Off To Ireland: Part 2

Please don't think that Dublin is all empty abandoned buildings.  It's a vibrant and thriving city.  On our first full day in Ireland, we visited an estate house turned shopping center and then the area around it.  Powerscourt House was built between 1771 and 1774 for the 3rd Viscount of Powerscourt.  The family lived in Powerscourt, Enniskerry, County Wicklow, but they would spend 'The Season' in Dublin.  So the house was built for them to live and entertain during that time.  Now it is a 'shopping court'.

Many elegant details are still in evidence.

There was a knit shop!

One of the few things I was interested in buying during my visit to Ireland was a tam.  Eleanor helped me choose just the right one.

Our day's walking tour focused on food.  We enjoyed sampling foods at various shops.  Cheese.  Bread.  Desserts.  One cafe even made me a delicious vegan cheese sandwich.  Yum!

There was even a carrot strip for Eleanor.

And she helped me finish all the desserts.

Of course, tea is the beverage of choice in Ireland.  But sometimes you just gotta have some coffee.

Are you bored yet?  Come back and see All. The. Photos of random buildings in Dublin.

Falling Leaves and Five Faves

Good Morning!  It's Friday, the second one in October.  It's time to reflect back on the week and choose five things/events that blessed me.  Here are my Friday Fave Fives for the week. (If you've been here before, you know the link send you to Susanne's blog)

1.  Sunny days.  Finally, we are able to be outside doing all the chores in our garden.  While we are still picking cherry tomatoes (yum!), kale and carrots, I have put the rest of the veggie garden to bed.  Other jobs such as cutting back bushes that overgrew during all the hot weather and then many rain days are getting done.

2.  I'm thankful that I have a strong teenage grandson who is willing to help with the heavy chores (for food and more food and a small bit of cash).  We are putting in a water catchment barrel to help with watering the garden.  It's a BIG job, almost finished, thanks to his help.

3.  On the weekend, we were able to drive to a neighboring town and then into the country a bit to pick up a baby native tree to plant in our front yard where we had taken out an aggressive species tree.  This nursery that specializes in native plants is only open one or two days a week, so we arranged our schedule to go and get a little sprout.  Hopefully, that tree will be planted today with help from Tall Boy.

 4.  An added fave to that is we found a sweet little local coffee shop.  The coffee and pastries were excellent.  In fact, we will be doing our usual weekly coffee date with T and S there next week.

5.  These sunny days have also allowed us the weather to walk on several walks on the local trails.  On Sunday, our daughters collected the three dogs and managed to corral the younger teenage grandson (Warrior Boy) and we walked a couple of miles under the trees with all the changing leaves.

Bonus:  I finally finished this 'formal dress' for PAL's (my youngest grandchild) bunny.  She requested a grey formal dress with ruffles.  It took a l-o-n-g time to figure out the ruffles without a pattern.  But it's done and will be on its way to Arizona soon.  Eleanor enjoyed being the model.

Off To Ireland! Part 1

This is the first of what will be MANY posts about my trip to Ireland, England, and Wales.  I was away for three and a half weeks making lifetime memories.

Our first part of the trip brought us to Dublin, Ireland.  We were in Dublin for maybe thirty-six hours.  Having landed on Aer Lingus at the Dublin airport, we found the correct bus that would take us to our hotel where we would meet up with the other people who were part of the bus tour.  CIE Tours was a fine company that made all the arrangements for our tour which was focused on Home Economics themes like food and fiber.  During this part of my adventure, I was traveling with a friend who teaches Home Ec classes at our local high school.

After we settled in to our very posh hotel, we were treated to a lovely dinner with our tour guides and fellow travelers.  (I'm not used to this kind of experience traveling!)

When you hear "Ireland", what do you think of?

Guinness!  Beer. Ale.

I'm not a beer drinker, but I was intrigued to see this huge Guinness warehouse.

St. Patrick's Cathedral was on our 'must see while we have free time in Dublin' list.  We were able to attend the Sunday evensong service there.  Because it is located in the middle of the city with buildings completely surrounding it, it was not easy to get a photo to show the magnificence of the cathedral. 

And tiny churches between large buildings.

The River Liffey flows through Dublin.  As we walked around to explore the city, we crossed this tidal river many times on various bridges.

Then, there were the things we didn't expect to see in Dublin.  I guess we should have since it's a large city.

Abandoned areas

Graffiti.

At least this was cute.

But even among the weeds and ruins, there was beauty.

We had a busy  day planned for the next day, so we finally headed back from our wanderings to our lovely hotel.

It's October!

Our first October Friday Fave Fives.  I love participating in this-- we choose five blessings from our week to share.  We call them our Friday Fave Fives and share them with others on Susanne's blog Living to Tell the Story.  I just checked.  This is the 806th weekly Fave Fives she has hosted!

1.  I'm a bit later than usual posting my Faves.  That's because I was out in the garden.  The edging of all the areas is finished for this time around.  Mounds of yard debris has been placed in bags ready for the waste company to pick them up on Monday.  The best part of this fave?  Tall Boy mowed the lawn.  I'm thankful for a teenage grandson who can mow our lawn for us.

2.  Yesterday our older granddaughter turned eighteen!  Pictures of ZG from homecoming a couple of weeks ago!

3.  Sometimes plans go awry but turn out different but just fine.  That happened to us on Tuesday.  We planned to have coffee with T and S at a coffee shop a bit closer into the city than usual.  We've been there a few times before and enjoyed it.  Just as we pulled onto the road where it is located, we got a text. "It's closed."  Hmmm.  OK.  What now?   We decided to drive to another coffee place, but as we passed the fruit farm, we all four just thought at the same time, "Let's just try it and see if there is coffee and snacks as well as APPLES and MORE APPLES.  We enjoyed some yummy fresh from the oven apple turnovers and I had a hot cider and the others had coffee.  Seating was different from a usual coffee shop, but the whole experience was a fun change up.  Fortunately, we are all fairly adaptable.

4.  One evening this week, I joined 4 other women to help our friend record a sample group counseling session for a class she is taking for her degree in counseling.  It was a  fun time and we discussed some good issues.  After that, we ended the evening with a yummy dinner around the table.

5.  Finally.  The photos from our trip to Ireland, England and Wales have made it onto my laptop from my camera and my phone!  It was time consuming.  But it's done and I am so thankful for The Professor who helped with a couple of glitches.  Here's a very quick glimpse.  What places and things pop up in your thoughts when someone mentions Dublin, Ireland?

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Guinness Ale 

This is a main warehouse right in the middle of the city.

Lots of pubs

Come back for more and more photos from my travels in Ireland, England and Wales last summer!

Autumn is Falling

Happy Friday (night)!  Life threw us another snow ball today.  During the rain/thunder/wind storm, we lost power (see #2).  That really messed up my schedule for writing my Friday Fave Fives.  But here I am, finally, to share my Five blessings from this first full week of Autumn.

1.  I do hope that everyone who is living on the east coast of the US is safe, dry and snug in their homes.  Because I have a sister-cousin in Florida, I have been watching the progress of the nasty weather very closely.  Good news there is that she let me know that she is fine and her house is intact.

2.  As I mentioned above, our electricity went out this afternoon and was out for several hours.  I am thankful that we weren't worried.  We have flashlights, oil lamps and candles.  And we had peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.  And now our power is back on again, and we are very thankful for that.

3.  We have a new mattress!  We wanted to buy a new one and then we found out that someone needed a bed.  So, we offered our old mattress to them and bought a new one for us.  It was delivered Tuesday.  I am thankful for a good dependable store near us that would deliver and place the bed on its frame for us.

4.  I have been going through all my old photos which are hanging around on my laptop and enjoying the reminiscing.  And deleting the ones I don't want.  Actually, I am finally ready to move them to a flash drive.  And then I will be able to move all the photos from my trip to Ireland, England and Wales onto my computer and write blog posts about it.  The fave in this is that I am learning all the tech stuff.

5.  Autumn decor.  (no photos yet)  I love autumn, and I love having fall decorations, especially flowers (like last week).  I bought two gorgeous mums and they are sitting on my front porch now smiling at everyone who walks or drives past the house.  I am thankful for the beauty of autumn.

Happy Fall!  Happy Friday!