Visited Lovely Lisbon in the Autumn. It is a wonderful city to explore with such lovely architecture and things to do. The weather was very hot so we just wandered around and took in all the sights of the city.

Autumn has really set in here in Ireland. The days are getting shorter and there is a real chill to the air in the mornings. Here are a few photos of my recent trip along the Wild Atlantic Way...

Hope everyone is enjoying the Summer, the weather is a bit gloomy here today but I am keeping my fingers crossed that more sunshine is on its way... Here are a few images I took two weeks ago when we were in the west of Ireland. I am busy these days doing DIY and painting so will post about that soon.

Here are a few views I took while on my way home from Sligo last weekend. As I always say "the best part about going away is coming home" :)

Here are a few images of my new home which is progressing ever so slowly. Inside it is almost ready for plastering. I am ready to pick my front door too so the exterior can then be plastered. This week the roofs were slatted on the two single storey sections.

Here is an image below of the snug, to the left hand side, the stove will be situated.

And here is the entrance hallway which is double height. I have yet to look at stairs and banisters for the landing.

Hi everyone, I'm home from my flying visit to Scotland, had a lovely time catching up with my friends. We went to Rosslyn the first day as we have already been to the main attractions in the city. Here are a few of my photographs to share with you.

The first day we went to Rosslyn Village by bus, it is a quaint little place, the weather wasn't great when we arrived so we went for lunch in this lovely old hotel, it was full of character and cosy too..

When we were all full and ready to get going, we headed down the hill towards Rosslyn Chapel, passing this lovely house on the way...

So here we are at Rosslyn, we couldn't get photographs of the whole chapel outside as restoration work in ongoing, here are just two photographs of it, if you would like to find out more about it you can visit the official website. It really is a wonderful place, the tour was excellent and the architecture and carvings are amazing! No photographs were allowed inside the chapel.

Once finished in the Chapel we headed back up to the village, passing this wonderful cottage on the way... Some colourful flowers would look lovely outside it I thought...

And then we caught our bus back to the city... the sky was getting very dull looking so we headed back to my friends' apartment passing these views along the way...

So that was day one of my break, we went out for dinner and drinks that night in the dome and bar one.. I'll share some more photographs of the rest of my trip soon too...

The sunshine yellow room, with beautiful fireplace, mirror and grand bookcase.

The blue room, very elegant with pretty porcelain tiles on the fire surround

The grand red room, this is the ladies room,

Look at that plaster work on the ceiling and moulding, and the mirror is very elaborate.

Another wonderful room, those windows are so grand and I love the shutters.

Wouldn't you love that view every day...

and to eat in this dining room...

and when your day is over, retreat up these stairs to bed...

Oh to live in a grand house in the Irish Countryside

I spent last weekend with my boyfriend, took a few photographs on Sunday, Saturday was dreary and miserable so I painted for awhile and stayed indoors. Here are three photographs I though I'd share with you all. I took them on Sunday. Here is a nice flower in bloom in the garden, love the colour.

We went for a drive too, took this photograph of some of the lakes.

And spotted this wee traditional cottage which is not a restaurant, thought it was pretty too

Hope you all had a nice weekend, next weekend is our bank holiday weekend :-) Looking forward to that!

Hello all, hope you enjoyed the weekend, weather has been very cold here in Ireland but no rain where I was :) Had a lovely weekend away with my boyfriend. Only problem was that it went too fast. What did you get up to? Here are a few photographs of my weekend away. Our hotel was really nice, very trendy and good value. The photoraph below is a lovely canvas in the hotel, how pretty and very girly.

We went to the seaside on Saturday to Strandhill with its long strand and the seaside village of Rosses Point, it was extremely cold and got very foggy too. Here are a few photos of the beach and views in and around  Strandhill

   

   

   

   

      

   

The further north we travelled it started to get very misty and foggy so the next few photographs aren't very clear, we couldn't even see the sea.

So as you can see the visibility on the West Coast of Ireland wasn't great, so we decided to head back to town and looked around the shops and got some food.

Today we relaxed and visited the seventeenth century Markree Castle on the way home. It is surrounded by mature demesne woodland and the River Unshin runs through the grounds. It is now a hotel and has been home to the Cooper family since Cromwell's time. Here are the charming entrance gates and some more views of the Castle.

Here are two photographs of the entrance, how elegant is that??

Up...

And back down...

Check out the website for some more photographs Markree Castle Hotel

The River Unshin

There are also luxury self catering cottages at Markree Castle Home Farm

This was such a wonderful demesne with its weatlth of built and natural heritage. We then said goodbye to Markree Castle and headed on the road for home.

Along the way we spotted a nice scenic viewing point of Lough Key

This sculptured metal horse with a Gaelic Chieftain marks the site of the Battle of the Curleius, which took place in 1599.

So thats the end of my lovely weekend away and as they say time flies when your having fun. What all did you get up to this weekend?