What I've learnt so far ...

It’s been 8 months now since I moved to Canada from Ireland and it’s been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster to be honest. At times I’ve felt lonely, frustrated, confused and close to tears but there’s been some good times too and I’ve also learnt a lot about myself that I wouldn’t of had the opportunity to realize at home.

So in this blog I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve learnt so far.

Meeting new people…

At the beginning what I missed most at Ireland was not having my family and friends around me. I missed the people that knew me best and who I could be myself around.

But being in a new place has forced me out of my comfort zones and I’ve met some new people. With that comes the knowledge that people who meet me now are seeing me with fresh eyes, they don’t know the me  from ten years ago they see me as who I am now. There reaction to me has helped me  to look at myself in a new light and see how I’ve grow into an intelligent and mature person with a great career, and in turn focus more on the present moment rather than the past.

Old friends…

Some old friends had come to visit me from Ireland since I’ve moved here. We knew our time together was limited so we tried to fill as much in together as we could. After they left I understood better why we’ve been friends for so long and just how much I enjoy their company. I know now actually why they are my friends and how lucky I am to have such good friends and appreciate them so much more.

Counting your blessings..

The reason why I came to Canada was to find work. I was unemployed in Ireland for over a year during a bad recession and for the first time in 10 years found it next to impossible to get a job.  At the time it felt like the worst thing in the world and I felt like a total failure when I left Ireland to take a chance on starting a new life abroad.  8 months on however I feel so grateful and blessed now that I got the chance to come and work here. For every downside there is an upside, I’ve heard this so many times before but never realized the full meaning of this until now. I believe there really are blessings to be found during hard times if we wish to find them and I feel grateful for a whole lot more.

I'd love to hear what you feel blessed and grateful for. Looking forward to hearing all your comments. xx

Proud to be Irish

Today the Irish people's spirits have been lifted by this great man! What an inspirational speaker, and he made it seem so effortless too!

President Obama's speech can be watched here..

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0523/obama_live.html#video

I feel very proud to be Irish today, and homesick too after I watched this...

Summer is a coming in................

After a long cold winter, from Dec to Apr it snowed and a practically non-existent spring, summer finally arrived this week-end in Toronto. Yippee! It was Victoria weekend, which means a long weekend and there was a sense of holidays and fun in the air. Hope the rest of the summer is as just good as this weekend was. The sun just seems to put everyone in a good mood. Here's some pictures I took of the start of summer
in Toronto..........

Even the ducks and squirrels were sunbathing and seemed to love the sun!

Engagement announcement

Once we announced our engagement, that’s when people wanted to get into the detail and asked questions like will the wedding be held in Canada or Ireland. Who will be going, when it will happen and of course who will be in the wedding party. We got plenty of lovely congratulations but with each one came more questions and comments, and the more questions we were asked the more stressed I began to feel. I felt under pressure to come up with the answer to them all and to find the perfect wedding location immediately. I started surfing the web furiously for ideas and began to forget about the true meaning of our engagement and what it means to me. 

When I told Ben how I was feeling stressed about planning the wedding, his reply was that we should just saviour the moment and enjoy this warm fuzzy feeling we have for as long as possible. Once he said that I knew he was right and began to realise that it’s time to forget about what people said or what they want and to focus on enjoying every moment of our engagement. 

Because what matters most to me right now is that I get to share the rest of my life with Ben, who knows me at times more than I know more myself and who I love more than words can say. I love his sense of humour, his beautiful and kind eyes combined with his sexy smile, and his easy-going and gentle manner. I know he is a real genuine, strong, intelligent and capable man, who is my rock, and with him by my side I feel we can accomplish anything.

My Birthday Surprise

Wow! What a weekend, after years of imagining what it would be like to be proposed to, on Friday the day of my birthday my boyfriend of 3 years proposed to me! 

To say I was shocked was an understatement, I had no idea what was going on. The proposal happened during dinner with my parents at the CN tower in Toronto. My parents had just arrived to Toronto to visit us from Ireland and my boyfriend Ben unknowns to me had asked for their blessing to marry me just a few hours before. The waiter placed a dessert dish in front of me, he opened it up and inside was a box with a ring inside. At that point with about 5 waiters and my parents looking on, Ben said he thought the world of me and asked if I would marry him. I accepted and now we’re engaged! Being a secret romantic at heart I loved the way he done the whole proposal though and wouldn’t change it for the world.

I had no idea this was going to happen. The thing that shocked me the most was that he bought the ring himself and planned it all without me knowing. I never even suspected a thing. He’s such a laidback and easy going sort of a guy so I never thought this would be his style.  I believed I would always pick out my own ring myself and wanted a certain colour and design, I imagined it would be like Kate Middleton’s but with a black stone to match the necklace Ben bought me last Christmas. The ring I actually got is perfect, it is so simple but sparkles like you wouldn’t believe. Each time I look at it I feel so happy and can’t help but smile. I just know I've finally met my Mr. Right.

Already we’ve started to talk about our wedding and what sort of day we would like to have. We don’t know when or where it will happen yet, maybe somewhere abroad like Italy.  We do know that we don’t want to have a big showy wedding that costs a fortune. What matters most to us is that we get to have the people that we love around us to celebrate and share in our special day. It’s all going to be very exciting to plan....I can’t wait!

Publish Post

Have you ever been proposed to? What sort of wedding did you have? I’d love some ideas to help plan mine. x

A life less Ordinary

Welcome to my blog! 

I read in the paper recently that Jack Osbourne has finally kicked his party habits and has been sober for some time. In the Documentary GOD Bless Ozzy Osbourne, which was produced by Jack, Sharon his mum says, Jack being sober meant he was dealing with ‘life’ for the first time. I found this statement interesting, and as Jack is now 25 it made me think back to my life in my twenties. 

In my late teens and early twenties I wanted nothing more that to go out clubbing, I would sit in work from Monday to Friday dreaming about my Saturday night out on the town. Back then there might as well of been only one day/night of the week, as Saturday night was the only one that mattered to me.  It was the highlight of my week! On Saturday night I wasn’t Grace who hated getting up early each morning to go to a dead-end job. The make-up and clothes I wore combined with the copious amounts of alcohol I drank made me feel totally transformed.

Preparations for the night were like a military operation, which involved myself and my ‘side-kick’ Tina getting together in one of our houses at least five hours before we were due to go out accompanied by loads of wine/vodka. We really believed we needed this much time and alcohol to get ready. With plenty of music, wine and the right look I felt like I was a cross between Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce! In the nightclub in my drunken state I really began to think I could dance and sing just like them too. As I was also single for most of my early twenties, Saturday night always held the possibility of meeting ‘Mr. Right’ and then who knew what would happen. At the same time there seemed to be so many parties and new people to meet, and everyone at the time seemed so lovely, I didn’t really want to be in a relationship as I felt it would only hold me back.

As time and the years went on, my hangovers got worse and worse, the outfits didn’t look as good anymore and I began to feel so unlike J Lo./ Beyonce on the dance floor. Staying in bed all day ‘recovering’ from the night before no longer seemed so appealing, nor was trying to avoid people I had made ‘my new best friends’ or  told all my secrets to in my drunken state. Although I still haven’t lost my love for doing my hair, clothes and make-up, I eventually realised that there was a whole lot more to life than my Saturday night party life and began to focus on enjoying more of my life when I was sober instead.  As for my quest for meeting Mr. Right, well that could take some time to explain so it’s probably a story for another time.

What was your party life like, did going out to nightclubs hold as much enjoyment for you ? What do enjoy most about going out ? I’d be interested to know.

My Princess life

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!  

For my first blog entry I thought I’d write about the hot topic that has made the news all around Canada at the moment, the Royal wedding of Kate & William.

For someone who loves to dream and still believes in fairy-tales, this wedding has really caught my attention. It makes me imagine what it would really be like to be a modern day princess. From the age of about four being a princess meant to me that I could eat as much candy as possible, I got to stay up as late as I wanted and have a room full of whatever toys I wished. Very different I’m sure to what Kate’s life is going to be like!

I wonder now though what the life of a modern day princess would be like, for instance could Kate put her feet up on the couch in her castle, is she still allowed to read her favorite gossip magazines, have a duvet day if she wanted to, or have a girl’s night out downtown to unwind? Would she still have to put her own dishes into the dishwasher? I’m not so sure!

Writing this reminds me of an ex-boyfriend of my mine whose family lived in the closest thing I can think of to living in a castle. Their home was amazing and I believed it could not have been more perfect. The first time I was invited over to what I’ll call ‘Bell air Mansion’ I was in my element as at that time I’d only ever seen homes like that in books or on the television!  I use to walk the halls from the East to West Wing feeling like a princess, exclaiming  to my boyfriend about how lucky he was to have grown up  in a house like ‘Bell air Mansion’. I imagined him playing as a kid, with noisy games of hide and seek, family sing-songs on the baby grand piano with logs on the fire and grown-up proper dinner parties, the house of my dreams! 

 After time however, I soon realised that only a quarter of the rooms were actually used, I discovered they had two huge kitchens, one was left idle, the fire never got light, the piano never was played, no-one knew how to play it. Family dinners were quiet affairs where the family ate the best steak staring wordlessly at the huge Television screen.  The house of my dreams soon began to feel empty and lacked soul, I began to dread those outings to ‘Bell air Mansion’. My childhood home began to seem so much more appealing and it made me realise that it was actually me that was the lucky one...although our home was quarter of the size than ‘Bell air Mansion’, it was welcoming and full of life. There was always a conversation or something happening, it was vibrant, noisy and fun.

Our childhood homes were not the only differences between us. Holidays for him were about getting the right photo snaps to show his friends what fun ‘we’ were having. He felt uncomfortable sitting in a bar or a club that was not as upper class as what he was use to, I tried to explain that it’s about the company not the surroundings that make a good time’, unfortunately it fell on deaf ears. After two years living together the differences between us just became too much, my ex-boyfriend and I broke up and my fairy-tale dream was over, my Princess life was shattered. 

Looking back now I can see how breaking up was a lucky escape, we were just not compatible, not only were our backgrounds and upbringing different but so were our personalities.

Perhaps however it will be different for Kate & William. They have known each other for a long time, and although their upbringings and backgrounds are very different, they could have similar personalities. For Kate visits to the Royal family could be fun and relaxed with plenty of conversation and laughter. 

What are your thoughts about what life would be like for a modern day Princess? Looking forward to hearing them.