New Restaurant and Polish Haul

Quick post... After a couple of hectic weeks my better half and I finally got to spend a weekend together (despite living very close to each other!). So after a lovely Saturday night spent watching the X Factor, we decided to get out and about on Sunday.

Sunday Lunch was in order, so we decided to try out a burger bar that has recently opened in Cork city. Ketchup, great name, has only been opened for about a month but judging by the food and the great location it will stay open for a lot longer. A great location, at the end of French Church Street and walking distance from the shops, so very handy indeed! Food is simple, burgers, lamb, chicken and beef and there are also vegetarian offerings, fish and sausages from the English Market's O'Flynn's. Even though its simple, the food is fabulous! I ordered the Haloumi Burger, yummy and himself got a Classic Burger. This was so good, the meat was of fantastic quality and everything was so fresh. And the chips.... Wow!

After we'd stuffed ourselves silly we decided to have a stroll around as the day was so nice. Really ,mild and fresh, a perfect autumn day. Perfect for shopping! Boots on Opera Lane was my destination of choice after two hours searching for the perfect pair of runners for himself... Honestly, two hours! And I'm accused of being the shopper... Hmmmmm.



And here's what I got... It was buy 2 get the 3rd free on all 17 items so having lusted after the new matte topcoat for a while I went for it. I also picked up this really cute Pinking Shear, looking forward to trying this out. For my freebie I choose, Miami! Not for me though, its going into the bag of birthday bits I'm putting together for my good friend. The matte topcoat though is the next thing on my list of untrieds. So watch this space for that and the next pink for October.

Pink - One month, One colour

I have decided that the only colour of nail polish I will be wearing this month is pink. As I'm sure we all know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and the colour that symbolises this is pink. So because I love pink and because I want to make a statement for this month I will be working my way through my stash of nail polish and showing you all of the pink offerings that this growing collection has to offer. As this isn't a huge number of polishes ( I somehow always tend to be swayed by other colours, so have surprisingly few pinks!), there may just be a Franken or two included!

First up is one of my go to polishes for a night out, 17 Miami. This is the most delicious shade of pink. Really bright and summery. This looks amazing both on hands and feet and applies like a dream. Two coats and you're good to go. Drying time is good too and as cheaper brands go, it actually lasts quite well. You'll definately get two days chip free out of this and more with top coat.

Have a look see at Pink No. 1! (Please ignore my sorry state of a pinkie, only noticed this up close.)



And will you look at the shine on it too... Definately one of my favourite polishes ever, I may even finish out a full bottle, an almost unheard of feat for me!

Get the Girls Round for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Quick post, search for getthegirlsround on Facebook and get organising your party ladies! This is fantastic cause, so many of us have been or will be affected by this terrible disease in some way or another. 2,500 people will be diagnosed with the disease in a year here in Ireland and will touch upon the lives of so many of us at some stage.

The idea is simple, register your party and you will receive a party pack including a collection box and invites. All you have to do is pick a theme and Get the Girls Round! The idea is that you try to donate what you would normally spend on a night out to the cause. You could ask for a cover charge, hold fundraising activities throughout the night, but raise as much as you can for this cause.

I will be getting my girlies (and some honorary girlies too!) around for a Pot Luck Dinner party and some cocktails. One of the excellent suggestions on the facebook site is to collect all the various recipies and make them into a keepsake recipe book for all the guests, then charge a couple of euro for this! But whatever your idea and your theme, Get the Girls Round, get the word out and lets tackle this problem the best way we ladies can. With a smile on our face, a cocktail in hand and with our friends at our side!

Update!

After a minor lull in proceedings while my supervisor read over my work, I am stuck, nose pushed firmly to the grindstone in the library making changes and corrections.

Ah the joys! However, in little less than two weeks time I will have a couple of extra letters after my name, a lot more free time and the opportunity to blog blog blog! Upcoming will be posts on My First Franken, the search for the perfect foundation, some lovely days out post thesis and some random ramblings. And who doesn't love a good ramble!

My First Frankenpolish

Ok, so I wasn't overly enthused with my Claire's Accessories green nail varnish. But I though it would be a bit of a waste to leave it languish in my box of polishes, whats a girl to do? I have recently become very taken with a number of nail blogs, one of which is Dr Frankenpolish. So I took inspiration from that creative blogger and decided to Franken my Claire!

I used to do this quite a bit when I was younger, adding crushed eyeshadow and glitter and I ruined many a nail varnish in the process! I knew what I wanted to achieve, make this a deeper, maybe a tealy green. I decided that if I added a deep blue it might turn out they way I wanted... It didn't! But, what I got was much nicer and very unexpected, making it possibly even better.



I added this E.L.F. polish in Dark Navy to the Claire's to get the colour I was hoping to achieve... But here's what i actually ended up with!





This was the most unusual colour, a kind of inky, creamy, greyed out blue-green with a tiny hint of shimmer. (How many more adjectives can I use to describe it I wonder!)This picture doesn't actually do this colour justice... In different lights this flashed green, slate, even grey at some points. Success, albeit unexpected!

Dupe for Audrey??

Having been doing little else other than staring at my nails as I was typing up my Masters Thesis over the past few months, recently I have become a huge fan of all things nail related! So I thought what better way to re-introduce myself to the world of blogging than to pop up a post on my latest aquisition. A potential dupe of China Glaze For Audrey. The original is a gorgeous Tiffany Blue duck egg colour and was inspired by the iconic store and named after the gorgeous Audrey Hepburn. Its not the exact colour of those famous blue boxes, but it is quite close. (Image from China Glaze website.)

I was searching for a suitable dupe and today I cam across something which just might work. Claire's Accessories nameless duck egg green is a very pretty colour. Its not blue enough at all to be a perfect match for the China Glaze offering, but its not a million miles away. In its own right this is a very sweet colour. It's a shimmer-less cream, and there's a hint of matte in this. The colour is nice and summery and would look gorgeous with a tan, unfortunately this did not quite work on my very pale skin... Bit of a lobster hands situation, oh well!



Second pic is best representation of the colour.

Application was pretty good, nice consistency, and a decent brush. No real problems there then. Three coats were needed to achieve bottle colour but this dried in no time.

Being very lazy, I trialed this without base or top coat and it actually stayed chip free for 2 days. There was minimal and entirely unnoticeable tip wear after the second day, but only extreme inspection would show this to the naked eye. Since I generally get sick of a nail polish after 2 days anyway, I wasn't bothered. On to the next one please!

Dolmio?? Nah.... I'll make my own thanks!

Well, this is turning into a bit of a food blog!! I do have other interests other than my stomach I swear!!
So, STILL having some tomatoes in the fridge I wondered what to do with them, a bit of a creative streak came over me. Pasta sauce!


Again with the simple (and affordable) ingredients!
And this recipe, which I'm proud to say is 50% me, (the other 50% consists of tips from The Afternoon Show), is very simple!

1. I added, olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli flakes and three cloves of garlic (I like the garlic, I do!) to a pan.
2. Next I added in the chopped shallots.
3. I left all of that until the shallots were lovely and opaque, then I added the tomatoes.
4. Now, this is where I went mad! After adding a good handful of chopped parsley, I added in a good handful of chopped smoked sun-dried tomatoes.
5. Add a good glass of white wine and leave to simmer for half an hour.


So after it had been simmering, I added three generous spoons of Philadelphia to the mix and blended! And here is what it looked like...

I have been using this as pasta sauce and also it tastes lovely on grilled bread with veg and cheese as a very posh grilled open sandwich...

The addition of the sun-dried tomatoes really added a wonderful flavour to this. As they were smoked rather than regular sun-dried tomatoes, there was a gorgeous depth to the sauce, a really unmistakable but not overpowering woodiness. You could also achieve this with Hickory Smoked Bacon if you couldn't get the sun-dried tomatoes. I think that this would be a lovely simple, but very impressive sauce to serve with anything.

One for the bag of tricks!