I was a dreamer, staring at windows

I just had a refreshing nap. I didn't mean to sleep for so long but it was just one of those days where the early morning caught up with me. I just wanted to thank all of you readers for being so kind. I've gotten some lovely comments over the past few days and it really makes me feel humble that people take the time to read what you've written and look at your pictures and comment on them. It's also great to find new and exciting blogs through these comments, I could (and have) spend hours reading them!

The weather's been bad here this past week, with lots of rain and even thunder! It's slightly annoying because it's the kind of weather that if you're out in it for even 5 minutes you get completely soaked. On the upside though it has given me a chance to read a lot of new blogs old favourites so that's a good thing about the weather!

Today I wore some very brights colours to work to brighten myself up through the cloudy weather. I find it a bit daunting wearing such bright colours because I do love my black, but I'm always pleasantly surprised when I do feel brave enough to wear bright colours because it makes me feel brighter and happier!

A pink bangle and pink toenails




You may remember I showed you these earrings a few posts ago.
I love them! Why are buttons so cute?

My Coral and Wishbone necklace. It's my poor man's version of this one





My Bright Coral Cardigan, probably the brightest item of clothing I own





My sunflower bando. Sunflowers are my favourite flower along with daisys. They're just so happy!

I shall leave you with a beautiful song (from which some lyrics are today's post title) from a Dublin based band called Villagers. When I say band it's more the singer/songwriter Conor O'Brien and some musician friends of his playing with him. Conor used to be in the Irish band The Immediate who were great and unfortunately only released one record, but it wasn't meant to be and it's probably a good thing because Conor seems to be doing quite well for himself. He's a lovely guy and actually lives with my friend Dave (also a lovely guy). I've only seen him play once as Villagers supporting Neil young last year but I'm hoping to see him the next time he plays in Dublin. I think it's so great to see talented Irish musicians do so well! Hope you like the song!

Love Em xxx

You Know You're Gold, You Don't Gotta Worry None

So it begins again, another week! I had a nice quiet weekend. My boyfriend was away so I caught up on Everwood and started watching Lost again with my sister yesterday. I only watched up to the third season so I wanted to finish it but I forgot everything that happened so I figured it would be best to start again! I'm also rewatching Everwood because I haven't seen the fourth and final season and RTE One is airing repeats of the entire show so I said I would watch that from the start too. I went to see Inception on Friday on a triple date with Donnacha, my sister and her boyfriend Eric and my friend Simon and his lovely Scottish girlfriend Shona who is staying in Ireland for the summer. Being a big fan of Christopher Nolan's work I was very excited to see his latest film and I am happy to say I was not disappointed. I'm not going to say much about it because I want to encourage everyone to see this and I think the less you know about the plot the better. I was very confused at first as it is a very high concept film but it's so worth it! Another reason I loved it so much was that some of my favourite actors were in it. Including Leonardo diCaprio (of course), Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.

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Ok, I know posting photographs of these men is a little unecessary, but they're all so dreamy, especially my new crush (well of the past year) Tom Hardy. He won me over when he played Heathcliff in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights last year and I've been swooning ever since! It helps that he's an amazing actor too. I also had a comedy double bill yesterday with Step Brothers and Hot Fuzz. Speaking of comedy, I think Friday's episode of the IT crowd is my favourite so far this season.

Today I got treated to a lovely lunch by my lovely mother. We window shopped and chatted and drank delicious coffee in Butlers and she surprised me by buying me my favourite lip gloss in Brown Thomas! It's Clarins Color Quench Lip Balm in Poppy. I've been using it for the past 5 or 6 years and it's by far the best lip balm out there in my opinion. It's a balm, but it's in the form of a gloss and smells so good! It's not as sticky as other glosses and really helps hydrate your lips with such great colour. Poppy is my favourite. It's a great pinky red colour. The last time I bought one was a year ago, but I lost it after only a week so I decided to not buy another one for a while because they're more expensive than the average gloss and I was sort of punishing myself for stupidly losing it. But the great thing is, you don't have to buy it very often because it lasts so long. Gosh, you'd swear Clarins were paying me to say this! Anyway I just wanted to share with you why it was such a nice surprise to get one as a present today!

What I wore to work today




No 7 75th Anniversary Nail Polish in Bobby Socks









My Favourite Wooden Bangle

These Babys








I did my hair like this, this afternoon. Well, my own version of it!

What's the best film you've seen in the cinema recently? I hope you all had a lovely weekend, I'm off to watch some X Files Season 7!

Goodnight,

Em xxx

P.S. This post's title is lyrics from this song;

Moomin

I have been busy this week in work with our sale starting and I have been too tired to post until now so I thought I'd write a bit of a funny post and tell you about one of my favourite cartoons from when I was a kid (and now too). When I ask people if they have heard of Moomin they either don't know what I'm talking about or they do and are weirded out by it. I can't remember exactly what age I was when I first saw it, but it was made in the early 90s so I was probably about 6 or 7. It used to be on the UK channel, BBC 1, on weekday mornings and then the Irish channel, Network 2, showed it too. I don't know what it is about Moomin that I love so much. When I look at the DVDs now it's such a strange cartoon. I showed it to some of my friends recently and they were totally freaked out. Heehee! It was orignally a series of books and a comic strip written by Finnish writer/illustrator Tove Jansson that have been published since 1945! There was also a stop motion television series, however the Japanese-Finnish animated series is my favourite.

I have acquired numerous Moomin merchandise over the years from ebay, as gifts and a lady whose children I used to babysit was from Finland and she brought me back things when she would go to Finland to visit her family which I thought was very nice of her. I thought I'd show you some of these things. It was fun to see exactly how much Moomin stuff I have.

Some of the Comics in hardback








A magazine my friend brought me back from France about the new Moomin film




One of my favourite characters Stinky is up to no good as usual

It must say something about my personality that all of my favourite characters are the mischievious ones!

I have a bag exactly like Moominmamma's one (unintentionally)





Some nice illustrations from the inside covers of the comics




Stickers I bought on ebay

Snufkin purse from ebay




A mug and towel that Raisa brought me back from Finland

I really really really want to go here! The Moominland Theme Park in Naantali, Finland. I am hoping to drag my boyfriend there when I get some money to go on a holiday.

A real life Moomin house!
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I'll leave you with the opening theme to the Moomin cartoon

Hope you're having a great week so far!

What's your favourite childhood cartoon? What do you think about it when/if you watch it today?

Love Emma xxx

Wine, Warpaint and What I Wore Today

Well I've been having a great weekend so far. It's Sunday evening so there's not much weekend left but I'm going to savour every minute of it because I have a busy week ahead in work. Our Summer sale starts on Tuesday so I'm in work at 7am tomorrow!!! That being said, I really can't complain because I finish work at 12pm every day this week because I'm starting earlier so I don't have to witness the horribleness that is the shop at closing time.

I had a good filmwatching week this week. I hadn't been to the cinema in a while partly out of laziness, partly because of the lack of appealing film choices. I made up for it this week though by going to see four films; The Collector, Heartbreaker, Whatever Works and Predators. Perhaps I should explain how someone who works part-time can afford to see four films in one week. I have what's called an Unlimited card from my local cinema Cineworld. This means that you pay €19.99 by direct debit per month and you can see as many films as you want. The only drawbacks are that you still have to pay an extra €1.50 for 3D films and you can't book ahead by credit card, unless you want to pay. But having said that I think it's a great deal for someone like me who would watch almost anything. It's €10.50 for an adult ticket during peak times which is after 5pm and all weekend. So if you went even twice a month you'd be saving money.

The four films I saw this week were all very very different. The Collector was a horror/thriller with a questionable plot and excessive gratuitous violence. For the mostpart I watched it through my fingers, not because of the violence which unfortunately doesn't really phase me anymore, but for the suspense which really gets me. It wasn't great and I don't think I'd be bothered seeing it again. On that note, I saw a great horror/thriller recently called The House of the Devil which was made last year but never got a theatrical release over here. It's an eighties style thriller (without being cheesy) about a college girl who answers an ad for a babysitter and that's all I'll say apart from it's the first film I've seen in a long time that scared me that much and yet was very original for it's genre. It's amazing what suspense and the use of music can do in a film.

The House of the Devil
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Greta Gerwig is in it too! Check out her awesome 80s hair and ringer tee!
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The second film I saw this week was Heartbreaker, a french romantic comedy starring Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis (aka Miss Johnny Depp and the face of Chanel). I really liked this predictable as it was. I am a bit of a sucker for romantic comedies, well good ones anyway. Maybe it was that it was French or maybe it was just that bit better than today's Hollywood rom-coms. I went to see this mostly out of curiousity of what Vanessa Paradis was like as an actress and I actually really liked her. It probably helped that she wore beautiful clothes and the most amazing shade of red lipstick. She reminded me of an older, less cute version of Leighton Meester. She's very interesting to look at (in a good way) and very beautiful. Anyway if you are generally a fan of romantic films I recommend this, if for nothing else then for the beautiful actors, clothes and scenery (it was filmed in Monaco).

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I went to see Whatever Works with someone who is a big fan of Woody Allen and someone who is not while I am in between having not seen any of his earlier films and liking half of his more modern films and greatly disliking the other half. As expected the Woody Allen fan liked this, while the other person did not. I liked it too, but I only just liked it. I was entertained and I liked Larry David even though I don't watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. However I'm not a fan of Evan Rachel Wood and found her character very irritating as I usually do with the characters she plays. Ed Begley Jr and Patricia Clarkson were in it too. I really love them and thankfully they didn't disappoint. I don't really know what else to say apart from if you dislike Woody Allen and Curb Your Enthusiasm then it's safe to say you're not going to like this.

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Finally I went to see the previews of Predators on Thursday. I wouldn't ordinarily have been so quick to see this, but my 13 year old brother is currently obsessed with Predator, Alien, Terminator etc. so he made my mam bring him in to see it as soon as it opened and so my boyfriend and I tagged along. I was curious to see Adrien Brody as an action star, I'd love to see when they pitched the idea of having him follow Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role. He did a great job though! He really buffed up and made the role his own. Topher Grace was great too as the comic relief. My mam loves all those kinds of films and she is a big fan of Predator but she spent the entire film screaming and hiding behind my jacket, it was rather hilarious. I think the other audience members must have thought I was a weirdo because I kept laughing, but I was just laughing at her!

Eh, Adrien, I think you need a shower...
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Wow! I actually wasn't planning on writing so much! That's a post in itself right there. I'm going to go on however and tell you about my weekend. On Saturday I woke up to a breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup courtesy of my wonderful boyfriend. That evening we met some friends in a wine bar in the city. It's only been open for about a year or so but we really love it because there's a huge basement room with exposed brick and old tables, chairs and couches and a piano. They do great coffee and brownies too! The basement room is great because you can still hear the people in the restaurant and the music upstairs but it's quite private so you can have the place to yourself sometimes. We got a table and ordered some bottles of red and white wine to share. My personal preference is for white. Their house white is very nice and quite reasonably priced too. Afterwards we went to Thomas Reads, a pub on Dame Street and met my sister and we danced to the Smiths. Then we got some yummy pizza before heading home pretty late!

The guys playing piano once the other people had left




I wanted to show you my fake eyelashes and red lipstick from last night.
I can't believe how well the lipstick stayed on after drinking from a wine glass all night.
Just in case you were wondering it's Benefit Flirt Alert, my new favourite red lipstick




My wonderful sister Kate, hasn't she the most beautiful blue eyes!




My make up turned out unintentionally slightly eighties today
but I kind of liked it because I don't usually wear such strong eye shadow




I found an old dress from work and thought I'd wear it again with my new jacket and boots
as it was a bit chilly today after raining all weekend




Photos by Donnacha and I

I wanted to share with you some music that I am loving a lot right now. I had heard of Warpaint a few years ago because the lead singer Emily was dating John Frusciante (my all time favourite musician) but at that stage they hadn't released any material so I kind of forgot about them until recently when I heard they would be playing in Dublin so I decided to see if they had released an album. I downloaded their EP Exquisite Corpse that they released last year and I totally love it. I don't even know how to describe their music because it's quite unique so I'll post my favourite song from the EP below.








The line up of the band has changed a bit over the 6 years since they formed, Shannyn Sossamon (from The Rules of Attraction) used to be in the band, her sister Jenny still is. Josh Klinghoffer, the new guitarist with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and collaborator of John Frusciante was their drummer for a while. The line up now consists of Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg and Stella Mozgawa.

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Here's their video for the song Elephants. It's a very simple idea but beautifully shot and the girls look amazing! Hopefully I'll get to see them live in October. Their first LP comes out later this year.








Ok so that was a bit of a monster of a post but I suppose it's better to have too much to write about than too little. I just want to leave you with a really funny screencap from the Hitchcock film Saboteur that I watched on Friday evening. It's a funny part of the film where the main character is asked to keep an eye on a baby so that she doesn't fall into the pool and he makes a funny face at her. I don't know why but I found it so funny so here it is (the film was great by the way). Hope you've had a lovely weekend!

Robert Cummings as Barry Kane in Saboteur

Goodnight,

Em xxx