New Year, New Me

image source

Well, not really. I’m still the same old me, just a little older since I’ve last been here. Though not much wiser… So then folks, how the hell have you been?!  All’s well this end, I’m glad to report. Happy to back in this weird and wonderful land of fanciful findings and frivolous fantasies. Where’ve I been without you all? As soon as I logged in here and saw those familiar names scrolling down through my dashboard I felt like I’d never been away. It’s really rather comforting.

Anyhoo, to answer that rhetorical question to myself, I’ve not been anywhere particularly special. Just hanging out with the neighbours, in a virtual metaphorical sense.  Spending too much time on Twitter and Tumblr, to put it more literally. In the past wee while I’ve gone beyond my lingering guilt at committing cyber adultery on you guys and fully embraced my micro-blogging addiction. Hence my total abandonment of this, my true internet home.

So - and you may have guessed this already - I’ve made it my New Year’s resolution to do something about that. I’ve already started giving the place a bit of an early spring clean (it’s not finished yet, I’ll get my blogroll and other wee foottery things back up soon enough), and I’ve decided to take a new approach to how I blog here, too. My addiction to Tumblr and the like isn’t hard to figure out; I’m pretty well occupied in my real life at the minute and only have the time and enthusiasm for popping in briefly, throwing a few posts up, and making a quick and quiet exit.

Tumblr makes that easy with its anonymity - on Blogger I’ve always felt an obligation to respond to each and every comment left here by visiting that person's page. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE catching up with you all since you’re all so damn lovely and have the bestest blogs ever, but that’s exactly the problem! I’ve been lucky enough to meet so, so many wonderful kindred souls on here over the past year or two that I always have a lot of loveliness to catch up with. And because of sense of duty to visit you all every time I post… well to be honest it puts me off posting. Not because it feels like a chore, but because I know how long it’ll bloody take! Not a bad complaint, I know. Just an impractical reality of my (previous) Blogger blogging habits.

I think it was the lovely Kathy who, in her infinitely witty wisdom, once told me blogging buddies should be like the people you talk to at the supermarket. You like them, enjoy and even look forward to hearing what’s been going on in their lives or whatever, but you don’t think they’re terrible and throw a huff if they’re in a hurry and don’t have time to stop for a chat. (Well, not unless you’re slightly insane.) It makes sense, for an analogy in which blogging is groceries. So, from now on, I may not always be able to stop for that wee natter, but then again I might have loads of time for a good auld chin wag… What I’m trying to say is I might not stop by your blogs every time I stop by my own, but I will get around to say hello eventually!

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Then there’s that other issue I need to address - POSTS LIKE THIS ONE!!! When I haven’t been on in a while I feel compelled to spend ages posting a big warbling apology for not having posted in a while. And just like with my self-imposed visiting obligations, the longer it’s been since I’ve posted the longer I’ll spend apologising for not having posted - sure just look at the length of this post! No more of this carry on, is what I’m saying.

Shorter posts, but more of them; meaningful catch ups not obligatory visits; blogging because I want to, not because I feel I have to; and no more months on end of random apologetic posts! That’s my blogging resolution for 2012. Well, hope you all had an excellent night. Good thoughts and best wishes for the coming twelve months!

And the winners are…

(Random unrelated photo to brighten the post up.) 

Hello strangers! How’re you all doing? Once more I’ve set a new record for blog neglect, but at least I gave advanced warning about it this time. Anyway, I’m back now and I’ve plenty of posts (and possibly another giveaway) lined up for the month ahead. Which, it turns out, is October! I love October.

First things first though, time to announce the winners of my giveaway. Thank you so much to everyone who entered, and for all your kind words and wishes too. All went well with the op, I’m glad to report. But enough about that! Winners…

So I assigned everyone some numbers depending on the amount of entries they had in and then submitted that to that random number generator thingy. I have to say, everybody had at least two or three in there - there were 36 different people in with 106 entries. Not bad going, eh? The first number who came out won the first photo, the second number the second photo and third etc etc.  Ok, so here’s how it all ‘went down’, as they say:

*drumroll*

And the first winner is…number 62 - Pabkins!


Next up we have number 82 - that’s Kristin!


And the third and final number out is 77 - the lovely Mademoiselle G!

Congratulations ladies, I’ll be contacting you soon to get your postal info. I actually feel really quite guilty now that I only had three prints to give away. I wanted everyone to win! As I mentioned earlier though, I may be holding another giveaway in the very near future. And this time it’ll be something from someone who knows what they’re doing, namely my very talented little sister and her boyfriend.  So check back soon for more details! Hopefully I’ll manage a post or two in the next week as well, I’ve no excuses this month.

Anyhow, thanks again to everyone who entered and I hope everyone’s doing well. Must get a good catch up with you nice blogging folk very soon!

Moons, trees, stars and a giveaway.

Oh look, what a surprise. Last time I checked in I said I’d be back in a couple of days and here I am over a week later wracked with guilt as usual. Ok, maybe ‘wracked’ is a little strong, but I do sort of feel as if I’ve been cheating on you guys with those floosies over on Tumblr and Twitter. Serial blog adulteress, that’s me.

So here I am with the proverbial bunch of flowers, hoping to earn some small iota of atonement for these weeks of neglect and excuses...  There I go with the drama again, but you get idea. Anyway, it's time for the previously promised giveaway!

Especially for my Blogger friends, I have one A4-size print* of the picture above and each of the two below to give away. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post to be in with a chance of winning.

That’s three prizes, so three winners. Unless by some freak of chance someone gets picked out thrice. That’d be a bit heebie-jeebiesish.  Unlikely as it may be, it could happen, though, for I’m going to stick with what appears to be blogger tradition and allow extra entries. Just do any of the following:

- share a link to this giveaway on your own blog;
- follow this blog;
- follow me on Tumblr;
- follow me on Twitter;
- or add me as a contact on Flickr (alternatively, to be fair to those who don’t use Flickr, you can just tell me which of my photos over there is your favourite).

Shameless self-promotion, I know. But sure you can’t blame a girl for trying ;) Anyhow, in your comment let me know if you’ve done any of the above and for each one you’ll get an extra magic ticket in the random-number-generator hat.  And don't worry, all you lovely folk already following here will automatically get an extra entry. I realise a lot of you are already following me elsewhere on the web too, but I’m a bit scatter-brained about these things so don’t forget to remind me!

Now for the timeline. Since I’ve giving up fooling myself and accepted that I just don’t have as much time to blog these days as I used to, I’m going to leave this giveaway open for a little while. I’m due in for surgery in a couple of weeks too and, while I’m expecting it to go well and be back on my feet pretty sharpish, I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. How does a month sound?

Ok, so I’ll leave it open until the end of September and on Saturday October 1st I’ll announce the winners. Thanks folks and best of luck to you all - though I know that’s a wee bit impossible. Believe me, if I had lots of money I’d send you all something :)

*The photos seen here may be slightly cropped in the printed version.

Northern (Irish) Lights

© Inishowen Photography

I just read over my last post and had a wee chuckle to myself. What a difference a week makes! So much for laid back summer evenings, I think this is the first night I’ve actually been in my house since I posted that.  It’s been hectic, but in a really good way; I’ve some exciting plans for the weekend ahead but I’ll tell you about them on Saturday. Which, incidentally, will be the next evening there’s even a hope of getting back on here.

Since I’m long overdue a nosy round all your blogs I’m not going to waste anymore time rambling on with my usual inane drivel. Instead I’m going to share some pictures of fair Inishowen at her majestic best. I came across these photos by accident on Flickr the other day and presumed they were taken in Scandinavia or somewhere, not just down the road! We do get to see the Northern Lights sometimes round here, but only every so often and then only if the clouds allow it.

Which, if you ask me, is what makes these images all the more fantastic. They were captured in March this year in Ballyliffin by photographer Mark Nolan. For many, many more of Mark’s beautiful images of the area check out is Flickr and webpage.

p.s. While I’m here I want to say a big thank-you-very-much to two amazingly generous bloggers - Evelyn at Through The Looking Glass and Carolyn at Littlegretel Dolls. I’ll explain more when I get back to proper blogging on Saturday but for now I just wanted to acknowledge their loveliness :)

Time For the Madness

I kept getting interrupted all afternoon so this post has taken much longer preparing than I anticipated. No matter, I’m here now and ready to party on down (dude)…

I have to give a big shout out in gratitude to my sister for sitting for the photos here. Hosting a tea party outside in the middle of the Irish summer wasn’t one of my most inspired ideas ever. There were other guests invited, but I could hardly fault them for not turning up considering the weather. Put very simply, it was raining. It’s always raining here. Even now when it’s not raining, it really is raining. It’s just not as noticeable.  Anyway, thanks so much missus! 

 

 

 We started off in the garden and later, when it looked like there might be a little respite from the rain gods, decided to move the shenanigans to the park. Sadly said rain gods were enjoying toying with us a little too much and gave us just enough time to sit down and poor a brew before opening the heavens on us.  Charlie was really starting to enjoy himself too!

All in all it was a brief but enjoyable sort of do. Definitely worth getting a little soggy for the sake of all those tasty treats! Mmm, Jammy Dodgers… I’d forgotten how nice these are dipped in tea so that the biscuit goes soggy and the jam is all chewy. I hope I have some left in the cupboard actually, I could do with a cuppa to accompany me on my imminent trip around the mayhem.

Well my friends, now that’s done I’m off to join in the rest of the festivities. Can’t wait to see what everyone’s come up with! First thing first, however. Kettle, on, now. 

Oh, and I almost forgot, thank you so much to Vanessa for being such a fantastic host!

Let the Partying Begin!

Right, so at this very moment, as I type, a large proportion of the people I know are on their way to rock it out at an honest-to-god actual real life festival. The rest are either off sunning it up somewhere, or at least making plans that involve going outside at some point over the weekend. What am I doing? Preparing for my busiest blogging weekend since last Halloween’s madness. And do you know what, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When they’re all waking up in their stuffy wee tents, on a soggy Donegal beach, with the mother of all hangovers, I’ll be sitting right here sipping tea, fresh as a daisy in my dressing gown and slippers, lapping up all the fairytale delights set to grace the land of blog over the coming days. Before that, however, there are a couple of matters to attend to. The first being my party post for today’s fae gathering!

I had prepared a totally different post for this, to be honest. I’d it all ready to go last night and everything when I had a change of heart literally at the eleventh hour - or to be more precise the twenty third… Anyway, it was late yesterday evening when I decided to abandon my post on fairy fools and other unseelie types for something a bit more light hearted.  This is a party after all, lets leave the darker side of fae till another day.

The result of this, though, is that I haven’t had much time to prepare any sort of a coherent post. Instead I’ve just put together a collection of some of my fairy-esque photos and things which (to the best of my recollection) I haven’t shared here before. Hope you like them!

Finally, all of the above I either dug up from old folders or had already uploaded to Flickr but I sat up late last night making these digital collages especially for the party :) Sorry, the little quotes on them are fairly corny but it was very late and, as I pointed out in my last post, my brain goes into shut down mode when I’m tired.

p.s. I have to go out now but I'll catch up with all the party posts as soon as I get home. Hope you're all enjoying the festivities!

p.p.s. I'm home now and I was just about to set out on my party adventure when I remembered I forgot to post this! You've probably seen it before but I only came across it the other day. Proof, my friends, proof.