sale items to Ireland (North or South). BOO!!! Thanks to hockeysticks for the heads-up.

Oxegen 2009: Wet 'n' mucky, but VG fun!

Myself and Himself decided to live dangerously last weekend, so we packed up our wellies and raingear and drinking hats and headed off to Oxegen.

And before you ask - no, no, we did not camp. We stayed with Himself's aunt and uncle and their real beds and loos and showers, who live about a half hour's walk up the road and do the World's Fanciest Breakfasts. Bliss.

Despite the rain, it was a great weekend, filled with some very good grub and lots of red wine in very classy squeezy Capri Sun-alike containers with screw caps or little lunchtime-sized cartons complete with aerating straws [sold in a carton like that, it's called "tandem wine", by the by]. Oh, and there was some music, too - stand-out highlights were Lily Allen, The Script, Snow Patrol, Little Boots, Elbow, Pet Shop Boys, Lady GaGa, Paolo Nutini, and The Killers.

Blur were good, but not nearly as blow-me-away amazingly awesome as I expected - there was a lot of filler that even my music nerd pal Denise wasn't au fait with - so I felt puh-retty let down.

There was other mediocrity, too - stand up and shuffle your feet awkwardly and mumble an apology, Ting Tings (I was nearly sick with disappointment), Kings of Leon and Regina Spektor, who was 20 minutes late starting her set and was then blinvisible behind the lid of the baby grand piano for its duration.

And as for The Saturdays... lookit, I like pop, and I wanted to get a goo at them because Himself's aunt had been insisting that I'm the spit of one of the birds in the band, and I hadn't a breeze what any of them looked like.

Well, I discovered that I could well be in The Saturdays since I can't really sing but am very good at flicking my hair, pouting into a microphone/hairbrush, having lots of attitude, and stomping about in heels. We stayed for two songs, I think, before looking at each other, smirking, and deciding to head out into the teeming rain rather than listen to another note.

Unusually for me, I actually did take a couple of photees...






Ummm, yeh.

Did I mention it was mucky?

Oh, and if I'd had a Best Hoodie badge to hand out, it would definitely have gone to this guy - the King's County's answer to Nick Stokes:


So if you're thinking about heading to Punchestown for next year's Oxegen, you now know to bring rubber boots/a mud wrestling bikini and a natty navy hoodie. But don't stress if you don't own a pair of matching socks, yo, because those are totally optional. See?


Snazzy.

Notable Quotables: Part Deux

"You can't have everything.

Where would you put it all?"


- Stephen Wright

Opaque tights + sandals: Match made in heaven or recipe for disaster?

Am having a total crisis of confidence this morning, brought on by today's choice of outfit (although I use the word "choice" very loosely indeed since it's really a collection of items that were (a) to hand, (b) clean, and (c) weather appropriate when I was getting dressed in a frantic "eek, I'm late!" rush earlier.)

The top half of things is a tried 'n' trusted combo, so it's grand: purple knee-length dress with slight bubble hem, scoop neck, and purple ribbon corsage/lemon vest top with lace & sequin trim/purple v-neck cardi with elbow-length sleeves/birdcage necklace/coral nails. Lovely jubbly.

Where things get a bit iffy is from the knees down: dark navy tights (less wintery and less severe than black and lovely with the purple of the dress)... aaaand brown/tan platform t-bar wedge sandals. With open sides and toes.

Last year's version of these River Island numbers, in fact:


Mine are almost identical, really; there's no plaiting at the front of my ankle strap and the toe part's a lot simpler, just two straps with some plait detailing that cross-cross at the bottom of the t-bar which is thicker.

Anyway, I actually quite like the look of coloured opaque tights with open toe shoes - on other people.

On me, well, I can't decide whether it looks fabulously retro '70s chic or just daft and nerdy!

An affirmation a day is ok... right?

Yeh, it's a bit American of me to come over all positive and affirmation-lovin', but sure we'll just call it a belated homage to the 4th of July!

Anyway, I'm a total Stressy Bessie by nature, so this really struck a chord with me:

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength."


- Corrie ten Boom

Ah, indeed.

*Nods knowingly in benign knows-all sage-like fashion.*

Must learn to "live in the now" and give all the feckin' useless worrying the boot. But given that I've been worrying about anything and everything since the year dot, will I be able to manage this and also remember to breathe??


Affirmation-y quote via A Thousand Words

Free as a bird

You may remember me getting a bit episodic about birdhouses and birdcages lately. Well, last night I managed to get rid of a little of that payday money that was burning a hole in my pocket, and arrived home from Monsoon Accessorize in Liffey Valley with this little beaut in tow:

Isn't it pretty? The little white birdcage pendant houses a doony silver birdie and sports a faux pearl dropping:

Maybe if I change his diet I can get him to lay/poop real pearls?

There's also a gold-y bird on the chain itself, getting the flock out of there:

I like to think that he's just nipping down the town for a curry and a bottle of wine to bring back to the cage, or maybe going hunting for something that would help him break his pal out of said cage, rather than just abandoning him altogether. (Although I'm sure the little silver birdie loves his cooped-up gaff. Ehem.)

Happy payday to meeeee...

It's payday today, and despite the fact that a pay cut has kicked in and I've sorted all my bills and stuck some cash into my savings, I still have moolah to play with.

This is because I will have not one, not two, but THREE (count 'em!) paydays in July. We're paid fortnightly, and having been paid weekly and monthly and, shall we say, sporadically in the past, I definitely think it's easiest to manage the finances with fortnightly pay. There's none of the accidental "I feel so RICH!" overspend followed by three weeks of stoney brokeness that goes hand-in-hand with being paid monthly, and it's easier to budget for monthly expenditure than when you're on weekly pay.

I'll be saving some of those pennies for Oxegen, but in the meantime I'm indulging in some window (or maybe screen?) shopping.

Trilby & frocks: Oasis. Shoes: Office.

What's keeping me from spending my pennies on these lovelies is that big bad ol' Sterling/Euro conversion chestnut. The shoes, for example, are £55 on the Office website, but €80 in their Irish stores. XE.com reckons that £55 is in or around €64 at today's rate of exchange, which is about a week's lunch spend away from 80 quid for me, and I just can't stomach handing over that difference.

Why is it that whenever you've a bit of cash for shopping, the universe always seems to step in with a roadblock of some kind?