Hectic week!

Wow this week has been hectic with 10 hour work days for the last few days.  I've been so tired when I got home that I didn't even have the energy to read a single blog let alone write a blog post!

Anyhoo, 'tis the weekend now and even better it's a Bank Holiday weekend here in Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

To mark St. Patricks Day the Washington Post will be broadcasting a special celebration of Ireland.  Click here for more information - it could definitely be worth watching.  It will be streamed live in Ireland at 9pm and at 5pm in the United States of America.

We have a busy weekend ahead of us but right now I'm looking forward to a glass of wine with dinner!!

Hope you have a great weekend and do let me know if you attend any St. Patricks Parade!!

Men with moustaches

We watched the 1976 film "Lifeguard" starring Sam Elliott and his awesome moustache.

It's a thought provoking film and definitely worth a watch (available on Netflix) and has really held up well considering it is nearly 40 years old!!  It's filmed in Southern California on Torrance Beach.  Watching it made be want to feel sand between my toes.

Not a whole lot of men can get away with a moustache - along with Sam Elliott only Tom Selleck of Magnum P.I. fame springs to mind.

Can you think of anyone else who carries a moustache well?!

Getting organized

We've been doing lots of Spring cleaning.  I recycled all of our glass bottles.  Conveniently there are bottle banks at my new place of work.

There are also clothes banks to recycle clothes so I will bring some clothes I am throwing out to the banks over the next week or two.  Some of the clothes are too good for recycling so I will drop them off to be sold in charity shops (thrift stores).

I bought two expandable box files for all our paperwork in Reads of Nassau Street.

It was great to file away a lot of papers that needed to be stored.  Previously I filed them in folders but it was a pain to punch them and file them.  This is a much easier system and has tidied the house up no end!

I'm feeling pretty happy about this little bit of Spring Cleaning!

Architizer + Awards

We received really exciting news yesterday - our house has been shortlisted, from thousands of entries, in the finals of the Architizer + Awards!!  

The Architizer Awards are a global architecture awards programme that receives entrants from over 100 countries.  Our house is up against residential buildings from countries such as Norway, Germany and Japan!

There is both a jury vote and also a public vote.  To vote for us you can click this link which will bring you to the category our house is in - as you hover over the picture of "Ranelagh House" it should let you vote through Facebook (quickest way).  Unfortunately it is not the easiest to vote as they do make you sign up, I presume in order to prevent voting fraud??

If you have a minute to spare I'd love you to vote for "Ranelagh House" and even more importantly please ask your friends to vote too!!  Thank you so much in advance!  ;-)

Although it would be a long shot for us to win the public vote (I'm sure we must be up against some very large architectural practises) - how amazing would it be for a house from Ireland to win. I will be on a campaign from now until the 21st of March to get all the votes I can for "Ranelagh House".  I look forward to the results on the 1st of April!

Netflix

Yesterday I signed up to Netflix.  We are currently working our way through Season 2 of House of Cards.  We are gripped!! Episode 1 was practically unbelievable.  Have you watched it?  

Yesterday we ate in Noshington on the South Circular Road.  

How cute is the little milk bottle?! 

I ordered badly :-(

French toast with bacon and caramelized banana.  It was carb overload.....waay too much bread.  I didn't enjoy it at all. 

Ciaran had the full Irish.  The rasher and sausage were overcooked.

We liked the ambiance of Noshington but the food didn't encourage us to plan a return visit.

Clear out

I was having a clear out of a stack of magazines that were hanging around the house.  I recycled most of them except for all of the ones that had a feature on our house.

Click the below links to have a look at my blog posts on the articles:

Beautiful Kitchens - February 2014

House Beautiful - July 2013

Ireland's Homes Interiors & Living - June 2013

The Gloss Interiors - Winter 2013

Sunday Independent Life - October 2013

Sunday Times - June 2013

The marvels of HDMI

I mentioned in work that I was thinking of getting Netflix but that I didn't think I would be able to get a second HDMI cable up the back of my TV.  

It was a tough job to get the original cable in for my TV service box - I had to use a mirror to help guide the cable in to the slot. 

A colleague suggested that all I needed to do was take the HDMI cable out of the TV box and not the TV when I wanted to hook up my laptop to the TV.  So simple!!

Today I did exactly that and watched The Great Gatsby on DVD through my laptop.  HDMI is brilliant!!

I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby.  The book is one of my all time favourites and one can only say that Baz Luhrman has made a spectacular spectacle which captures the gloriously decadence of the roaring twenties and the jazz age.  Just splendid!

We had a great Friday evening with an early bird dinner in The Table in Portobello.  It was our second time here and although I  loved the ambiance and setting I think we didn't order well for our mains.  However, the bottle of malbec I ordered helped it all go down!

I'm currently in state of what I call "super woman" where I feel that I can do anything.  Common sense prevailed however and I came to the realization that I possibly was over stretching myself and over estimating my capabilities.  

Along with making arrangements to start a Diploma in Digital Marketing in the next few weeks, I had also signed on to train as a volunteer counsellor with a rape helpline.  I decided however that the time wasn't right for me to make this commitment so I pulled out of the training course for it.  I will revisit this volunteering opportunity in maybe a year or so as  I have to make work my priority at this time. I am currently assigned to working in a new branch that is opening at the end of the month so I am massively busy.  Along with my work commitments I am also having a small procedure carried out in hospital on Wednesday but hopefully I won't need any time off work after this.  All in all, I have a lot going on so I need to be careful not to over extend myself.