Stolen Scrubs and Confiscated Slippers

I think John decided at some stage that a pillow would be a more suitable option for supporting my heavy head than his arm.We took a taxi over to Caroline's place and declared ownership of her bed. The next morning I woke up early as John got out of bed, shrugged into a dressing gown and headed out to the balcony to have a smoke. I helped myself to some pajama pieces in pink I found that looked more like scrubs than pajamas, stuck my feet into a pair of slippers which I confiscated and went out to say good morning to John. I was tired and wanted to go back to bed but wound up throwing myself in her huge Budda bag and got completely engulfed in some gossip magazines. John made me tea. 

I thankfully did not feel hung over (I'd also like to point out that John wasn't either, despite the pained look in the picture. This is simply John dodging a picture and trying to look horrible on purpose.). A bit later in the morning when Caroline appeared and felt she had woken up enough to drive, we drove off and got a greasy breakfast.

Sleepy Saturday Night

When all the female individuals (that is, Caroline and I) had finished fussing over their appearance we finally headed out, to the great relief of the waiting male individual (that's John). I don't actually know/remember where we went, as I was feeling a bit sleepy after all the wine. I think we took a taxi to a nearby bar but my memory from that night is a bit foggy, and embarrassingly enough my story telling concerns a Saturday night two weekends ago. Procrastinating blogger, moi? Mais, non!

Caroline had made plans to meet up with two of her friends, Catherine and Liz. Here Catherine is posing with one of her friends, who had also come out for the evening.

Catherine, her friend and Liz. I spent the beginning of the night - when I still had some energy - chatting with Liz. I enjoyed our conversation but I'm not sure what she thought, as she was stone cold sober and I wasn't.

The remainder of the night was spent in a sleepy daze. While I'm pretty sure it wouldn't constitute as sleeping, as there was some form of consciousness there, I was leaning heavily on John's arm all night. I was told that a lot of the night was also spent affectionately gazing up at John from the bottom of his sleeve where I was clinging on to it. 

Caroline, Catherine and her friend.

P.S. I never really think about the fact that my boyfriend is so much taller than me. I only ever notice the height difference when I put my arms around his neck or kiss him, the rest of the time it feels as if we're pretty much the same height. It's funny to see the pictures of the two of us, as I can clearly see there is a difference of a good few inches between us. It is however a welcome change after dating so many shorter guys!

Makeup Lessons and Wine

After enjoying a very satisfying and filling dinner and enjoying a bit of wine (aherm... two bottles between us), we went out for a few drinks. I debuted this little number. It has a collar, a splash of colour and fits me perfectly. I love it!

I used to hate orange. I guess I changed my mind somewhere along the way, as I own these cute little things. Even though I do own orange ballerinas, I'm not sure I'd venture as far as an orange piece of clothing (say, a dress... I might be mistaken for an approaching fruit on the run) or sport an orange bag. Yep, it seems I appreciate orange, but only in the shape of footwear.

My necklace is vintage and has a blue glass stone in the middle. It has leaves at the top, meaning it's supposed to be thought of as an apple, pear or some other leafy object. Despite it's lack of certainty regarding which leafy object it desires to resemble, I find it adorable, it's one of my favorite necklaces. 

I did my makeup as such. I thought it would be fun to mention to Caroline that I never use foundation, powder etc on my face and said it would be fun if she did my makeup sometime. She swiftly declared sometime would not be good enough but instead immediately would be sufficient. She got all her bottles and jars out and in a few minutes did the remainder of my face which had not been painted by me. 

This is the result. What do you think of my before and after? I thought it looked nice and it wasn't too obnoxiously made up and didn't look tarty. I wouldn't like to wear this much makeup all the time though, as getting beige collars does not really seem that appealing. I also think I scratch, fidget and touch my face too often to be able to keep the makeup on my face, rather than everywhere else. 

To Caroline's for an Impromptu Dinner

The other week, as John and I were walking home after visiting the farmers market, we arranged to go over to Caroline's place later in the evening. Not so much go over, nor would it be later in the evening, but her picking us up from my place as soon as we'd get home. We stopped by the shops and got some food to prepare in Caroline's place as we were ravenous and then took the bus home. Once back in the house we put away our purchases from the market (did I mention they sold books for a euro each at the market café? I brought eleven newcomers back home with me...) and also slipped the strawberries and whipped cream I had purchased earlier in the day into the bag of groceries we would be bringing with us.

Caroline had some problems finding my place so we took our bags and our groceries with us and I grasped a large plastic container of salad as we hurried out the door. As we walked up the road and around a few corners to where Caroline was parked, I seemed to get a lot of curious glances from people passing me in the street. Apparently it's unheard of to make a large salad and store it in an equally large plastic container, that then is too bulky to place your average carrier bag.

I've only been to Caroline's place once before but the last time I was unfortunately not equipped with a camera. This time, as John slaved away by the stove, I had my way with the apartment and walked around hapily snapping shots of all the interesting things crammed into all corners of her apartment. 

Her couch is incredibly, lusciously comfortable and I'm highly jealous as the couch in my place is not only small, but not very comfortable and certainly not luscious. 

This is a painted didgeridoo that Caroline bought when she was in Australia. The painting is by Caroline/John's mother.

 

This is a hungry me, sans make up and clad in my boyfriend's baggy sweater.

I love that there's so many decorative items in her apartment and that it all seems to match. When I buy decorative items (read: knick knacks) they tend to never follow any consistent theme or similar colour scheme. 

My First at a Market

In light of my recent healthy eating (minus some cheating lately, at the moment I'm eating a pizza and getting oil all over my sheets) I have been researching farmers markets and whereabouts in Dublin they are hiding from us ignorant ones. The aim was to buy organic vegetables and to hopefully also find organic eggs. These can both be found on the shelves of big supermarkets but I figured there's nothing wrong in giving some of my hard-earned money to hard-working famers, who are in bigger need of the money than the supermarkets.

I found a website with a long list of farmers markets and picked one on the ouskirts of Dublin.

Friday came ('t was last week's Friday) and with the unmistakeable weekend excitement I rushed home, only to stumble into bed. I was utterly exhausted and remained in a coma-like state for an enjoyable amount of hours and woke up early on Saturday. A quick peek through the curtains revealed a bright blue sky, and as I poked my foot out of the doorway I could establish that it wasn't too cold either.

It took a good bit to walk down to the market, but I didn't mind as it felt nice to get some fresh, crispy air while strolling hand in hand with John. The sun was really bright and John had to wear sunglasses. 

The market was rather small and there wasn't much that caught my fancy. I saw a quite large packet of organic vanilla powder that was quite expensive that I do want to go back and buy at some stage. What I did buy was a bottle of raw milk and a bottle of organic olive oil. John bought a jar of curry sauce. 

We found a steel door with a sign on it, stating there was a café hiding behind it. We opened the door (it felt a bit like we were breaking and entering, cafés usually don't have big heavy steel doors and they also tend to have windows...) and stepped in.

What we saw was a large area that looked like a warehouse. There were wooden tables, along with wooden chairs, covered in a quirky multicoloured fabric. There were chains hanging from the ceiling with cute raggedy fabric pennants. 

We had coffee and ice cream. 

I didn't buy any vegetables and I didn't see any eggs, but it was a rather small market. I'm planning to check out one of the markets that they have in town. The curry sauce that John bought was actually very tasty so I think I'll have to find my way back to this one again!

Aaaaaaaaawwww

I tried to follow a recipe for coconut flour pancakes this weekend but the batter didn't quite turn out as it should have. John said it wasn't thick enough and added more flour to it, but what we were left with was a thick puré-like consistency. I didn't want to simply bin the remainder of the batter/puré, so today I thought I would try my new silicone cake mould and see whether the mess of a batter would make a nice cake.

The mold features medium sized gingerbread men, Christmas trees and Christmas stockings. I got the mould at a sale the other week. I love Christmas and I couldn't resist a tool which would enable me to eat festive baked treats the year around.

I think we ruined the batter beyond any point of rescue: it didn't make a nice cake. They're undoubtedly irresistibly cute though!

Evil Plans and Red Balloons

It seems that most, if not all holidays have lost their original purpose. These days Christmas is all about gifts, Easter is all about chocolate eggs and Valentine's day is all about commercial hysteria for anything remotely pink, red, chocolate-y or romantical. I like the idea of Valentine's day, but I think that any good relationship should have more occurrences of romance than an annual only peek-a-boo. This does not mean that I am cynical and that I don’t like receiving gifts on Christmas, chocolate eggs during Easter, nor that I wouldn’t appreciate being romanced on Valentine’s day. I think the thought behind the day should, however, not be forgotten. I think Valentine’s day is for showing your boyfriend or girlfriend that you care for them. I also think that Valentine’s day plans which include gestures/plans/gifts should have a bit of thought behind them, and do not have to be expensive to hit the perfect romantical soft spot of a girl’s or boy’s heart.

My Valentine’s day with John felt very unplanned and abrupt, almost as it fell over us. I knew it was on the 14th of February and I knew that it would be on a Tuesday and that I would be off from work and spending the day with him. I thought he had mentioned to me that we would have ours on the following Sunday, because he had an appointment on Tuesday which would cut the day very short for us. Apparently we were both thinking of different Sundays, so it didn’t quite go as planned.

On the actual Valentine’s day we had a lie-in. At some stage I sneaked out, supposedly to make coffee, but returned not only with said coffee but with a dessert which I had made for him. After a brief moment of detective work on the internet, we found a romantical movie which we had planned to watch cuddled up together. Instead we wound up dashing out of bed after only 10 minutes of romantical cinematic viewing and headed into town, as we wanted to visit a few shops before they closed. We casually strolled up and down the streets and had a quick look in a few. I was surprised that the streets were rather empty and the lack of red/pink and/or heart shaped decorations. 

After some time we headed back home and I got stuck taking a lot of pictures of the river, as I liked the lights and the patterns they cast on the water. John waited “patiently”. We had dinner when we got back and were able to spend a few more hours together before I had to pack my bags. John walked me to the bus stop with me clinging to him as I didn’t want to leave. I always hate leaving him. Sometimes I make evil plans of kidnapping him, but I haven’t quite figured out how I would be able to manoeuvre the tied up body of a 6’ 6’’ tall man into the trunk of the bus unnoticed. Oh well.  

New in Ireland, not Just me

I came to Ireland over three years ago. I had never travelled alone, I had never been to Ireland before and my knowledge of the country was minimal, I came alone and I didn't know anybody in Dublin. My most useful contact during the first few days was the Irish receptionist in the hostel I was staying in. There were a few receptionist, all of different nationalities, and they would work different shifts. I quickly learnt that the best way to get good tips quickly, was to save all my questions and ask the Irish receptionist. He didn't have to google or ask around in order to be able to answer me, like the others did. I mostly understood what he said as well as his Irish accent was pretty friendly on my ears, although he did say "notice board" in an unapprehensable way. Que me exlaming "OH, notice board" to which he muttered something under his breath.

People tell me I'm brave for coming over on my own, at such a young age. A "mere" twenty when I arrived, I wasn't particularly scared or worried as I had a job waiting for me and the first few days I kept busy getting things sorted: getting a SIM card, buying a duvet and a pillow, buying tooth paste and finding somewhere to live. I walked around so much that I got a big gaping hole on the sole of one of my shoes. 

While it wasn't very scary to move to a new country on my own I did manage to get lost on my first night and it took three hours of frantic running around until I found my way back to the hostel. It was dark and getting late and as for all I knew, it could have been dangerous streets I was walking around on (it wasn't) so I was scared.  

Sometimes I think back on my first few months here. I have a lot of memories and everything was so new and exciting. If I could go back and do it all again, I would. Ireland is a great place and I like Dublin. I don't know what I'll be doing in the future, but I don't think I'll ever move back to Finland.

On a related note: My younger brother should be in Dublin at the moment. Last time I spoke with him he said that he was flying over on Friday as he's starting his new job on Monday. My mother must be feeling separation anxiety as two thirds of her children are now located in Ireland. At least she can feel a bit safer knowing I sent my brother an email with a list of dangerous streets and places to avoid. I think it will come handy, in case he gets lost too. 

Valentine's Day in Bed

My new shirt I got today. <3

My Valentine's day was mostly spent in bed. I don't think I've ever had such a relaxed and cuddly Valentine's day before. More on it will follow, it's getting very late and I'll have to retire to bed as my lotto winnings from this weekend (six euros) will unfortunately not enable me to take an early retirement.