Showing Rebecca how a blog works....

Here is the blog platform with blogger it is easy to use and is a very quick way to get a web presence up there...

IPPA Online Web Strategy

Just chilling in the Kilmaninham gaol...sorry hilton with lots of lovely photographers from IPPA

Developing interest in social networks- Ireland

Great news this week from Facebook which now boasts an impressive 1million ireland based users! 1 million is a hell of a lot of Irish people.
781k of these have used their facebook account in the past 7 days making it a huge actively engaged client base.
Of that 55% are now in the over 35 age bracket so it's no longer about pimply spotty teeenagers getting their kicks on the weekend.
For me the facebook tipping point really came when my mother joined up. Now she is on facebook, so is her boyfriend, so are my two sisters, their boyfriends & fiances.
My brother is not my friend on facebook but that is cool cos he is currently following me on twitter. I sneakily started following him on twitter but he caught me out!

Facbooking My Way Forward

Was at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce Digital Media Networking Conference this morning. Was like a zombie after a late flight from London to Dublin and an interrupted night of sleep. However, after two or three cups of coffee I felt human enough to participate!

What a great meeting full of interesting and surprising people and ideas.

Loved this video showed by Rick Kelley of Facebook. Sums it all up..I think.

Summer

It's been an interesting and busy summer..and unfortunately now it's over...Waking up in Limerick at 6 am on Tuesday 1st of September was a chilly reminder that we are now moving into the last quarter of the year! It was fecking freezing!
So what has happened well I was really busy with lots of projects. Work related madness must go on and of course been busy with JCI and my personal pet projects.
Gathering volunteers for Darby O Gill screenings and The Down Syndrome world Congress was a worthy cause.
I also attended plenty of car boot sales around the country in an effort with she who must be obeyed to save money and make money. www.bootflea.com

We set up Twisted Sister Vintage Style which is a vintage clothing and jewellery retailer and we took the show on the road in Cork, Clare, Limerick and Dublin among toher exotic locations. We had such a good laugh! And met some interesting and cool people too.
Now I have some time I'll be eager to write about it in the blog!
Great to be back!

Video Test

Testing Video in the Blog...

Stop Boring Hugh Laurie.....

IWIB

Having some fun times in The Dylan with the lovely ladies from www.irishwomeninbusiness.ie

Making Ryanair Pay

There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of travelling Ryanair and paying nothing more than the cover price. Oh that and the exhorbitant cost of credit card fees with Ryanair.

So I travelled to France this weekend to see the boy! It was a pretty expensive ryanair flight with 169 return! However they were the only airline to go to Carcassone so off I went.

Seeing my boy is paramount! Even to the ends that I must travel Ryanair!

So this time I decided I was not going to either check in or to that end check in a bag! So it was less than 10 kilos hand luggage. I adore the way that checking at the airport is an expensive extra with Ryanair!

Tough when you are trying to pack jumpers for a chilly boy! Aswell as clothes in order to look fabulous all weekend. And of course a months worth of sexy lingerie!

Also he had a special request of Chef Brown Sauce! Poor baby can't get it ( the sauce) in france and loves an old ham and brown sauce sandwich! I was unable to complete my mission cos Brown sauce is a gel and gels more than 100ml are not permitted in hand luggage!


Oh well I'm off now to post him a care package ( aka a shoe box with Chef Brown Sauce inside!)
We did have a great weekend by the way! We climbed a castle that looked like disneyland!

Highly recommend Dublin to Carcassone. The airport is five minutes from the town centre!
A one room airport! Only two hours flight time to Dublin.

Recessionary tactics!

So the recession has hit hard and of course just when I have a wedding to afford and plan! Oh well just as well I'm not planning to do the deed until late 2011. There will be plenty of time to save money on stuff!

Looked at some venues over the weekend. Including Thomond Park, that place certainly packs some whack with the value. You can fit 26,000 into the venue. That's some cost per person!
And just think of the photo opportunitys as after the ceremony, the groom could drop kick a goal and the score board could light up : Score!!!!.

Probably not for me and the fiance! But a girl could dream!

Dragons Den

I've just been watching Dragons Den and trying to learn from their mistakes. Also been watching on Twitter to the response of the bloggers and tweets all over Ireland.

This whole recession thingy has been hanging over us all for the past few months. So something has to be done. I was thinking to invent something or somehow come up with a winning strategy and make my millions.

Watching dragons den has put me right off this! Nothing is as easy as pie there is always someone who points out the pointlessness of your invention, the lack of market or worse that you are an idiot.

Well done to everyone who went on the show...maybe next year!

The blogging class

Gorgeous or bust.....

Dear all,

Sorry for the lack of posts. Been out living life! I was in Madrid and then in Dublin and finally in Glasgow...
The terrible snow has meant that twice last week I got snowed in at work ...not a happy time!
I did pick up some money saving tips though...for example...why buy diamonds for yourself. I got engaged and so have successfully gotten one man to purchase a twinkly sparkler for me! Success! This shoudl not be the only reason to get engaged but it is a lovely bi-product!

Secondly I've found that lugging wedding magazines around will serve as a great workout session!

If gettign married is not an option why not do as I do and get down to the Dublin City Council Countess Markieveicz centre and avail of the Gym for only 6 yoyos a turn..no yearly joining fee or anything. Plus theres a pool and sauna it's great value in Dublin City Centre..

Blingalicious Bargains

Sorry folks been away for the last couple of weeks. Been in Madrid..thanks to free flights and only paying for taxes!
Been also in Kerry and my favourite exotic and fabulous Limerick.
The diet and the money saving has gone on despite the exotic locations I was travelling to.
I discovered with the help of my boyfriend the markeivicz centre just down the street. Why pay expensive GYM fees when you can swim and gym for just 6 yoyos a turn. No sign up fee no monthly fee..just pay as you go.

It's not fancy but clean and has all the machines, weights and everything you would find in any gym at all.

Then we went off to Madrid checked in for both flights before we left. Printed the boarding passes. We also weighed our hand luggage to ensure there were no nasty shocks at the airport. There was a strict no purchasing/ shopping rule on the visit too. That saved 30 quid a head on the check in and bag charges!

Of course himself went off the chart by proposing with a lovely diamond ring! He did it so romantically and nicely though that I couldnt object at all. I had to carry it back so some shopping was done after all...

I'm off the drink for January... .

If I've heard this phrase once its been uttered a million times in my presence in the last few weeks. Lots of people seem to be eager to gain the benefits of health, wealth and happiness that giveing up drink for one month will bring.
Sure amn't I one of them?

So DAY 14 of the great drink shortage today. I wonder if we'll all last until the 31st?
It's surely not that hard. Met a guy last night who told me he too was off the drink for January. Except for on Saturday Night.

What's going on on Saturday you may ask? Some UFC thing in Dublin.

If we are only doing it for one month why break the fast in the middle...a bit mental. Shows a definite lack of resolve if you ask me...

However the boy is due home this weekend so a few glasses may be required.

Recession Session

The weekend shall now be dedicated to saving moola and organising my life.

I even went so far as to travel to Dun Laoghaire today. Met a friend for coffee and then did a little shopping in Pennys.

Pennys, is, i'm discovering, the new mecca for frugal fashionistas in Ireland. I found some real bargains. A T shirt for two yoyo will see me cutting quite a dash playing indoor soccor tommorrow. It was packed with cool looking student types, long legs and long hair. I found a pair of shoes for five yoyo and some belts for only one yoyo each. Totally bargainous! And before you ask I didn't spend loads!

On the way home I chickened out of cleaning the car all on my own. I know, I know it's a great workout but it's fecking freezing out! So I compromised by getting the cheapest possible car wash. It was an excruciatingly painful eight yoyos and only seemed to last about 30 seconds.

I wasn't much impressed by it to be honest. It got the thickest layers off the car but left a lot to be desired.

Not like the shine, I always got from the guys who cleaned my car in Dubai.
Real workmanship that was, those guys took pride in cleaning the old car.

The machine in Merrion did not seem to have much desire to please. It left a large lump of bird shit or something on the roof of the 206. And there were still some grimy bits on the mirrors etc. I'll have to give it a bit of elbow grease yet. Maybe I should have gone for the car wash one stage up?

I then hoovered it myself. Big change for me. I mean I don't think there is a need to call the UN over infringements of my human rights, not like that wagon who wrote about her terrible life since the recession made her cop on, in last weeks Indo weekend. It was a good workout though and hopefully it will be nice to sit in a car and see out the windows for a change!

I ended up driving all over ringsend looking for a bottle bank! Still no luck. Hope the car doesn't end yup smelling like a brewery! Normally i wouldn't mind but i'm off the drink for the rest of Jan too so that would be no fun at all.

Now I've another pot of veg soup on the boil. Made a fabulous omlette for dinner with cheese, pasta sauce, wholegrain mustard and a bit of bell pepper. It was lovely! Herself would be proud.


Better go check on the soup! Let's hope it tastes better than last weeks...

See you later folks!

Cabbage Soup

So what's new... the bloody cold weather has us reaching for the extra duvets and turning on the electric blanket.

The chilly weather meant that sneaking to bed early under the duvets felt a bit like being the grandparents in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory.

Only without the cabbage soup. Well almost....

The twin drives to save money and to save calories are coming together now.

We had a good clean out of my cupboards in Dublin to discover I had no less than five packs of stuffing mix. Something I was obviously craving!

Ella came up with some super tips too.

I ate the soup ( not cabbage soup of course!) we made for lunch all during the week which was good. Though I'm not sure the chicken we put in it was ok. It tasted weirdly strongly of chicken. Ella suggested that a good dose of food poisoning would help the cause. But this is really not a good way to either lose weight or save money.

We decided to team a number of diets together in the hope that a total detox would really get our New Year off to a fantastic start.

So, if we take the activia challenge and also the Special K challenge we should really be super healthy. With the added bonuses of amazing digestive systems!

I did think about moving my biggest meal of the day to lunchtime but the erratic selection of food I tend to find for lunch is a problem. Sometimes I don't even have time to move away from the desk for lunch.

Perhaps the cabbage soup diet is the way to go after all?

New Year, New Me, New Diet....

Well here we are again another year and another diet. Today we took down the christmas decorations and wrapped them up for another year.
We also raided the cupboards for food. It was a food raid on the house!!
So we gathered all the food we could use to make dinners and set about having a real recession session....
So we took some left over chicken and made a stock with hot water....and threw in loads of chopped veg and made a zero point soup..yummy for those bleak january days.

Then we had some leftover mashed potatoes so we added some egg and onion and made some potatoe-cakes.

Being thrifty is the newest coolest way to be...and myself and herself are the queens of cool.

Then we hit lidl and aldi to try and supplement our rations with other stuff...