H&M Vintage Conscious Collection Maxi Dress

A moment for the dress please!

The second that Patrick said wear a nice dress, I knew exactly what I would be wearing.

Waaaay back around 2010 Enid had bought this wonderful dress in H&M which was part of a new collection they had just launched.  To this day I adore that dress.  So about 2 months ago I set about sourcing myself one - thank you Poshmark. Side note. Isn't the internet amazing?  Imagine trying to find this dress in pre-internet days?? Impossible.

As you can imagine, I was just dying for the perfect occasion to wear it.  And who would have thought that both the dress and occasion were perfect for each other?  There is that "perfect" word again btw...

I am going to let the pictures speak for themselves.

Perfect dress for a nice breezy sail

Look at the ruffles at the bottom! Aww

And the back! So cute. So 1970'sesque I think

I just adore it!

What do you think?! Have you ever seen a better dress for a surprise vow renewal party - on a boat?!

Surprise!

 Where to start on this post?

We are just about a week out from one of the biggest shocks of my whole life.  Just as Patrick was heading off to work last Sunday at about 8.30am he said something along the lines of this to me "Surprise date night tonight!  We are going for oysters first in Alonzo's and then we are going somewhere special.  Wear your favorite dress, curl your hair the way you had it last week!"

I was intrigued and all day I was plaguing him for clues about what we were going to be doing.  I had a theory that he was bringing me to Berlin's - it is one of my favorite places on the island and I also figured raw oysters in Alonzo's, baked oysters in Berlin's.

Well. It was not  Berlin's. It was a 75ft catamaran (The Argo Navis) where about 20 of our friends were waiting.  I was stunned.  And shocked.  Not sure if any of the photos or videos captured it but I actually started crying when I first saw everyone and realised what was going on.

Here are a selection of photos and video which I think capture the essence of night just perfectly.  Because that is what it was - Perfect.

And a super video here!

This is what I posted on my facebook page afterwards:

"A magical evening! Thoroughly recommend a surprise vow renewal party - on a boat!!! Love you Patrick

Ps. Also recommend doing it all in bare feet "

Cat flap installation

Oh Monty!  

Monty is a very vocal cat, I mean like seriously vocal.  His noises range from little chirps to big yells.  No real pattern to the shouting, no consistency, and no real reason.  He shouts and yells at different times of the day/night and we cannot identify why he is doing it. 

The worst is when he comes into our room in the middle of the night and yells at the top of his lungs.  Another favorite of his is to roll around on the carpet on my side of bed chirping to himself, plus giving himself a bath - noisy licking and chomping noises go along with that.

You can only imagine the effect this is having on our sleep! So, to try address the issue we decided to install a cat flap for him.

I assembled all the equipment and tools needed.  Yikes! A jig saw.  Pretty scary stuff, eh?!

So first things first is you tape a template to the door and drill some pilot holes.  I found these extremely hard to do and that started giving me some clues that this job was going to be far more intense and difficult than I thought it would be.

I had imagined myself zipping through the door, sawing 4 lines nice and quickly - like cutting butter.

Well! It turns out that what I thought was a wooden door was actually made of metal on each side and lined in the middle with foamy stuff.  I guess it is a hurricane proof door?  Which is good I suppose! But very, very tough for sawing through.

Okay, I did it!

To get to this point - took me about 4 hours.  I was originally thinking that this job, all in, would have taken about 1 hour.

The final job was to install the cat flap on either sides of the door.  This was difficult too - the screws supplied were not adequate - and I had to jimmy some things and come up with some work arounds.  But I got there.

Final hurdle was to train Monty how to use it.  He got the hang of it pretty quickly I have to say #proudmomma

 

Vacation Inc Suncream

I met the team from Vacation Inc. at a recent event, mentioned how much I loved their products, and a few days later this package showed up. They were kind enough to send this to me, so let’s see what’s inside!

Don't you just love their branding?! Their marketing too - their instagram is clever and just so enjoyable - who doesn't like nostalgia lol.

I made a little video for my social media.  Click here to view

 

Bits and Pieces

Did you know that it is the 10-year anniversary of the release of La La Land? One of my favorite films...

Read my initial review of it here.

In honor of the re-release of the film, I treated myself to the soundtrack on vinyl.  I am a tad obsessed as you can imagine and listening to it over and over, every chance I get.

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Upon my return from Ireland I detected a small crack in my retainer.  I rang my dentist here in Key West and got a quote of $635 to replace.  What the heck!  That is some serious money, right?  I was discussing with my twin and we were both a little mad that we hadn't thought about getting it done in Ireland (a spare) while I was there.  I did get my hair cut during the trip (way cheaper than Key West) but there were a few other bits and pieces (retainer, one example) that I probably should have taken care of when in Ireland.  We both agreed next time I was coming I should make a list and make appointments in advance.

I decided to go the online route and landed on Say Cheese Club.  The price was right (approx $140) but as of yet I have not received the retainers so be warned, it is SLOW! Don't use this option if your retainer is completely cracked/broken but for me, with the retainers still useable, it is an "ok" option.

They sent me trays and putty and I had to make a mold of my top and bottom teeth.  Pictured is the top I think?  It was a weird process - you have to let it set in your mouth for 5 whole minutes and then when you go to remove them they are stuck pretty hard!  There also is a whole lot of drool during this time ugh.

I sent the trays back to them and from that they make the retainer in their lab.  Will update when they arrive... 

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Enid had a great find in a charity (thrift) shop in Dublin of a beautiful Laura Ashley Christmas dress for our niece Leia.

I popped on to poshmark and I found the dress - literally one - in the exact size of her little sister, Celine.  It arrived during the week, and Enid and I had a lot of fun texting each other pictures of the dresses and describing them as just "darling".

Here is the little "darling" my dress is for.  She is 2.5 years old and completely wild.  She spent the morning digging this hole on the beach in Spain and the rest of the day jumping in and out of it

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Foods...

The one day I don't go out on the water and Patrick catches this monster Wahoo!

First night, we ate it lightly seared, pictured above.  Second night, we ate it completely raw (sashimi).

This fish was so big that it was divided up between us, Patrick's fishing buddy, the dockmaster, the assistant dockmaster and we gave some into our next-door neighbor also.

As a thank you for the fish, Lisa our lovely neighbor, sent us in a loaf of her beautiful sourdough bread.  Oh my gosh, I slathered it with Irish butter (Kerrygold) and you can only imagine how it tasted. Heaven!

Yes, I am still making my bone broth on a weekly basis.  I don't know if it is doing anything for me but it a very nice lunch every day in work: Chicken and broth.

I attended a very cute little baby shower recently.  Look at this spread!!

 

Petlibro automated cat feeder

We recently have been really struggling with Monty at night.  More on that is posted in this blog here. 

We love that cat to bits but boy was all the noise and racket affecting our sleep.

One thing we considered was that maybe he was hungry during the middle of night.  And rather than just giving him extra food before bed we decided that we would invest in a(nother) automated feeding machine - Buddy's white one is pictured in the forefront of the photo.  Why does Buddy have one?  Well, Monty was eating all her food in a regular bowl so this meant that it would only allow Buddy feed from it.  For Monty, I ordered a black machine - it is in the right background of this pic.

These machines are not cheap btw!  $140!!!

But, they are really good I have to say.  You set up a schedule and it automatically dispenses the food.  And the nice thing is it has an app where you can review all the times and how much your cat is eating.

On the subject of The App.....! For the whole length of time that Buddy has had the machine I have never had any issues with the app.  Two days after I got Monty's machine the app went down - intermittently for two days solid.  Can you imagine how much scrambling the tech people and communications team have to do when a bank's app go down??  Like when people cannot access their money they tend to freak out, right?  Well, second to that, I think it might be pet owners!!!!  Can you imagine all the work going on in the background - you should have seen some of the communications they sent out reflecting that.

So! Buddy now has his own entrance and his automated feeder.  I am happy to report our sleep is getting better - we have seen some improvement!

Edit.

Monty also got a new bed which I think he likes ;)