Merry Christmas 2012!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Our Christmas family tradition is.....

To open our presents.

Meet up with all our aunts, uncles & cousins at our aunts house.

Come home for Christmas dinner.

And relax!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a happy and healthy 2013.

Christmas Torture

Is it wrong to subject your pets to the torture of Christmas outfits?  Probably.....  But they look so darn cute!

 Ollie was happy to oblige and gave me his best true steel.

But Amber was having absolutely none of it and wouldn't get out of bed, no matter how much I offered her!

Birthday Loot

It was my birthday last Sunday and I had a really good fun and food packed weekend.

Friday night I went out with all my workmates to celebrate Christmas.  We went for dinner in The Cornstore which was delicious and to The Spailpín Fánach pub for a few drinks afterwards.  It was packed, loud and fun and it was great to catch up with my workmates wives.

On Saturday my sister and I played cards all day which was cool cos we spent the time chatting, messing around and drinking tea.  That night we went to Nandos (yum!) before seeing The Hobbit (hurrah!).  My sisters friends came with us and brought me presents which was unexpected and so nice of them.  We saw The Hobbit in 3D and if you haven't seen it yet, don't bother, as there is absolutely no point.  But I enjoyed the film though I do think it was probably a little longer than necessary.

On Sunday Aideen and I played cards again all day (she remains Gin Rummy champion while I rule at Fish in the Pond) and later to Star Anise with my family and my friends Veronique & Monica for dinner.  It was gorgeous and I have to admit I needed open my very fitted skirt for a little while to fit dessert in!  We headed to Dan Lowrys for a few drinks afterwards and my friend Ruth joined us there bearing more gifts, so I ended up with a lot of birthday loot.

I'm lucky I've got such great family and friends, thanks you guys!

Guinea Pig

I got this new app over the weekend that allows me to make collages using photos from my phone so decided to use Ollie as my guinea pig.

You may notice that he loves to sleep!

Pretty cool effects, I think.

Acting the Ejit

It's nice that my sister is home.  There's nothing like a bit of acting the ejit and having a good laugh to pass the evening away.

 

This is Aideen pretending to be a cat on the back of the couch.

And this is Amber wondering what in the name of God Aideen is doing.

We got a good 10 minutes of laughing our arses off while Aideen tried out different cat poses.  It's the simple things in life!

The Hobbit

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is coming to a cinema near you in December.

I'm excited because I loved all the Middle Earth books as a teenager and the Lord of the Rings films as an adult and can't wait to see what they've done with The Hobbit.

I do think 3 films from a small book is a bit of a stretch, but I'm sure it's to best portray the story and they're not just doing it for the money....

 

From Aideen when in New Zealand - 2012

Santa Baby

Ho, ho ho!

 

I'm afraid I don't know who made these to give due credit, but they're awesome!

Group Effort

So my sister appeared to live in some sort of commune while in Sydney.  She slept in 1 apartment, watched tv in another, tea was a round of 10 and Wednesday was family dinner night.  The idea of Aideen cooking for 10 people tickled me pink as I once asked her to start a stew for dinner cos I was in work and she had to YouTube how to cut the leeks!  But she never poisoned any of them (that has been proven), they all got on like a house on fire and made her very happy while she was so far away.

As I may have mentioned before, every week I sent her some postcards & sweets and the occassional novelty for fun, not to mention the amazing birthday photo montage, and her commune took great interest in this.  So on her departure she gave them all a postcard addressed to me and told them to write to me.  And fair play to them, they did.

So to Phelim, Gary, Stephen, Sean, Sharon, Kathryn, Megan, Stephanie and Ros, I thank you kindly for both my postcards & for looking after my baby sis.

 Pictured: The Avoca Street Posse & Kathryn, who was absent from the 2012 Randwick Commune Committee AGM

Nice To Eat You

I mean, meet you.

 From Aideen when in New Zealand - 2012

This postcard is wicked cool - zombies, the freakiest of all supernatural beings, on a welcome committee.

Thanks lads, but I think I'll give NZ a miss!

Did you know...

Where has October gone, I can't believe it's been a month since I blogged.

So my sister has come home and following her, some postcards to me from her friends in Oz.  It's cool when you get a postcard unexpectedly, especially from someone you don't know, as it keeps it really interesting trying to figure out it's from!

This arrived yesterday from Fiona A Rochford (cheers gurl!), who politely requsted that hers be included.  It took its sweet time but here it is, complete with a stamp it picked up in Singapore on it's way to Ireland.  A very dramatic scene of Mount Cook in New Zealand.

Did you know it's the highest mountain in NZ at 3754 metres?  You do now folks!

 From Fiona A Rochford when in New Zealand - 2012

My Baby Sister's Coming Home!

I'm so excited, my sister is coming home from Australia on Saturday!

We're very close and though we've kept in constant contact and sent each other millions of postcards (give or take 1 or 2),  I've missed her very much.

 It's been a whole year and I can't wait to get a hug from my Bubs!!!!!!!

Christmas - 2009

London Baby

Saturday I headed to London with my friend Veronique to attend the Renegade Craft Fair for a day of fun.

 

An early start meant we missed breakfast so we had brunch in Bishopsgate Cafe near Liverpool St.  My rueben sandwich and juice were so yum!

This is our second year going and there were so many lovely things at the craft fair which is for all kinds of work from screenprint to jewellery, paper craft to ceramics and woodwork to stitch.  Here's a few of my favourites:

 

l-r:   I am Acrylic, James Ward, Life with Tigers

l-r:  Unusual Cards, Me Me Me, Hello Dodo

I love textile dolls and figures and so The Cat in the Shoe stall with it's beautiful handmade figures was my absolute favourite .

I was spoilt for choice and had real difficulty chosing between Red Riding and Icarus, but in the end Red won out and I couldn't resist adding her to my textile doll collection.  The attention to detail is lovely and she's fully dressed from her cute knickers and lacy underskirt to her red felt cape.

We had time afterwards to do some shopping and had a lovely dinner in Wright Brothers fish restaurant near Carnaby St before flying home. 

A tiring but most enjoyable day.

Just Because

It's striking and I love blue, patterns, tiles and patchwork!

 

From Luisa when in Lisbon, Portugal - 2012

Pens for Her

My friend Ruth read my last blog about the gender based marketing used for a food processor and drew my attention to this product.  

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you..........Pens especially "for Her"

It seems someone in Bic can indeed imagine such a marketing campaign in the 21st century.

Read the reviews here on Amazon, they are absolutely hilarous!

Set Back

I'm known in my sisters circle of friends in Oz for postcards because I send a lot of correspondence to her so when one of them was at a yard sale he bought me a bundle of random postcards for AU$1 - thank you Sean!

It was a real mixed bag with the usual scenic postcards of Australia & Sydney, London's Windsor Castle & Piccadilly Circus in the 1900's mixed in with some art & promotional postcards.

And amongst them all were these two beauties. Talk about setting back woman's rights a century or ten.

This is a promotional poster by the Suffragette Atelier for their Votes for Women campaign highlighting that while that women held roles in society such as doctors, they were not entitled to vote.

And this is an advert for Kenwood which has a woman crawling all over her husband in the hopes that he will buy her a food processor.

 

It looks like it's from the 50's and if the tag line "The Chef does everything but cook - that's what wives are for" isn't bad enough, the rest of the text in the advert is SO unbelieve that I just have to include some it for you.

 "Cooking is fun" says my wife "...food preparation is a bore!. Think of the meals I'd cook for you if I had a Kenwood Chef!" I can take a hint - I'm giving my wife a Kenwood Chef right away!"

I had to read it again, I was sure I had just halucinated the whole thing.  Can you just imagine that as a marketing campaign today?!?!

I'll Check My Diary

The diary conflicts of an animal owner!

 

Courtesy of James Patrick Leahy I