This Sunday’s weather made it very difficult to believe that we are just ten days away from Midsummer. The sky was dull and dark in these parts and misty, gauzy, grey rain floated incessantly to the ground. A soft day! To cheer myself up this evening I did a spot of comfort baking and whizzed up a batch of orange and cinnamon breakfast bars, for the freezer. The recipe comes from Jane Clarke’s book Body Foods for Life.
♥ Peter and Pygmalion
Last night I went to see George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. The plot (to win a bet, phonetics expert Professor Henry Higgins transforms cockney flower girl Eliza Dolittle from a “draggled-tailed guttersnipe” into someone who could pass for a duchess, at a society garden party) could so easily, as so many before me have suggested, segue into a reality TV show.
♥ Sleep and Sheep
I am of the ‘I need eight hours shuteye a night’ tribe. I am awestruck when I read about folk who regularly survive on four hours sleep or less, betwixt dusk and dawn and still manage to fully function as entirely sane human beings. How do they do it?
Filed under Musings
♥ Coffee in Dublin//Three: Bibi’s Cafe
The culinary deities have been kind to the denizens of Dublin 8, as there is a delightful café called Bibi’s in the neighbourhood, which serves breakfast and lunch on weekdays and brunch at the weekend.
Filed under Coffee, Dublin, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés
♥ End of the Week
Sunday again, yet another week gone by. Incredibly it’s now June, how oh how did the first five months of 2011, flutter by so quickly. This was the week that the Irish weather briefly acknowledged that it’s Summer and we had three splendid sun soaked days. However today I woke up to a familiar and unmistakable sound… rain.
Filed under Musings
♥ Coco Chanel by Justine Picardie
Coco Chanel and the brand she created fascinate me: despite this fascination I knew very little about Chanel’s life until I read Justine Picardie’s biography of her. I love the way the well-researched book delves beneath the myth and mystery in which Chanel’s life is shrouded to arrive at a hugely human portrait of the legendary fashion icon.
♥ Favourite Shops//AMOC
I find that the shops I like the most are the hardest things to write about on the blog, as there is always the fear that my words and photographs will not do them full justice. AMOC Jewellery is a special favourite of mine. It is not your average jewellers selling a mass of homogenous manufactured items. Instead it is a veritable treasure trove of handcrafted jewels designed by Mette, AMOC’s talented owner. The prices are amazingly reasonable.
♥ Nothing to Wear
When I am having a wardrobe crisis, I can be heard uttering that most plaintive of cries ‘I have nothing to wear’. Naturally if I peer into my closet there are umpteen sartorial possibilities, so when I use those words, what I really mean is usually one or a combination of the following.
♥ Chocolate Guinness Cake
I suspect the grand panjandrum, whoever he or she is, in charge at Diageo’s (owners of Guinness) marketing department, may have been mostly occupied these past ten days with ordering in cases of celebratory champagne. The reason? On a recent state visit to Ireland the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh watched a master class in how to pull a pint of Guinness. A short few days later Barrack Obama also on a visit to Ireland was pictured downing a pint of the black stuff. These images have appeared in media outlets worldwide; a marketer’s dream and the type of publicity that no amount of money can buy.
♥ Fashionable Effect
Fashion is a multi billion-dollar global industry, providing a mass of employment worldwide (designing, manufacturing and retailing). There are of course countless ancillary jobs such as PR, journalism, shop-fitting; the list goes on and on.
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 