My Hero

Here's my Hero! He completed the Marathon in 3 hours 56 minutes. In his blog, you can read a description of his running adventures.

I knew he would make it!

Mark's Marathon

Mark is going to run the Dublin City Marathon on Oct'29th, in aid of MS Ireland! I have added the banner right under my blog header, in case you wish to make a donation to the society and sponsor him!

Thanks so much for your support!

My gifts!

Well, here's the pic of the lovely gifts Mark gave to me for Valentine's!

The star on the card is actually a pin, the hearts are M&S champagne truffles (all gone by now!), the CD is Queen's A Night at the Opera (it was in my wish list and I am happy he remembered because I've kinda forgotten about it). And the little compact is a cool, new Chanel eye shadow palette, which I haven't used yet since it looks very pretty in the pan and I am hesitating to mess it up!

I gave him a box of Belgian chocs and a card with a cute cow, a Valentine's cow...

M&S is great although I hate their ads: "This is not just food, this is M&S food", aaaarrrghhh... The voice of the woman is just utterly pathetic in its attempt to sound sexy, and, in the end of the day, yes, it IS just food, for crying out loud. Nice food? Indeed. But just food, really! The ads irritate me a bit as you can see, but I still like buying there because it is nearby, and they also have a wider range of everything you need: fruits like yellow plums, avocados, golden kiwis, nice breads, pomegranate juice and gingerbread men.

Happy Valentine's!

Today I woke up to the most exquisite flowers ever. Mark bought them yesterday and arranged it so I could have them this morning, so lovely!

There are so many, that it is even hard to capture them all in a single picture, but I have tried. Also, I hardly know most of their names: roses, sunflowers, lilies that have not blossomed yet, and a bird-of-paradise even! And some others I could not possibly name! Gorgeous...

Test Blog...

This is Mark, Andrea's husband (she calls me everything except "Mark" and "husband" though). Anyway, ignore this post! This is merely a technical test. I'm setting up w.Blogger to try and get around Blogger image problems. And now for a test image:

Scruffy O'Bear: A True Story

This is a picture of me and my beloved Scruffy O'Bear, a present of Mark before we got married!

He tells all the story of Scruffy in his blog here! All details and so on... Later on we realised that he was not really a bear, but a dog. The last name remained of course, because it sounds very Irish and Scruffy was already used to it, he he!

When Mark sent it to me in Rio he also made an album with lots of pictures of him, Scruffy and Owen called:

"The Grand Adventures of Scruffy O'Bear - Being a Tale of Fun and Larks in the Seaside Town of Brighton..."

Lovely! The pictures are great, however they were taken with a disposable camera and the scans, as you will notice, are far from perfect, a bit grainy in fact. The originals are perfect though and I have them here, of course! The little story Mark wrote is also very cute and funny! You can as well see the pics as a slide show, however on the slide show Mark's captions with the original little story are not available.

Now let's face it: how on Earth could I not fall in love after such a present???

Mark is back from Japan!

Last night Mark arrived from Japan! He was looking great, wearing his suit with a casual blue t-shirt. He was hoping to look like a young Yakuza fella, he said, but I'm afraid not... And he wasn't missing a little finger anyways.

He didn't seem too tired either, because he was up watching a gore Clive Barker film until past midnight.

He brought me lots of things. Lots of Minamoto Kitchoan sweets (my all-time favourites), a Kitty stash that he managed to get at Narita Airport and some wonderful perfumes, that can only be found in Asia, unfortunately.

Here's my boxes of sweets:


I could not resist to show the original package. The boxes come wrapped in that gorgeous green paper, tied with natural fiber cords instead of ribbons. The way the paper is folded is almost like origami. I couldn't possible work in that shop, since I am a disaster when it comes to gift-wrapping! Now the box itself (after unwrapped) is the one at the top. Sturdy carboard, and again, enveloped in white paper displaying a Japanese print and more fiber cords...

Now, these are the sweets...


The ones at the left are tsuya, adzuki bean paste inside mikasa yaki (pound cake)...
These at the right side, are a wonderful selection of their delicacies: a box containing a big yokan (solid bean jelly), 3 soft bean jellies with a chestnut inside, 3 soft white bean jellies with yuzu and green tea flavour and 4 fukuwatashi-senbei - crispy waffles stuffed with milky cream...

He also bought me some Pocky! These are very addictive... Mousse and White Chocolate:


And my Hello Kitty stuff...



As for the perfumes, they are simply gorgeous. But I will write about it in a separate post.

Digressing...

Long time no blogging, it seems! Today I am back. First of all, a report of the weather here: just the way I like it. Rainy and fresh now. Lovely breeze coming through the windows... Relaxing...

My Mother is arriving to Dublin on Tuesday, so, I managed to clean the house to perfection today. And by myself, because Mark has a back ache. He normally helps me out. Actually he still did: since the kitchen is his territory, he scrubbed it so clean that it would make Aggie and Kim very proud! (Yeah, the ladies from the TV series "How Clean is Your House").

While I write this, I am listening to a wonderful Japanese singer. Her name is Shiina Ringo. She has a wonderful voice and sings not only in Japanese, but also French, English and even Portuguese, to my surprise! Her choice of a Brazilian song is "Manhã de Carnaval", an old Vinicius de Moraes' song from the classic Brazilian movie "Orfeu Negro". I love her singing in French, the accent is just perfect. She sings "Feuilles Mortes", alternating between French and English, and it is such an original, almost funky version. Just beautiful. Well, that lady simply rocks. The arrangements are superb, needless to say, and the album presentation is amazing, as only in Japan we can find. Check that out:


CD Title: Utaite Myouri, 2CD, Toshiba- EMI.

Finally, Mark has been to Washington DC some days ago and came back last weekend. He took lots of pictures, which are quite good. I hope he will be posting them soon. Anyway, he took one that I especially loved. It's from a shop that sells Japanese goods, called "Ginza" (what else???) He told me he could not go in because it was closed by the time he passed by, but look at that!



As you can see, all things I love are there (just click on the pic to see it bigger): Manekineko, Hello Kitty, nice ceramics and who knows what else! I really wish I was there, can you imagine? That would be paradise!

Now I need to go, we are starting to watch "Violent Cop" by the ever-so-wonderful Takeshi Kitano. Just love his films... They are, I know, very violent, and it's strange to see someone who so much loves "cute" things to appreciate this kind of films, but there we go. I love them. From soundtrack to acting, Kitano's films are something everybody should watch at least once. Meaning, you should not die before you do it! Ditto.

See you later then!

My Hello Kitty Display!

After a long, long time, here I am. Back again. I have been very, very lazy lately (and sick too). But I will tell about this "absence" in a separate post (I am not in the mood now!).

Today, I need to show you the pictures of my new Kitty Display Board! Mark made it for me, he is indeed quite talented (lucky me!).

I am super-happy with the results. Actually, I do have almost 300 netsuke and mascots, and the board does accommodate only 56. However, the fun of it is that I can always change the Kitties - and make different "exhibitions" by theme etc...

To start with today I only put some of my favourites, from my wonderful Sellers in EBay, and the themes are: Kabuki, lucky charms, Summer, Hina Matsuri, Azumi etc...

Well, here we have Mark working on the board last Sunday, after having bought all necessary material (MDF board, frames, paint, sandpapers etc...):



The colour is a nice burgundy that we thought could make it look like lacquer (Mark's idea). And it does indeed! Below you can see the board, ready and drying:



And finally, here is the board already displaying some of my favourites!



Thank you Mark!
(Where would I be without you???)
:)