17 Dez. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

…everywhere you go
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Ah do you have an earworm (just found out this word actually exists in English as well, yeeeees!) now? If I might recommend my favourite version of this song: the one from Pentatonix. You really should go and listen to it right now. 😉  Whoever knows me a little bit better, knows that I am obsessed with their music, especially around Christmas. But now:

Hi everyone,

I hope you all are doing great and are in a bit of a chrismassy mood already. When you are in Ireland you actually can’t really help yourself but be in that christmassy mood, because the Irish are definitly obsessed with celebrating this special time.

As soon as I got back from Austria I had to bake Christmas cookies with the girls, but not just any. I definitly had to show them my all time favourites the „Vanillekipferl“ from Austria. And let me tell you, they were a big success. Not only are they super delicious, but also quite easy to make and therefore absolutely suitable for my two girls.

Next up was doing some arts and crafts with them. They love doing these things and are very talented as well and become more and more patient, as we do them quite regularly. We made little fan-angels, as the girls like to call them. And they immediately wanted to hang them onto their Christmas tree.

Speaking of Christmas trees – when I came back from Austria, the Christmas tree was already up and decorated, which for me is an unusual thing. The Christmas tree normally gets decorated on the 24th in my house and of course me and my brother never helped because we loved being surprised by our mum and dad who then got to choose which colour baubles and candles we would have that year. But here in Greystones it looks very festive and adds a very cozy feel to our living room now. Of course I had to take some photos with the girls infront of it:

I also ended up taking some advanced selfies again.

Hah tricked you, I didn’t put a single ornament on the tree, but psssht, don’t tell anyone.

On the weekend my friends and I did some very christmassy things as well. Of course we had to go to Dublin and visit a Christmas market somewhere. It was a pitty that the weather forcast was terrible for that weekend, but we were able to find an indoor market. It was really special, because it was a flea market mixed with a Christmas market. There also was an ongoing theme throughout the whole market, which was zero waste, which I was kind of obsessed with. We spent a few hours in there, just looking at amazing artists and getting inspiring ideas to reduce waste easily.

Next up was buying matching Christmas hats and reindeer antlers, which we wore for the rest of the evening. We went to the main city, strolled around for a while and then decided to have a drink in Temple Bar, which was very brave of us, to even set a foot in this pub, because the crowds that are in there at all times really, are just crazy. But we managed to get some drinks, so now we can officially say, that we had a drink in the famous Temple Bar.

After that we decided to have our AuPair-Christmas dinner. We went to a lovely burger place, where we all ate so much, we felt kind of sick afterwards, but hey at least we were full.

We decided to end the day in a club, called the River Bar. It was pretty amazing, because not only was Spanish music playing, which my Spanish AuPair friends loved of course, but we could also dance Salsa and had a dancing instructor who did dances with the crowds, which was just hilarious.

The next day we decided to do a little bit of Christmas shopping and went to Dun Laoghoire. First we went to the food market again to get some Korean noodles for lunch, which we ate under a roof, while there was pouring rain outside. This led to a rainbow in the end. I have never seen so many rainbows in my life as in Ireland and they are always full ones. A rainbow definitly never fails to impress me.

After that we had a look at the lovely Christmas market, where we found actual „Glühwein“ (look at the sign on the cottage in the picture). I bought some and let the girls try. See for yourself if they enjoyed it:

I think Elenas facial expression says it all, doesn’t it?

After that we shopped a little bit and just enjoyed all the Christmas vibes Dun Laoghoire had to offer.

If you didn’t feel christmassy before, I hope I could make you feel a bit more so with this blog post. The next time I’ll post will probably be after Christmas and let me tell you, I am up to something special this Christmas.

See you soon,

Lena xxx