Happy Birthday Sissy!

Happy Birthday to my lovely sister! (Think it was probably an anniversary of some sort for my parents, no? Since our birthdays are only a day apart??)

Here she is in all her random glory!

This picture was not staged. She actually fell out of her chair. 

Anniversaries

Today is the 10th anniversary of my 21st birthday. (Did you get that? Does it make me seem any younger?)

AND.... It's also the one year anniversary of when BF and I moved into our little house. YEAH!
We've had a lot going on so not doing anything too crazy to celebrate .... just a quiet little dinner in my favorite Thai restaurant.  

Cannes- Part 2 (The Date!)

Although I had to work in Cannes, BF was able to come over and stay in my little hotel room with me which was amazing! I arrived on Tuesday and BF didn't get there until late Thursday night. To be honest, I didn't see him at all until late Saturday afternoon when all my work was done. However, we had made the best of the 5-6 hours and had the most lovely date exploring the old section of Cannes and San Margarita Island. Below are some pics! 

Studying hard for his exam

How fake does the background look? 

Please... no pictures! (In front of the Cannes Film festival Auditorium) 

View of Cannes from our ferry ride 

On San Margarita Island 

Lovely little swimming/lagoon area on San Margarita 

Cannes- Part 1 (The Work)

As mentioned in my last post, I was in Cannes this past week for work at the Cannes Lion Creativity festival. Googs had rented a lovely beach area and turned it into a cool beach hut -filled with smoothies, yoga and fun activities. There were lots of meetings (on the beach) but also mingling with new co-workers and clients.

I'll let the pictures do the talking- It was probably one of the best work events I have ever attended!

Pier on the G beach 

Paddleboats with slide

Seaside Hammock 

My new temporary desk 

Googley beach chairs 

Color coordinated to the beach chairs! 

Tough Life

Sorry I've been MIA dear readers... I've been busy working in Cannes, and it's kind of difficult amazing!!

This is what my current office looks like. Pretty swanky, no?

Congrats!!!

I woke up this AM to some fabulous news... one of my good, great, amazing friend got engaged over the weekend. I know she reads my blog religiously sometimes... so a huge congratulations to her and her newly acquired fiance (and bling!!).  She's in the west coast at the moment so the time difference has prevented me from hearing the story. GRRR!!!

Here's the lovely lady herself. This was a pic in London a couple of years ago where we ate and drank our way through the city before heading to Harrod's and cheekily trying on fabulous jewelry (which may or may not have included an engagement ring or two !)Wish I was there to toast you with a glass of wine (and maybe some pho!) xxx

Gaoith Dobhair

Was away at the weekend with my gal pals in Gweedore- or Gaoith Dobhair in Gaelic - in the County of Donegal and had the most fun. I'm still unpacking and I am EXHAUSTED from the weekend, but thought I would give a sneak peak of one really cool thing we saw....

A Shipwreck!

New ways to view my blog

The factory has come up with new ways to view blogs, and it's really fun! It's called dynamic viewing options. All you need to do for any blogger blog is to enter in the blog name and then "/view". The example for my site would be utran28.blogspot.com/view

There are five different ways to view blogs and I think my favorite is mosiac. Definitely check it out!

Taste of Dublin

Over the weekend, my foodie gal pals and I decided to check out the Taste of Dublin which is a food festival that allows you to try little meals from different restaurants around Dublin. I LOVE trying new foods and sampling different bites for my meals so this was right up my alley. We got super lucky because the weather was gorgeous (for Ireland). The only con about the Taste of Dublin was that they charged an entrance fee of 28 euros (ouch) and that doesn't include the food tastings which were about 5-8 Euros. Luckily the prosecco was inexpensive!

We started off classy with some sausage and prosecco.

Here are the ladies in the sun with picture evidence that it actually stopped raining in Ireland this summer!

My amazing pasta bowl that was actually really good value for money. 

 Thai dancers in front of the food stall for Baan Thai (one of the best Thai restaurants in Dublin in my opinion)

Oysters. Yum! This was my first time trying them. I love seafood of all kinds so not sure why I never had them before. I'm now obsessed. 

My friend the unicorn... not sure what it was doing there! 

A Gordon Ramsey treat- Raspberry and chocolate mousse 

Doing a 90's line dance to Smash Hits, a 90's cover band 

The gorgeous Ivegh Gardens. I love this little house! 

Summertime...

and the living is indeed easy... While the weather has been TERRIBLE, we've been trying to make the best of it. Even though there was a downpour of rain, BF and I decided to meet up with friends anyways. We were caught in a downpour...booo...but then rewarded with a double rainbow... yeah!

After drying off at one pub, we decided to meet up with some long lost friends at another pub down the road -one who had been in Australia and was home for the next couple of weeks and some American friends who were working over here for a couple of weeks. It was great fun and so good to catch up with everyone!

My Irish friend living in Oz

Three buddies from the American offices working abroad for a couple of weeks 

100 days!!!!!

I can't believe it's 100 days until....

...I get to sit on this adorable swing with BF (not anymore!), soulmate (barf), hubby (ekks) , ball and chain (?) 

Sunny Dinner party

It was my turn to host our group dinner party this week, and I was TOTALLY uninspired. I love looking at food blogs and have a back log of recipes to try out, but my energy was sapped with the entertaining of the future in-laws.

Lucky for me, the work on the garden paid off because the gals barely noticed the food since we were able to sit out in the sun on the deck -sipping lovely glasses of wine (and mint water - with fresh mint from the garden!)

How bright and sunny? Lucky for us, the deck is a sun trap as it was quite chilly in Dublin yesterday. 

The menu for my dinner party included steamed shrimp dumplings (delicious and easy since I bought them pre-made from the Asian supermarket) and beef lettuce wraps -also really easy to make and so healthy. To make up for the lack of carbs and sugar, dessert was a make-your-own banana split extravaganza. This was my best genius moment! I was so lazy, I tricked them into making their own desserts :) 

Wedding Loveliness

Although I've been mentioning that the wedding planning has caused some stress, to be 100% honest, it has been pretty smooth sailing. We booked things relatively easily and just have the little details to deal with.

Two fun wedding things have happened to me in the past two days.

I read endless wedding blogs and every once in awhile if I'm bored, I'll enter their giveaways. I never expect to win but lo and behold I received an email yesterday from Beantown Bride (see how I'm trying to hold on to my roots?) and BF and I won a little prize from one of their featured vendors, Pinhole Press. How exciting! I never win ANYTHING! And what have we won? Custom wine bottle labels- Perfect for each guest table. WOOP!

The second fun wedding thing that happened to me, I made a new wedding friend a couple of months ago while I was studying in France. She had just gotten engaged (getting married this August at the MOST gorgeous venue in Ireland) and loved talking about weddings so we became fast friends and update each other on the progress of our wedding planning often (even though she lives in London). We were discussing the wedding ceremony and I was saying just last week that I don't even know how to start tackling the ceremony reading. What arrives in the mail today from this lovely lady?

How lovely!? Or else, she's trying to tell me she loves me in which case slightly weird cause we have one more session in France together :) 

How does your garden grow?

Ours is FINALLY growing! BF has been intent on making the garden nice but he doesn't really have a green thumb so his parents came up this weekend to help us pick out plants and give us tips on planting. Watering often was the key advice. You would think the stereotype of rainy Ireland would keep our plants alive but no dice! The other helpful advice for BF... remove the thin fabric film from the plant BEFORE you plant it in the ground. I nearly died laughing when his parents discovered that he had planted the plant WITH the fabric film on- There was no hope of survival for that poor thing!

Below are some before and after pics.

Before: Front buckets (That BF planted about 3 weeks ago)

After: My new front buckets! And my favorite work of art - my window box! 

Before - The right side of the garden. I HATE that bush 

During- TIMBER! Take it down! Take it down! 

After- Bright little flower bed without the atrocious bush! 

My little guest, who I'm obsessed with. This is our house gnome, but he wanted some time in the sun so I let him play by the mini tree which is about 6 inches tall. So cute! 

Teeth

I've been having problems with my jaw recently (due to the previously mentioned stress) and needed to head to the dentist to get it looked at. Imagine my surprise when I showed up to the dentist and saw a film crew from TV3. Agreeing to be interviewed before I realised what was going on, I was featured on TV 3 this past week.

You can find it here. Just a warning there is a LOT of teeth involved in this shot. (Thanks mom and dad for all the $$ spent on braces. See, it was worth it. My teeth are famous!)

Yes I Cannes

So... it's been a bit quiet here on the blog because my life has been nothing but hectic- enough so that I was run down and out sick for two days last week. The last time I took a sick day was when I had Chikungunya fever! The wedding has been just a bit stressful, but I'm also changing jobs in the middle of it. (Why not, right?) 


One of the first tasks for my new job... Go to the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity* and hang out at the beach all day. No...seriously. When asked what I'll be doing there, my new manager said "Well, we have the beach rented out for the week, and I'm expecting you to be there for the entire day mingling. Hope that's ok" Um...yes, please! It's on at the end of the month and I cannot WAIT! I need some sun badly! 




* The Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity is like the dorky/nerdy brother of the fabulous Cannes Lion Film Festival. If only, I worked in movies and not online advertising!