In the absence of actual sunbathing weather I’d like to step into these lovely prints from Kelsey Garrity-Riley – oh for some vitamin D!

Prints available from Etsy.

A perfect example is the range of lovely baby homewares and clothes from Tory of Coco Loves Flo. You can see Juliet giving a blanket for a test run – I would very happily have one of these for myself if it came in grown up sizes!

I met up with Tory recently for a tea and a chat and she told me a little more about how these gorgeous goodies came into being…

Tell us a little about your company and what you do?
Coco loves Flo is a range of bright, cheery, quirky baby products from snuggly baby-bedding and blankets to teeny-weeny dresses and room accessories all designed by me in Co. Galway. They are available to buy from www.etsy.com/shop/cocolovesflo. I am also working on growing the range to include Homewares and textiles for big people too!

What gave you the idea to create your products?
I’ve a background in fashion having studied Fashion and textiles in NCAD. When I became pregnant with my daughter I started making and crafting at home and once she arrived I made lots of pretty things for her. Requests starting coming in and soon Coco Loves Flo was born!

Where do you find inspiration?
I look to many different areas of design for inspiration. Interior Design, beautifully printed textiles and fashion have always been ‘obsessions’ But at the moment I’m mad about children’s book illustrations and designers like Orla Keily, Lotta Jansdotter and Donna Wilson. I love graphic prints and Scandinavian design.

What advice or words of wisdom would you give from your experience?
Believe in your products and try not to worry too much about what other people think! For too long I agonized over ideas and designs and now I’m just taking the plunge and trusting my own taste.

What are your favourite things to do?
I love pottering around vintage and design shops, eating beautiful food, sunny holidays, listening to Lana Del Rey and days out with my wee family and bassett hound, Hugo.

My bedside table is stocked with recipe books, baby books and design books and magazines. I also love coffee table books on photography and pattern & print. My copy of Tricia Guild’s ‘Inspiration’ is always close to hand.

Thanks Tory!

To see more of the Coco Loves Flo range you can visit the Etsy Shop or like them on Facebook

Like most people I’ve always thought I had a very neutral accent, so it was only when I moved to Dublin for college that I discovered that I pronounced some words with a very strong Wexford twist.  I now say “one” instead of “wan” but after years living in Dublin I still can’t bring myself to pronounce “horse” as “hoarse”.

Jenny Keogh is making a series of videos celebrating Irish accents sayings and slang – Story Bud features Dublin and she is currently running a Fundit campaign to raise funds to make a feature covering the whole country – you can see a little sneak peek here:

To resist temptation we try to not buy them all the time. When a packet does make its way home – snuck into the trolley under the pretence of  “for visitors”- it disappears rapidly with nothing left behind but crumbs and sugar headaches.

When I saw these biscuit cushions by Nikki McWilliams I just couldn’t resist – I think this is the first biccy that has lasted longer than 48 hours in our house!

Colm and I both love our new cushion so I was delighted when Nikki agreed to be part of our just being curious series – meet the lady behind the biscuits!

Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
I’m Nikki McWilliams – I’m 27 and I’m a designer and maker based in Dundee, Scotland. I draw biscuits for a living and am very lucky to be able to do so!

What gave you the idea to create your biscuit cushions and other products?
When I started out I was only really making things that I’d like to have in my own home – things that I thought would be cool – that weren’t available to buy anywhere! I tried making a few for myself and posted a picture on twitter – and people seemed to really like them! The first batch that I made sold quickly and I knew from then onwards that I had to try out all of the other ideas that had.

Where do you find inspiration?
Anywhere and everywhere! I find that inspiration comes when you least expect it so I try to carry a sketchbook to quickly jot down ideas before they disappear again!

What advice or words of wisdom would you give from your experience?
That’s a tough one! I think I’d have to say that learning to trust your instinct is really important.

What are your favourite things to do/foods to eat/books or blogs to read?
I love cooking – my ideal day off involves loads of home-cooked food at home – bliss! I also love decorating and re-arranging our flat – it’s quite a small space so we have to be quite disciplined about what we choose for it to keep the space simple and clutter free – but I love experimenting with colours and finding new storage solutions! I’m a total storage geek. My two favourite interiors blogs at the moment are ollieandsebshaus.co.uk & www.brightbazaarblog.com

Thanks Nikki!

It’s also special for another reason, on my way back to the studio this morning after dropping my little girl off to her Grandma’s, I got my first glorious whiff of May bush! Summer has begun!

Photo taken on my phone so excuse the quality!

While flicking through the pages trying to decide what to read (I only had 5 minutes of reading time) an article caught my eye. I am baby mad as you can tell from a few of my posts so anything to do with bumps, babies and kids instantly screams for my attention.

The article told the story behind the very clever Creeper Crawler playsuit. Creeper Crawlers grip suits were designed by Irish Mum of two boys, Ollwyn Moran.They were designed to help babies learn to crawl. Crawling is a difficult skill to learn for babies if they have to contend with super slippy wooden and tiled floors. My little girl found it really difficult to get a good grip when she was making her early attempts at moving around. We have no carpet at all in our house (except for my lovely rug) so crawling was a big challenge. If only I had known about the creeper crawlers suits a few months earlier!

I got in touch with Ollwyn to find out a little more about the suits and where the idea came from…

1. Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
My name is Ollwyn and I am a Mum and a teacher. I have two sons Matthew and Alex. I teach science in a secondary school as my full time job and I also run Creeper Crawlers. I also work with children with learning difficulties as a neurological development therapist.

2. What gave you the idea to create Creeper Crawlers?
The idea for Creeper Crawlers came to me a long time ago and I had always wanted to develop the idea into a product to help babies learn the vital skill of crawling. The opportunity came along while I was studying for my Masters in Maynooth. I saw a poster for an entrepreneur competition and decided to go ahead and enter it. At the time I thought I could spend some of the prize money on a nice new sofa! When my idea for the playsuits won the competition, I decided it was a sign to focus my energy and the prize money on developing the Creeper Crawlers suit and bring it to market.

3. Where do you find inspiration?
From my family and my boys. I have so much support from my family, I am very lucky to have them so close to me. The boys also inspired the suits themselves, when the boys were babies I knew how important it was for them to learn how to crawl so that they would understand depth, space and balance. I had no carpets in our house so when Matthew was a baby I used to bring him to the only tiny patch of carpet that we had at the top of the stairs so that he could practice. I went to a carpet shop and bought some remnants when Alex was a baby and I would crawl around in front of him to encourage him to crawl!

4. What advice or words of wisdom would you give from your experience?
Look for the positive in every situation, and be thankful for what you have. A friend of mine once said to help look for the positives, think of it like this, pick a colour – say green and point out all of the green that you see in the room – quite a lot! Do the same with focusing on the positive. Once you focus on that you will begin to see positives everywhere!

A wise Doctor also once told me to go with your gut, you know your children better than anyone else and never feel silly if you have a question.

5. What are your favourite things to do/foods to eat/books or blogs to read?
I love running and tag rugby! The boys come and watch me play. We also love going for walks, our favourite spot is the Knocksink Woods in Enniskerry. We all put on our wellies and head into the woods for adventures, jumping in the mud and looking for tadpoles and frogs!

To find out more about the creeper crawlers suit visit Ollwyn’s website, Ollwyn also writes articles for several Irish parenting magazines and she won the Maternity and Infant business parent of the year in 2012.

The news that Ikea would like to build another store closer to my neck of the woods reminded me to add it this week. My heart skipped a beat when I heard that Ikea are hoping to build a new store in Cherrywood just off the M50 in South Dublin. I could zip up there in half an hour and avoid paying a nasty toll! I could put my toll savings towards some smelly candles.

My house was featured in an edition of Ikea Live back in December. I was shocked and extremely excited when a researcher for Live contacted me to ask if I would take some photos of our home and write a feature for the magazine. My poor old house which is usually very neglected had a huge clean before I took the shots. Cupboards were scrubbed and cushions were plumped, I even dusted our plants! It was great fun styling our house and deciding which shots to take.

You can click on the image above to see it at a larger size.

I was quite proud of how our little house looked all cleaned up and wearing it’s glad rags!

What do you think about the plans to build a new store? Are you an Ikea fan?

New design and gift shop Rua is the latest addition to the street and I already want about half their stock for myself. James, half of the team behind the shop, kindly agreed to give us a little behind the scenes info – thanks James!

1. Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
I’m originally from London and along with my fiance Cara we have started
Rua. We both have a retail background and things just kind of came together
that allowed us to open our own shop! Its something we had really wanted to
do for a long time so it was great to be able to turn it into reality!

2. What gave you the idea to create your shop?
Its really hard to find something unique to give as a gift these days and we
wanted to give people somewhere to find those things! Cara is the creative
one of us and it has been her who has created the amazing look of the shop
She studied Set Design in London and it clearly shows! In addition to the
products we have created ourselves, we have sourced as many Irish products as
possible. We have a range of Chocolate from Chocolate Garden made in Carlow,
handmade scarves made by my sister Amy in Wicklow, prints from our artist
friend Declan Loftus from Galway and two beautiful jewelry ranges from
Dublin based designers Arty Smarty & Aliquo.

3. Where do you find inspiration?
From life! There are so many beautiful things around us in nature why should
we surround ourselves with dull things!

4. What advice or words of wisdom would you give from your experience?
If you have an idea you just have to roll with it. The only thing holding
you back is you, if you have come up with a great idea you owe it to yourself to do it. You will soon find there is nothing more rewarding than having people appreciate what you
have created.

5. What are your favourite things to do/foods to eat/books or blogs to read?
We are massive film fans and are lucky to have an excellent cinema round the
corner from us (Cineworld!) €20 a month for unlimited films – bargain! We
also go to a lot of gigs we’re just back from London where we went to see
Sigur Ros, that was incredible.

We love to eat out and are lucky to have The Black Sheep a few doors down. We
used to frequent the Cottage Bar & Salt House in Galway, so were pleased to
find one of their pubs so close to us! Their carbonara is well worth paying
them a visit for, and they do a great range of craft beers.

With all the great TV on these days its hard not to find something to love!
The new series of Mad Men is coming soon, it seems like ages since that was on. We
also love Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy, its so weird how the guy from
Sons of Anarchy was in Byker Grove!

These cushions are calling my name!

To see more pop into Rua at 55 Capel St. or you can shop online at www.ruaboutique.ie

Happy Faces Day is on at the moment and is running throughout Easter week from 30th March to 6th April 2013.  It is a fantastic event organised by the IPPA (Irish Professional Photographers’ Association).

If like me you are obsessed with taking photos of the little and big people in your lives, this is a great opportunity to have a professional photo shoot while contributing to the fantastic Jack and Jill foundation.

You can have a professional portrait done for €25 from your local participating IPPA photographer and 100% of the proceeds will go to The Jack and Jill foundation.

What a great way to celebrate this Easter weekend, you could even bring along your favourite Easter eggs to the photo shoot!

To find out more about Happy Faces Day visit http://happyfaces.irishphotographers.com/

Happy Easter and happy snapping!

This girls name is Ailbhe Murray and she is an extremely accomplished entrepreneur running not one but several successful businesses. Mom’s frantic phone call just about covered the main details of Ailbhe’s newest creation, just enough info for me to stretch my googling fingers and find out all about her fairy doors.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Ailbhe from Mudpies and Rainbows about her winged friends and how she became the official fairy ambassador…

1. Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
Well I’m 32 years old and I had been working in travel and tourism for many years before deciding to venture out on my own. The travel industry allowed me to see lots of the world and I decided that I would like to live in another of the corner of the world for a while. I moved to Canada with my partner and while there I studied Make-Up.

When we returned home after a year, the downturn had badly affected the travel industry so I decided to focus on Make-Up artistry. I really enjoyed being a Make-Up artist and decided to write a book called “Eye catching Eye candy” about Make-Up for an Irish audience. This opened a lot of doors within the Make-Up world for me. I began sourcing clever beauty products and distributing them through my website. One of my products, a compact mirror with lights has been so successful it was featured in London Fashion week and I was commissioned to create a custom mirror for a celebrity client!

2. What gave you the idea to create fairy doors?
The first door I made was for my sister’s house. My Sister’s daughter, my Niece had lost her tooth so I made a little door to let the tooth fairy in to collect it. My Sister’s kids were obsessed with the door! We moved it around to different places in the house and they couldn’t contain their excitement looking for the door and reading the little letters that the fairies left for them!

It was down to the kids reaction that I decided to start making the doors for other people to bring a little fairy magic into other homes.

One of Ailbhe’s Nephew’s opening a fairy door

3. Where do you find inspiration?
My Granny Hughes brought magic and excitement into my life and was a great source of inspiration. I’m now bringing the magic she shared with me to my niece and nephews and anyone that receives a fairy door!

4. What advice or words of wisdom would you give from your experience?
Don’t focus too much on the financial side of working for yourself, you will always get by, and if you have a clear vision and are passionate you will make it work!

5. What are your 5 favourite things to do/foods to eat/books or blogs to read?
I love to cook and bake, I particularly love watching Lorraine Pascale, her recipes are amazing! I also love old fashioned children’s books and films like Eloise, Madeline and anything by Roald Dahl.

You can order your very own fairy door through Ailbhe’s website or by visiting her facebook page. Ailbhe also hopes to retail her fairy doors in toy and gift shops in the near future.