Blast this Christmas music…it’s joyful and triumphant!

Happy Christmas y’all!
My brain is fairly fuzzy at the moment thanks to an overload of flu meds!
Yup, my second time to get really sick this year strikes on Christmas Day night.
*sigh*
I’m getting better though, even if standing is proving a bit of a challenge, so hopefully I’ll be peachy for New Years!
Christmas was shaping up to be a bit of a disaster anyway, considering I’m pretty much an orphan and I didn’t want to impose on friends’ family dinners, so I was spending the day on my lonesome.
I had to leave the chicken-buying (I hate turkey) until Christmas Eve after work, because we have a teeny fridge and shock, there were none left by the time I got to the supermarket.
So my Christmas dinner was a sad plate of roasties, carrots, awful stuffing (Paxo is shamefully bad) and gravy….for one.
The Boy was around for the morning and night, so twasn’t too bad…well until the flu struck.

This is not the place to find the Christmas spirit, my friends.
Bah Humbug indeed.

 

My Christmas Wishlist…

…you know, for when myself or The Boy win the Lotto!

1. A Burberry Trench
2. A Chloe crepe silk-satin blouse
3. Some feminine boyfriend tailoring, also from Chloe
4+5. Chanel can provide screen-siren red lipstick and a vintage handbag
6. Then off to Hermes for a silk scarf
7. And top it all off, some flamboyant faux-ostrich leather pumps from Marc Jacobs…

Ah yes, some beautiful dreams indeed.

Lazy Days

*yawn*

I’ve had a lovely sleepy weekend.
The snow and ice appeared on Friday night, which meant that I wasn’t even going to consider leaving the apartment.
I feel a little frustrated at the moment, because it seems as though there isn’t a single time of year that I can relax!
I love autumn and winter, but in the last few years autumn has been overly warm and humid and the winter has brought nothing but ice for me to fall on (I have no balance).
Summer and Spring have been dreary and humid and suffocating.
Damn global warming.
I’m leaving Ireland for another climate.
*sigh*

But it hasn’t ruined my weekend!
We put up our Christmas tree and decorated the apartment on Friday night, settled down with a pizza and some goodies and watched the Toy Show (this is a show that happens at the end of November in Ireland and pretty much kicks off the Christmas season for us!).
An amazing job by Ryan Tubridy and his team made it the best show since Gay Byrne retired 10/11 years ago.

We watched Christmas movies, like Home Alone and Elf, drank tea and ate tummy-hugging food all weekend and I now feel thoroughly relaxed and ready for the week ahead.
How strange to hear me say that!

Now please enjoy these Jacob Sadrak portraits of Hanne Bruning…

Currently obsessed with …Vintage Posters

Taking down the Christmas decorations ALWAYS leaves me depressed for days. It’s just so bleak sitting in a room with newly-bared walls and celings!

So I’ve decided to prevent it happening this year and am hunting for some vintage posters to pretty-up the apartment!

So many online stores are SERIOUSLY trying to rip people off, but thankfully my trusty friend Amazon has come to my budget’s rescue…

Kudos to them for not puking afterwards….

Lol, so I was back in the blogosphere a whole five days …and then I disappeared again!

Basically Judy (baby girl ginger kitten) got sick and I spent all my free time worrying about her, instead of blogging.

So here is my last few days in bulletpoints:

• General Week: Work, Cry, Sleep, Work, Cry, Sleep, etc, etc
• Friday Night was spent watching the Late Late Toy Show, which always signals the beginning of my Christmas season and which was actually good this year, unlike the past ten years that Pat Kenny strangled it.
• Saturday morning, after a thorough investigation of Judy, we decided she seemed much better and we wouldn’t need to drug her and smuggle her passed the caretaker and to the Saturday Morning Vet.
• 8pm,  I arrive back home to find she has now suffered a cut to the inside of her eye, which looks like it could become a gross infection.
• Saturday afternoon was spend finger painting and making things out of lollipop sticks and baking a Tank cake with a six-year-old and two four-year-olds. Note to self: mixing icing with small children is a terrible idea.
• Saturday night was filled with X Factor, jager and cider. ending up in a local nightclub and then wandering the streets alone clutching a bag of chips and asking God (outloud) to please let me get home safe. Gooooood times though!
• Late, late Saturday nights ….being out-smarted by my five-month-old kittens who managed to steal and eat my chips, which were covered in vinegar and salt. Kudos to them for not puking afterwards.
• Sunday was spent chirpy and listening to GaGa while cleaning the apartment.
• Sunday night consisted of Family Fortunes and X Factor, while cuddled up on the couch with The Boy and the kittens.

Sweet Baby Jesus

Today I saw THE Coca Cola Christmas ad.

The one with the truck.

And the “Holidays Are Coming” chanting.

Not the CRAPTASTIC one with the stupid old woman that they tried to pawn off on us last year.

Hurrah for the classics!!!

Because every shop is making me think about Christmas…

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Christmas Catch Up

Hi Gang!!

So I’d been feeling quite guilty for not blogging since one of my last days in work, and have just realised that the vast majority of the blogging community have been neglecting their duties just as much as me, so Hurrah!!!!

Well Happy Christmas to you all!

I must admit I’m terribly bored at present. Days off are fab when they’re precious and few, but when one is confronted with 9 days off work, one becomes very bored, very quickly, especially when said days off are at the quietest time of year, when people have gone back home or to New York for a pre-living-there holiday (Come home Lyndddsssaaayyyyy) and nothing is properly opened.

One plus of the days off though, were my being able to spend a lot of much needed time with The Boy, which more than makes up for the loss of brain cells I’ve endured during these empty days!

Anyway, the two of us have decided to take matters in hand after seeing Yes Man in the cinema the other night (surprisingly good watch, btw!) and we’ve dedicated tomorrow to new and random and spontaneous things! Granted we’ve planned a few activities already, but they’re just to give us some foundations.

I’ve just realised I haven’t painted the best picture of my Christmas holidays!!! Believe me, it’s only since yesterday I’ve been bored, and that’s only because I thrive on being busy!

I was showered in amazing gifts from books on Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland, to a Roald Dahl calendar, to a Learn to Play Guitar book, to DVDs, money and sweets! It really was fantastic ….thank you SO much everybody!

I also treated myself in the sales and FINALLY purchased my NIKON D60 -can I hear some cheering crowds please and thank you! I also bought a new and much needed laptop which ACTUALLY WORKS, so yay to being a working girl!!!!! So I’m quite overwhelmed with stuff right now, but after 21 years of poverty I’m willing to not be guilty! (actually that’s a lie, and I gave a lot of money to charity over the festive season to help reduce the guilt!!lol!)

I took my shiney new Nikon to the park the other day to test it out and got some pretty pics! The Boy also helped …..

My Daily Update

Well this is going to be a short one because not a whole lot happened yesterday.

Well it did and it didn’t …I’ll explain.

I spent the day in work, which was bleurgh. Then at 5 I was free and I met the Bestie to head off to the DCU Christmas Panto. On the way there I stopped in Oxfam’s Fair Trade shop to buy a new Christmas Star. I couldn’t find a proper picture of it online, but it is the same as the red one in this picture, except it’s bigger and has a gold coloured metal sprial base to sit on the tree. It’s nice and I felt like I’d done something good afterwards.

So then we bused it out to Santry and stopped in the EuroSpar to buy our sick friend Gary a care package. Here is what we bought:

• Multi-vitamin juice to boost his immune system …mmm Vitamin C.
• A pound on mince for iron to make him strong again.
• Tea, because tea always makes you feel better.
• Chicken soup for his soul.
• Mars Bars because chocolate makes happy hormones, is good for your throat and Gary like Mars Bars.

So after so pasta, tea and toffeepops in the Boys’ we headed over to The Hub for the Panto Snowfinger.

I’m refusing to give a verdict on it yet, because apparently it was the first time they’d had a chance to run though it fully, and there’s a lot of newbies, and there were tech problems. I do, however, have great faith in them all and there’s some seriously good talent in there, so I’m going to the final show on Wednesday to see it all in full swing. The Boy is coming too. Poor him.