Handmade Beaded Jewellery in Dublin, Ireland from balanced.

Greystones to Bray Cliffwalk

We finally had some nice weather! On Friday we got up early and headed into town to catch the train somewhere. We weren’t sure where, but once at Connolly station we decided we’d do the Greystones to Bray cliffwalk again. Was beautiful the first time, why not?

So, we took the train to Greystones. Got off and headed down to the beach.

We walked up and down the beach for about a mile looking for sea glass and shells.

Then we headed back into the town of Greystones for some coffee. We stopped at this cute little cafe, situated at the entrance of the cliffwalk, and had a big ol’ cappuccino and some apple pie. Was just the thing to re-energize us for the walk! Couple of health nuts, we are.

Then, off we were!

The cliffwalk itself is 8km. And it is a truly beautiful walk!

Once we got to Bray we stopped at this picnic bench to eat our sammiches and rest a minute.

The Bray promenade is just the cutest thing. I love all those brightly coloured buildings.

It was cooling down quite a bit by now, but we strolled along the beach again looking for more sea glass. I found all sorts of treasures, but I’m saving those for another post.

We were knackered by the time we got home, but it was a beautiful trip!

You can see the full length of our walk here in this neat little gadget.

You can even see when we speed up downhill and slow down uphill. Pretty cool!

Greystones to Bray

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August 29th, 2010 | 5 Comments »

Hello world.

I’ve been trying hard not to get sucked into vacation mode. Mr. balanced is off work for 2 weeks for his birthday, but I’m not. It’s difficult for me to stick to my “schedule” when he’s here. Not that I don’t want him here!

Anyway, we made some plans, but the weather has been horrible so we keep pushing them back. We have, however, had a lot of success out in the garden. During the small breaks of good weather.

August 26th, 2010 | No Comments »

I could live here

It’s a bit out of the way, but c’mon. How charming is this!?

And the view!

I can’t imagine I would ever be uninspired.

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August 5th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Swoon

Ok, I don’t usually gush over children’s items, but seriously, how much would you have loved to have a room like this as a child?

That’s one lucky little kid.

[via]

August 2nd, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Banana Bread

I can only eat so many bananas, so I made us some delicious Banana Bread the other day using this recipe from Simply Recipes.

It’s an easy peasy recipe, took about 5 minutes to throw all the ingredients together. That’s my kind of recipe!

I went with 3/4 cups of sugar and added some mini White Chocolate chips. It’s a good thing I took these photos of it when it came out of the oven because it’s all eaten up now!

July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »

Ginger loves

… her new “beanbag” pillow.

This was something I sort of just threw together a while back. I got these great yards of Amy Butler fabric in a trade on Etsy and they had been just sitting around in my craft room. I basically just folded one of them, hand stitched up the sides and then stuffed it with some styrofoam peanuts I also had lying around. Ginger loved it as soon as I gave it to her!

Recently though, it dawned on me… dark fabric, light haired cat. It might have been wise to install a zipper? to be able to wash it easily? perhaps?

So, that’s what I did. And then to make the stuffing easily removable during washings I just put it all in a plastic bag that I can just take out and put back in. Voila!

Of course after all this hand sewing, because I don’t own a sewing machine, Ginger was not interested in her pillow at all. Cats!

It sat around unused for a couple days, but yesterday I caught her. You can hear her on it with all the noise from the peanuts.

She loves her pillow once again.

July 6th, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Meet Bob

Bob is a dinosaur plant that we got ages ago. He’s been sitting lifeless for about 8 months in some rocks on the windowsill. I can’t remember why we named him Bob, but I’m sure we had very good reasons. Or not.

Yesterday we brought Bob back to life. Enjoy!

June 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

Long Weekend

Happy Tuesday!

We had a long holiday weekend here in Ireland and the weather was perfect! It was sunny and warm and beautiful.

The dear husband recently ordered a ton of seeds and bulbs and other equipment, but when we got our order we were missing a few things so we had to go out and pick those up and then, of course, we came home with more than we needed.

We barbecued on Friday and Saturday night, ate outside, enjoyed the neighbours being gone all weekend! It was wonderful.

Mr. balanced painted the shed and together we planted lots of things.

( It seems that Ginger has been nibbling on that spider plant while on the windowsill, so we’ve put it outside in the nursery. She can’t be trusted with anything.)

Today, of course, the rain returned. But, I’m happy to see it. It’s washed away all the dirt from our adventures outside and made everything feel fresh and clean.

It was a wonderful weekend, indeed. I hope yours was too.

June 8th, 2010 | No Comments »

Wanting: Patchwork Footstool

This weekend Poppytalk posted about some cute patchwork footstools that were featured in Canadian House and Home magazine. I, too, hearted them right away and immediately began trying to figure out where to get them.

I sadly still can’t find anywhere to buy them, but I did find a few beautiful alternatives.