Erin of My Beautiful Disaster hosted a fun tea swap project a little while back. I love tea, but my tea choice is usually a little boring in that I just drink traditional tea and haven’t gotten into the whole wide world of tea’s that are available. (I still think green tea tastes like dirt….I just can’t get past it). Nevertheless, I wanted to share my simple but amazing tea from Ireland with Erin and also with lovely Daisy of Pretty Green Tea. But, due to college commitments, I knew I’d be useless at the tea swap right now, so instead promised to send these two lovelies a little sample of the tea I love (which I haven’t done yet, proving how useless I would have been at the actual tea swap). Daisy was kind enough to send me a little selection of tea anyway, which I was so excited about!.
I decided to try the chai tea and had it with warm milk as she suggested. It was the perfect occasion to use my favourite vintage teacup that a dear neighbour gifted to my family a long time ago. I felt so dainty drinking tea from this little teacup :)
Truthfully, I think I’m still way too set in my ways when it comes to tea. I think this might be an acquired taste and in time I could grow to love it, but for my first time drinking it, I found it difficult to get used to the taste. That said, it was so fun to try a new tea and there was something really interesting about the fusion of sweet versus the cinnamon flavour in this tea.
Thank you, Erin, for inspiring this little experiment and thank you, Daisy, for sending me the tea. I can’t wait to try the others :)
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve done an outfit post! Truthfully, I’ve been in a style rut lately as my life has consisted of being constantly in college and feeling tired and lazy as a result. Now that college is coming to an end and summer is on its way, I’ve been a little more excited about my wardrobe. Here’s what I wore today. I had a day of essay writing ahead, so I wanted to wear a dress to feel a little prettier about my day, but still feel comfy while working. I love this dress – the print reminds me of a peacock and the fabric is soft and comfy. I took a leaf out of Cathy from Turquoise Flamingo‘s book (see her recent outfit post here) and teamed it up with a pair of converse to give it a more casual feel. Sometimes all it takes is a pretty dress to lift your spirits :) Ooh, I can’t wait to post outfits from Nantucket once I arrive there! xo
In follow-up to my recent post Adventures in Entrepreneurship, I thought I’d share some photos from this week’s Young Entrepreneur Programme Awards ceremony in Killarney. The night was a celebration of the achievements of those who took part in the programme this year. The awards covered the Junior Entrepreneur Programme and both the Second and Third Level categories of the Young Entrepreneur Programme. It was the perfect end to an amazing year with the programme. The organisers really went all out to create a special night, with everything from 6 foot posters of all the winners, amazing food, great special guests and a photobooth (!!!).
OnTheQT.ie team with our 6ft poster – very surreal!
Photobooth fun! This made my night.
Us with Colette Fitzpatrick from TV3, who hosted the event.
All the third level finalists with our tutor, Breda.
OnTheQT.ie team with our stand at the exhibition.
With Norah Casey of Dragon’s Den fame.
The best friends and team-mates I could ask for xoxo
As I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve been involved in the Young Entrepreneur Programme & Awards lately. We entered our final year college project – OnTheQT.ie: a tourism website for the alternative tourist - and were lucky enough to reach the final four of the competition. Our project features off-the-beaten-track locations in Ireland through video and virtual audio content. It’s brought us to some really cool places and the whole project, both for final year and for the YEP competition has been so much fun. I thought since it has been the main focus of everything in my life lately that I’d share some photos we’ve taken along the way :)
Shooting some rock climbing in Ardmore, Co. Waterford.
Honoured, meeting the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin with the other finalists of YEP.
With my friend and team-mate, Laura, at The Irish Times in Dublin during a finalist trip.
At The Aviva Stadium during the finalist trip to Dublin.
Shooting Thomastown band The Mill Rats in a craft studio in an old mill in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny.
With my wonderful friends and team-mates Stephanie and Laura.
The Young Entrepreneur Programme has opened so many doors for us and despite not winning the final prize, we are excited to take our website further after college. I’ll keep you updated once it’s launched :)
(I promise I’ll stop blogging about college soon and go back to blogging about luffly things! xo)
It’s been a little while since I’ve updated the blog about what’s been keeping me busy. And what a whirlind its been lately! I’ve been working really hard on my final year college project with the most wonderful team and loveliest friends I could ask for. It’s such a breeze to work with people who you can have both a professional relationship and great friendship with at the same time. We’re currently in the final four of the Young Entrepreneur Programme & Awards and next week we’re going on a trip to Dublin to meet the President of Ireland Michael D Higgins. It’s such an amazing opportunity. We’ve been through many stages in the competition and it involved a lot of business pitches in front of some very influential people. It’s been a huge step outside our comfort zone and such a great learning curve all the way. I think I’ll leave details of what our project is all about for another post. We launch in May, so I’ll do a proper piece then…but in the meantime, here’s us with our business faces on at a recent event.
I can hardly believe that in just six weeks, I’ll be finished all classes, college projects and exams forever. Four years done and dusted!
Next stop…lovely Nantucket for the summer, to escape the real world for just a little bit longer. It will be my second summer on the island (I was first there in 2009), where I’ll be working in a beach restaurant and playing gigs there at night. Nantucket is a beautiful place and I can’t wait to blog from there and share all the fun experiences we’ll be having. The boy and I have secured a wonderful living situation in an apartment owned by a lovely lady who is actually from the same city as me and went to my school, but now lives on Nantucket with her husband. They own an antique store on the island…could the story be more perfect!?
At the end of the summer, I’ve left some time to travel in September before returning home. I’m hoping to take a trip to Missouri to visit friends of mine and while there I’d love to check out the Red Velvet shop in Springfield (dream!). It turns out Renegade Craft Fair is happening in Chicago around the same time…so depending on how everything goes this summer, I am definitely there if I can afford it. Drooling at the thoughts of all of this. Hopefully it can all come to fruition.
That’s the main updates on my life for now. I’ll get into the more fun details soon :) XO
I mentioned last week that I was going away for the weekend for a festival in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. The Lights Off Festival at the Red Door Music & Arts runs every year roughly around the time of Earth Hour (which was last night) and basically consists of two nights of no electricity; candles, acoustic performances, gramophone DJ and so on. What a wonderful experience it was! Thomastown on any night is pretty magical, in my opinion. The people there are friendly, talented and welcoming and there always seems to be good live music happening. All this on top of the atmosphere created by candlelight and beanbags made for a really special weekend.
We spent an evening last week decorating empty jam jars with fabric, chalkboard paint and all sorts and they looked really cute scattered around the venue with little tea lights in them.
My beautifully talented friend Laura Cunningham (above) performing. Listen to her music here, she’s lovely.
When the performances ended, there was a huge jam session with everything from guitars and piano to djembe, saxophone and upright bass, along with lots of happy people dancing and singing into the early hours of the morning. The sun shone all weekend and we had breakfast and barbecues and dinner cooked for us both days – once again proving just how amazing of a community it really is there. I’ve truly fallen in love with Thomastown. When can we go back?
Also, if you’re looking for more lovely music, check out ‘A Tailors Tale’ by Seán Watmore, who performed at the festival. So lovely. Very Josh Ritter-esque. And listen to this really fun cover by Thomastown band Mill Rats…preferably while dancing and smiling :)
All photos above credit to JacksonDesign. Thank you, Richard, for allowing me to use them :)
Woah! Something weird happened and my blog went missing somewhere in the blogosphere for more than a week! It could not have happened at a worse time as I was so busy this week I had no time to try and figure out how to fix it. Finally, after a lot of emails and Googling and hours spent tearing my hair out, it’s finally back. Thankfully, all the content seems to be ok. The layout has been a little affected, so please bear with me while I get that back to normal. Blogging will resume this week. It’s good to be back :) XO
