New Ventures

Hi everyone!
I know I have been gone for ages and you have all been waiting with baited bated breath for the next batch of treats and treasures but I have been insanely busy. I have finished college, won an award for the documentary we made about the occupy movement, and started a full time internship at a wedding blog! In other news, I got a finge.

The internship I am doing is at a wedding blog/online magazine called One Fab Day and I am loving it! It is great experience and if I had to make up a dream internship this would be pretty close to what I would come up with. How bad could looking at pretty stuff with lovely ladies be really? However, I am now a poor intern so any donations will be delightfully excepted. Jokes...Kind of.

The sun decided to make a rare appearance in Dublin over the past couple of weeks leading to some al fresco dining and the mandatory Irish sun stroke/tan.

Everyone seems to drink really extravagant drinks when it's sunny like mojitos or berry ciders or craft beers so not to be left out I decided I would pimp my lemonade with a cherry. It would be a nice idea to freeze cherries and use them instead of ice cubes. They look so pretty and your drink wouldn't be watered down. 

Ella was looking pretty stylish at the BBQ.

I also got my college results last week so to celebrate we went to The Botanic Garden and had a lovely lunch with all the old folk. You apparently have to be of a pensionable age to go here but we are daring like that and ate with all the oldies anyway. It was lovely and sunny so we strolled around but we did squeeze in a mandatory visit to the hut. 

All in all, it has been a very hectic but very lovely few weeks.

Joey x

Charmed.

I have been out and about wasting my money on junk again. Hurray! I went along to a sale of work in Howth where you can be lucky and get a few good bits for rock bottom prices. It is actually really quaint. It is in the grounds of a little church on a hill and there is everything you would imagine for a church sale including a brass band and the mandatory tea and cake area (a little on the pricey side if you ask me- €15 for tea and rice crispy cakes for three people...seriously?!) Anyway, here are a few of the trashy trinkets I lovingly adopted.

Loving this for €3

Cup from the last carboot sale for €3.20

Vintage perfume bottle €1

This hilarious make up bag that is real suede and leather for 20c.

Yep it says Lourdes...whatevs.

This picture frame holder was a bit of a mishap. I asked how much it cost. The guy said 5c so I was delighted and handed him a euro to pay and he then said 'Actually I'll leave it at a euro' and walked off. Not usually the way bargaining goes.

Last but not least, a present from the sale from my lovely Auntie Karen. See that little heart peaking out...?

Want to see what it is off?

The heart is one of the charms on Mam's charm bracelet. She loved this thing.She called it her life bracelet because 'Christians don't believe in charms' etc. Of all her jewellery , after her engagement and wedding rings, I reckon this meant the most to her. There are no diamonds or rubies but it is dripping in love. We had to really think about putting it on her when we said goodbye but it was too meaningful not to keep. I will tell you the story that she told so many times to people about this bracelet. 

Each charm had a special meaning to her. She picked each one except the swan which Deborah and James got her as a present which has a special meaning for her and dad. 

• Bumblebee- Deborah in Irish means honeybee
• Singer sewing machine-to remember her time with the women who she bought sewing machines for in Uganda
• Heart- Dad was her sweetheart
• Gingerbread man- because Timothy loves to cook
• The shoe-because she knew she had an addiction to clothes
• The cupcake-guess who that was for...
• The Scissors- to represent her creativity
• The laptop-because Jonny was always making movies
• The second shoe-to represent the women who she loved serving through her ladies ministry Flourish
• The frog-because when James was small he used to love insects and reptiles and we even held a funereal for a tadpole for him. Mam buried it in a matchbox alongside my hamster. 

We decided to keep it because we want to continue adding on the charms that we know she would have put on. She would have bought one for her new son and daughter in laws which will come, and grand-children and great grand children. In fact knowing Mam, it would have given her an excuse to go out and buy another bracelet and start filling it up again! But if you ask me, if you look at her bracelet, it was pretty full up. Like her life. Full of the people that meant the most to her and full of love. I just wish she was here to put the rest of the charms on her life bracelet herself.

Joey x

Weekend Treats

Hi everyone.
Sorry I have been gone for so long but I was finishing up in college and had loads of work to do. This post will be jammers with pictures but I had such a lovely time I might as well show you them all.

I met Michael for lunch on Friday and right when he had to go back to work my pal Aoife came into the same cafe to take her lunch from work so I stayed with her and had tea. How handy! I was very much a lady who lunches that day. We were in Soundbites cafe which is above Tower Records just off Grafton Street and if you haven't been you need to go. I love it there.

Then on Saturday I convinced Dad to take me and the person who created my love of bargains, Granny Flo,  to a carboot sale that was on. I am afraid to bargain with people but with Granny as my wing lady, I was getting things marked €10 for €1 50. She is a pro. 

Then it was time for a tea break after all of our bargain hunting and the selection of dried up scones in the church hall just wouldn't do so we headed down to the farmers market in Clontarf  for some tea and cake and the weekly bunch of flowers of course.

There are such nice cake and bread stalls at the market and on a nice sunny day, it makes you feel like your wandering around a little French market.There is a lovely, friendly atmosphere. Granny kept saying she felt like she was on her holidays.

Then to top it all off we bumped into my little friend/cousin with my aunt and uncle. A delightful morning all in all.

Style icon in the making

So cute

Buying flowers

After all of the carboot sale and farmers market fun, I went up to my friend Aoife's house for her birthday lunch. I have been at every one one of her birthdays since we were 8 and I hope that continues until we are 80.  Love you loads Aoife. 

Bst Bdz 4eva 'n' eva

Joey x

So-da Easy

Have you ever made Irish soda bread? I think it may have been the easiest thing to make ever. You basically mix flour and buttermilk and that's it. And for something that is so simple, it makes for a tasty snack or a very patriotic breakfast. You can't help but think about fully loaded coffin ships heading off to America with hundreds of eager, fellow Irish or our pal Michael Collins eating a slice before heading off to a historical meeting with the British. Just me? Well that or you can just watch 'Storage Wars' while you eat it and it's just as good.

Recipe:

What you need:

• 450g/1lb of plain flour
• teaspoon of castor sugar
• teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• teaspoon of salt
• 350-425 ml buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk you can apparently mix lemon juice into normal milk and leave it for about 10 mins and ta-da...you have buttermilk.)

What you do:

Set your oven to 230 degrees celcius. 

So all I did was weighed out my dry ingredients into a bowl and poured in the milk. I used the dough hook on my kitchenaid because I had never used it so I was curious. This basically just meant I had something extra to wash up so I reckon just use your hands. You just have to combine them together and you can either put the dough into a loaf tin or shape it into a ball kind of shape and throw it on a tray. No rising or proofing. Just put it into your preheated oven and then after 15 mins turn it down to 200 degrees and bake for another 30 mins. You know it is done when it is golden brown and if you tap the bottom of the loaf, it will sound hollow. I rolled it into a ball shape and scored the top and was delighted with how it turned out when I took it out of the oven. It's basically a giant scone so you could add fruit or maybe some cheese and herbs. It was so so tasty. I recommend good old fashioned jam and butter. And a mug of 'tae.' And a few folk tales to round it off. 

Joey x

Box of Love.

Fresh, farmers market flowers.

So every now and then I come across something that belonged to Mam that makes me stop in my tracks. Obviously we are surrounded by her stuff all of the time so the everyday 'Mam stuff' is ok like the fridge. I can deal with that. Or the floor. That's not too emotional. But pretty much everything else has a silly sentimental story. Even the dreaded wooden spoon. Every time I take it out I am like 'I wish Mam could chase me around threatening to whack me with the wooden spoon again.' EVERYTHING has sentimental value. I found it really hard when the vegetables had to be thrown out that had gone bad after she died. People were just throwing them in the bin because they didn't understand that we would never have carrots in our fridge that Mam had bought again. So what did I find? Well Aunty Carolann actually found them down in Grandmas house. What do you think is in this little box?

It is her collection of 'Love is...' cartoons that she cut out of the newspaper everyday for what appears to be a very long time and she apparently had a lot of time on her hands before she had five kids because she even organised them into relevant categories. I would say there are about 300 little cutouts.

This isn't even half of them!

They are so sweet and lovely and the best bit is the biggest pile was the one labelled 'Food!' (If you click on the picture you can read them better.)

I don't know why these are so sentimental to me. Maybe because she did it before she was married and was at the stage of her life where I am now and I can see how excited she was about starting her life as a wife and mother. Or maybe because she was such a die hard romantic and how sweet it is that she cut them out everyday. How fitting is it that she became a relationship and marriage counseller? She loved love. Or maybe because they feel like little black and white, individually and lovingly cut out messages that I can always read from her. If I ever need relationship advice from my Mam I just have to look through her little box of love.

Miss you Mam.

Joey x

Dream come true.

She always found a baby to hold, even in Africa!

Last Wednesday would have been Mam's 50th birthday. She was not looking forward to being 50. When she turned 40 she was also not happy. Dad had booked a surprise limo to take us all to a show and she wouldn't get in it because she didn't want people to know she was 40. I remember standing in her room with her and the limo pulling up outside and all she said was 'that better not be for me,' and just continued to get ready.

Painting the teen girls toenails in a school in Uganda.

What did we do for her 50th birthday? Well dad decided to plan a show in the Olympia theater to continue raising funds for the the dream she said she had just before she died. She had just come back from Uganda, a place we had been twice as a family with the charity Zest4kidz, which helps sick and war effected children around the world. Mam came home from Uganda and told Dad, she would love if we could raise the money to build a rehabilitation home for the children in Uganda. She was really excited about it and then she passed away so suddenly. This gave Dad the drive to make her dream come true.

The cake stall at the book launch=€700

We took a donation at her funeral to start the ball rolling. €10,000 euro was donated by all of the amazing people who came to the service. Then my wonderful Auntie Karen wanted to do something for Mam. She wrote the cutest children's book and donated all of the money that was generated from the book to our cause. Myself and my friend baked about 500 cookies and 300 cupcakes for the book launch, Jonathon sold photographs, people made jams and Christmas cards and over €14,000 was raised on the night. We were nearly half way there after only 2 months! People continued to be so generous and the money continued to grow. So Dad wanted to plan something for her birthday to keep our mission going.

What a brilliant night. All of the acts donated their time for free, the Olympia theater didn't charge us, a motorbike was donated for the raffle, some well known names donated large sums of money and when it came to the end of the show, we were able to tell Stuy, the founder of the charity, that we had smashed our target and raised over €60,000. The Jean Carley Rehabilitation home will be built and we knew this for definite on her 50th birthday. Thank you so much to everyone who gave their time, money and love and helped Mam's dream come true.

I think this is how Mam would feel about knowing her dream will be a reality!

Joey x
Ps thanks to Uncle Keith for the photos of the show.

Life Crush.

So I think I have a life crush on this amazing new chef on BBC 2. She has a show called 'The Little Paris Kitchen' and it is so lovely. She lives in a tiny studio apartment in Paris and runs the tiniest restaurant in the city. I am addicted to the show and I think I have watched every single thing and read every word written about her on the internet. She has loads of lovely, vintage dresses and her array of lipstick colours may have lead to me legging it into Mac to get me some delightfully purple lipstick. Well if Rachel Khoo has it then I should too...

She made these really cool little croque madame muffin things and they looked so darn delicious I decided I would give them a go. I even bought nutmeg and it cost €2 but then I lost it. But then I had a tin of nutmeg so the crisis was over. Phew!

They turned out really well except I left them in for too long so the egg wasn't runny so next time hopefully I'll take them out on time.They were still super tasty and got a thumbs up from all the boys. Also for the recipe, you have to cut off the crusts so we made some croutons and they were delish too.

So here's the link of the lovely Rachel making them. If you're stuck for time, watch it from 1: 22 because that's where the recipe starts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L38S1F6Y4u0

Joey x