New Bridge House

A couple of months ago, I went with my friend J and A to the New Bridge House and Farm in Demense, Ireland. J volunteers with the Alone group every couple of weeks. Alone is a volunteer run organization that matches volunteers with the elderly and home bound. They work together to also put on volunteer / elderly outings and socialization programs. I was asked to tag along and to pictures of the group for their newsletter, which I was only too happy to do.

The New Bridge house and farm about 30 minutes north of the city center. The building itself is a Georgian era home with multiple out buildings including a carriage house, stables, old pig / chicken homes, victorian walled garden, and plenty of park land and animals. Some of the history of the location is as follows:

On June 19th, 1736, Charles Cobbe (Cobb), then Bishop of Kildare, paid £5,526.5.6 for the townlands surrounding Donabate, Lainstown, Haggardstown and Newbridge, containing 490 acres. In 1747, the house itself was started on part of these lands, in a traditional Georgian style. For inspiration, the Bishop used another fine Georgian house which he had visited in the city center. In 1751, Charles son, Thomas, married Lady Elizabeth Beresford, daughter of the Earl of Tyrone. She brought money into the family, and redecorated and updated the house including adding the famed Red Drawing room. The house has been occupied fairly consistently since the completion under Lady Elizabeth, and remains occupied part of the year by the Cobbe family today. The surrounding parkland, house, and property now belong to the Fingal county council who manage and run it as a public and visitor’s attraction.

The day that I was there was bright sun most of the day, but also intermittent showers. We toured the house (no pictures allowed) and went out into the petting “zoo” portion of the animal farm and the out buildings. One of the highlights was watching the peacock strut around in the courtyard. We also got to see a very old guilded carriage that used to be used to take the mayor to the swearing in ceremony in Dublin.

One of the amusing parts of the tour was actually seeing the sign on the blacksmith’s shop – and getting a chuckle.

If you’d like to see more on the house (including pictures of the beautiful inside) you’re welcome to check out their website at:

http://www.newbridgehouseandfarm.com

Hen Party Shirt crafts

As some of you know, my friend J. is getting married soon. We recently held a little hen party here for her in Dublin – nothing very big, but dinner and a bit of dancing. Then, we had the proper “big” party in York (more about that later).

In preparation for the batchelorette party weekend, I thought it would be fun to have t-shirts. After pricing several places on line for “standardized” hen party t shirts, I was shocked to see that they were all either black & pink or white & pink – and quite expensive at about 10 – 12 Euros each (about 150 euro). Thus, I decided to make my own for the 15 girls with some plain t-shirts (5 euros each) and some spray fabric paints in the 3 colors that Jacqui loves best – lime green, violet, and silver.

I got the fabric spray paints from a site called as a set of 6 colors for 34.00. I also got a couple of stencils. Add in my time over the course of two evenings – and I had a mini sweatshop going in my living room.

First, I read the instructions, and tried a few tie dye style shirts – with no stencils. This involved scrunching up a few of the shirts in various ways – and spraying colors across them. The results turned out quite cute:

Then, I decided to try the tie dye look with a few sample stencils – like “princess”, “hearts”, and “angel”. This worked ok for some, but I found that if I was impatient removing the stencils, the paint ran. If I waited too long, the stencils stuck. The key was being spot on with removing them at just the right time – when the paint was tacky, but before it was too dry.

As time went on, I got the timing better – and figured out how to get the stencils to work even better – realizing that you had to put on the light colors and gradually add the dark ones so that they worked best.

Finally, I felt comfortable enough that I could actually use some airbrush/spray paint techniques – and actually did a “brick” style layout using some old cardboard to make “stripes” and short lines. Then, waited for it to get to mostly dry. Next, I laid out a stencil for the lettering – and popped on a few flower shapes to spray around. This resulted in a couple interesting looks:

In the end, we didn’t use the shirts while site seeing before the main evening party as I had thought (we didn’t all arrive at the same time, and not all of us site-saw together) but I did give them to the girls as a momento of the weekend. They went over well – as the girls could choose which ones they wanted according to size. The best part was that they were all in similar colors, but they were all slightly different – which meant each person’s personality was reflected a little bit in each shirt.

A few notes – the total ended up being 120 for the shirts had I purchased them pre-made. For these, I spent 110 and my time. I do however have the stencils and spray paints left – only 2 cans having run out after having made a total of 18 shirts. I’m planning on using the fabric spray and stencils on some pillowcases, a couple pairs of jeans, and have some other ideas as well. I think for the cost the project was quite worth it – especially because of the leftover paints.

I actually think this could / would be quite a fun thing for an older child’s birthday party. They can make their own “spray paint” tie dye t shirts quickly and easily out in the back garden – and let them dry for 30 minutes while you sit down to have cake and gifts / play some party games. It’d be a fun addition to the goodie bags and a really neat keepsake if you have kids who love crafts.

Olympic Decorations at work

Here where I work, we’re totally into the Olympics. Since it’s an international community and an international workplace, we try to generally avoid conflict because of cultures and cultural influences and find ways to bridge these differences. When the olympics comes around, however, things change. The Olympics are a huge source of nationalism (via sporting events), team work, and joy as we can all celebrate the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals with others of a particular nationality. All around the building, we constantly hear – Sure, my guy lost, but yours won – what a stunning finish/great match.. etc.!

In Honor of the Olympics, the events committee here at work has decided to challenge us on a floor by floor basis – to support charities, to decorate, and to show our cultural diversity while celebrating how well we can work together. On my floor, we have many varied nationalities – including French, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, American, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Indian, Canadian, Brazillian – and this is just the ones I know about!

The idea was were supposed to choose 1 color, but the floor decided to go for "ALL" the colors. I made paper chains for all the desks (I was up until 1:30 am) – and there were Olympic balloons for the end caps. There were also olympic balloon rings; and flags representing the countries of all our team mates on the floor.

We managed to get sports equipment & pictures of nearly every sport up on our columns, and then people participated in desk chair rowing, desk basketball, desk badminton, mini-football, and stick horse racing at the time of “judging”.