A (rainy) day in Dublin!

Hey guys! It's time for me to share all about our week off earlier this month with Jason's family! Our holiday consisted of many parts: first, we were staying at my parents' for a couple of days to celebrate my sister's 25th birthday, then we hopped on a plane to visit Jason's family in North Wales for five full days and left with the Capri to the Cotswolds before taking the ferry in Portsmouth and drive to our house! Oh yes, we didn't really have a minute to ourselves but we had such a good time. It really felt like it lasted forever though and I have so many photos to share with you!

Just after we arrived, Jason's parents organised a day trip to Dublin by taking the ferry from Holyhead, which was only 25mins away from their house. Handy! It was quite a long day as the ferry takes 3h to arrive and we of course took the first one available in the morning and the last one running in the evening. We didn't go to bed until 1.30am but it was all worth it :)

Here are a few photos!

We arrived around lunchtime in the rain, and it just didn't stop during the whole time we were there so we didn't spend much time outside! However, it was a good excuse to visit the many galleries dotted around Dublin.

We first stopped at the Dublin City Gallery where I completely fell in love with the impressive architecture of the building and the tall elegant room with pastelly blue on its walls (as you can see!). They really had a good mix of artists and types of art and it was quite refreshing to find very traditional paintings alongside contemporary and abstract ones.

Also, we loved the fact that they had an exhibition about Francis Bacon and his way of working. They recreated the entirety of his studio as a perfect replica of how it was when Bacon left it. Quite amazing!

Jason and I started to feel pretty hungry so we took his parents to a very familiar place: Grand Canal Dock. This is where the festival OFFSET was taking place about 6 years ago and where we started to really get to know each other. Memories! We started dating just after going to this festival and the rest is history (haha). Anyway, we remembered that there was a really nice place called Fresh which is a supermarket/deli where you can get pretty much anything you fancy. It was a hit! I had the most delicious salmon bagel there.

Once our bellies were full, we headed to the National Gallery of Ireland which was also really good. Some of the paintings were much bigger than in the previous gallery and we could really see the details up close. I mean, how amazing are the details on the pieces of jewellery and clothes from one of the photos above? Amazing. We found plenty of art pieces that were really inspirational too and it's nice sometimes to look at different types of art that you wouldn't usually be interested in.

The Natural History Museum was close by (and free!) so we went inside briefly and were lucky enough to be leaving it just when loads of school groups were entering! I always have mixed feelings going to these places because yes, it's really interesting and you might see some species of animal that you didn't know about, but at the same time, I feel a bit sad seeing these poor animals that most of the time were killed on purpose in order to be stuffed and exhibited there. Oh well! I loved the building though and I have to say, the exhibition was very well thought of.

After that we made our way to Temple Bar (obviously) and had a drink and some food at The Old Storehouse, which was delicious, whilst listening to a guy singing some Irish songs! It was so lovely that I didn't want to leave but we had to get back to the ferry at a certain time and it would have been a shame to be late and miss it!

Hope you liked this little guide :). The two galleries we went to were also free and we used DoDublin to get around town. A bit expensive but very handy when it's raining all day ;)

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Happy Easter!

Is everyone looking forward to ALL the chocolate?! I know I am! Although to be honest, I didn't wait until this weekend to crack open the bag of Milka mini eggs!

Life has been a bit a bit tough lately and I try and concentrate on the positive around me instead of feeling like everything is going wrong, but honestly, why is all the rubbish/stressful stuff happening at the same time?? It's like the universe is trying to send me a message ha.

Anyway, Jason and I are focusing on all the good moments together, the projects that we love working on and the amazing families that we have (oh and food! We're having all the comfort food). We keep telling ourselves that life is too short to worry about "the little things", and with a couple of our family members currently in hospital, we realise this even more and feel lucky to be healthy.

So, to finish on a more positive and uplifting note:
Enjoy this weekend with your loved ones, eat too much chocolate, laugh until your belly hurts and give extra hugs to everyone around you! We all have our worries and things going wrong in our lives but at the end of the day, we just need to concentrate on all the things we're grateful for, with a big smile on our faces :)

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Wallpaper Giveaway - Spring (finally!)

I've been meaning to do a new wallpaper giveaway for ages now but never got around to doing it... until today! I'm a little bit late to the game but still wanted to celebrate the fact that we're officially in Spring now, after a Winter that seemed to have lasted forever. I have to say though, the heating is still on in the house because we still have bloody cold temperatures most days and I honestly hope that by April, this whole cold and gloomy weather will be over! At least I don't have snow so I can't complain too much ;)

I hope you like this new lettering I created especially for you! It was quite nice and relaxing to do something just for fun actually.

These wallpapers are free as usual but I would just like to remind people that they're only for personal use, thank you :)

Download:
WHOLE SET // PHONE 1 // PHONE 2

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La Presqu'île de Gâvres

Hey guys! Last weekend we took advantage of the (kind of) nice weather to discover another place in Bretagne that we hadn't seen before! The Gâvres peninsula is super close to Port-Louis but we never thought about exploring it until last Saturday. I knew there was a pretty good walk to do all along the coast, and because we had plenty of food for lunch, we thought it wouldn't be so bad for us to be walking all afternoon ;)

It was super quiet but I assume it would be more touristy around Summer. We mostly met locals on their afternoon walk with their dogs so it was quite nice actually. The weather was very changing and as it was quite windy, clouds would move fast, resulting in photos with plenty of sun, and some not so much. Oh well! Nevermind if the photos aren't perfect, I just enjoyed taking it easy and walking at our own pace, stopping here and there to pick up washed up pieces of glass on the sand.

What we didn't realise is the fact that West of the peninsula, there were loads of German bunkers left from the Second World War when the North of France was occupied. Gâvres was a strategic place on the coast of Bretagne and they had clear views of the sea and sky. It was a bit strange as I'd never seen so many bunkers in such a small coastal area.

On the last photos, you can see the Porh Puns fortress built in the XVIIth Century that was then taken by the German troops and changed into some kind of base with two big domes on its side. It's a shame we didn't have much explanation on the site! Everything was very intriguing and a bit impressive. But more in a weird way obviously. I kept thinking about the fact that all this is still quite recent in history and people on the island must have gotten used to this sight, maybe forgetting what had happened here with time.

(PS: Am I the only one seeing an annoyed face on the last photo?!)

I spent a good while stalking that white stork, but I have the feeling he didn't like it so much as the closer I got, the more he would walk away from me! I decided to leave him alone so that he could eat in peace :)

By the time we reached the Marina, the sun was fully back on and we started to feel a bit tired and thirsty. The town that you can see on the other side is Port-Louis! We couldn't believe how close it was and how super fast it must be to go from there to Gâvres by boat, knowing that by car, you have a good 25 minute drive as you have to go aaaall the way around.

It was such a good day and we happily made our way back home, rested and content :)

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Life Lately...

Let's just start with saying that I certainly did not see the month of February going and I'm surely not going to realise when this month will be over too! I've been busy, and I still am! It's a great feeling because that's every freelance designer's dream, but at the same time, days are going so fast when you're concentrating on your work that you actually don't concentrate on anything else! Not complaining though :) Although I think Jason's a bit disappointed that I don't take the time to cook some nice meals like I used to haha.

Things have been happening! Professionally, I launched some new prints in my Etsy shop and I'm planning on launching some notebooks very soon too. I've also been working on some very exciting projects! You'll have to wait before seeing a few of them, but at the moment, one of my clients and I are working on a new children's book called The Contest to follow the previous book Quinn's Socks. Make sure to have a look on Q for Quinn!

ALSO, I can't not talk about the Café des Orfèvres opening next month in Vannes! You might have seen sneak peeks of the branding I worked on for Mathilde the past couple of months. I loved working on it and I can't wait to see the café open with all my designs displayed inside (and outside!). It already feels like such an achievement as the scale of this project is much bigger than what I'm used to. Mathilde is currently raising money for the activities she'll be offering in the café, so if you fancy participating, head right over here! (Eeek, I'm in the video!)

On a more personal level, Jason and I have been preparing our tiny wedding and it will be happening in September this year (Yay!). We've got our outfits (well, I'm only missing the shoes), the wedding rings and we've booked the restaurant for the meal we'll be sharing with our close families after the wedding. So exciting! Jason's parents and his brother with his girlfriend have booked their flight and accommodation so it's all good. We just can't wait for it! One of the best parts though was booking the few days of holiday we will have after the celebration. We decided to stay in the North of Bretagne and I'm sure we'll have a great time :). I love organising holidays so much that I could do that all the time if money wasn't an issue!

Actually, we're also off to North Wales next month for a whole week to pick up Jason's old Ford Capri! I'm SO looking forward to going back to North Wales. I haven't been there for more than a year now and I miss it! I miss our friends, family, and the beautiful landscapes. I'll enjoy this time off for sure.

Even if great things have been happening lately on many levels, I've felt a bit off these past couple of months and I can't quite understand why. This is a very personal feeling and although some days are completely fine, some days are definitely off ones. I think I've just been worried too much about the little things in life that don't go well, things that are not done or finished, things to come that I'm dreading... I keep telling myself that I should just concentrate on the GOOD things though. And this is why I've decided to pick this quote 'Always look on the bright side' for my artwork today. I let my head get filled up with stupid things sometimes but what really matters is that I'm happy with my life where it is, being with the man I love, keeping healthy, doing a job that I love and having family around me. I'm one of those people that will forget everything that is going well over ONE thing that is going wrong. Does that ring a bell to you?! Anyway, I'm working on it but my god it's hard sometimes. On top of this, I've been doubting myself a lot lately, which is not helping...!

Guys, I think I just need a holiday ha!

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