The Interior DIYer
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A Visual Feast – Irish Street Art

New to my coffee table is this feast for my corneas staring some of Ireland’s finest street art. Compiled and documented by Rua Meegan and Lauren Teeling, A Visual Feast is a meal for my graffiti hungry eyes. 

I’ve been snapping pictures of graffiti for many years. I’m on the ‘for’ side of graffiti. Well, I should say, I’m for non-shitty graffiti. Ireland is a grey sheet of depressing grey clouds and equally grey buildings {except when the sun occasionally appears}, so the more colour on our derelict streets, the better. I think.
A couple of months ago when I saw this book of Irish Street Art on the shelves, I was very excited. Because at that moment I knew I wasn’t the only one stopping dead in my tracks and, where necessary, stepping onto the middle of the road to get a decent snap.
I’ve seen a healthy portion of the graffiti in Rua and Lauren’s book in real life, but nothing outside of Dublin unfortunately. This is a great alternative and just my kind of coffee table candy. Props to Rua and Lauren. I’ve included below a couple pieces I’ve appreciated and snapped myself that also appear in A Visual Feast. 

Canvas and Xπr, Abbey Street Middle or Lower, Dublin 1 {2008}. ESPO, Tivoli car park, Dublin 8 {2012}.

Littleman lips, walkway near the Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin 2 {2010}.

Unknown artist, Lincoln Inn construction boarding, Dublin 2 {2008}.

I Love Lamp sticker, side of a dumpster, Great Strand Street, Dublin 1 {2009}, R2D2 by Fink, South Circular Road, Dublin 8 {2009}.

Maser, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1 {2009}.

Do any of you out there share the same enthusiasm about graffiti as I do? Or do you think I’m off my tree, and you despise it?
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Lovely mention – Prudence Magazine

I got a call from my mom this morning while I was on my way to work, to say that Hydrangea Girl had a mention in the March / April edition of Prudence magazine! I was pretty excited. I actually had been told months and months ago about it, but since then I was given the heads up that it didn’t make the cut, so I completely forgot about it. It was just the little piece of good news I needed to wake me up from my crusty, groggy, bus-journey-coma this morning.

And what’s this my observant eyes spot – only just the lovely Laura Howard’s blog too, Bugs and Fishes! A lovely blog friend of mine with only a massively successful and crafty website. And I might be more stoked by being mentioned along side Bugs and Fishes! Yeah, I’m a nerd. What an awesome mention. Thanks again, gang at Prudence 🙂

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Apple, cheese and Guinness soda bread. For real.

When I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingshall make this bread, I made a mental note that this would be a great pre-St. Patrick’s Day recipe to try out. And is it ever good.


Before you get intimidated by the word ‘bread’, it took me 10 minutes to make this bread – and that’s including peeling two apples and grating cheese. Nothing puts me off the idea of making bread more than the thought of dealing with yeast – letting it rise for hours and having to kneed it? No thank you. But when I saw Hugh making this bread, I knew I could handle it. This is lazy as hell bread. And it tastes gorgeous. 

The Guinness really adds an earthy taste to the bread. You wouldn’t immediately think “oh god, this bread tastes like Guinness” because it’s not recognizable. The apple and cheese also wonderfully justifies devouring a quarter of the loaf in lieu of a meal. It’s got apples and cheese. And Guinness. Guinness is good for you. 

Recipe details included after the jump … 

Ingredients

250g strong white flour
200g spelt flour {I used half white flour and half rice flour}
50g oats 
10g fine salt 
20g baking powder 
100g roughly chopped dessert apples,
75g grated Cheddar 
50ml sunflower oil
100ml buttermilk
250ml Guinness

Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line your baking tray with parchment, or butter / flour it in preparation. 

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, oats, salt, apple and 50g of the grated cheese. Mix and make a well in the center. 

Begin to add your wet ingredients. The next stage is the most important part when dealing with soda bread – the less you handle the mixture, the better. ‘Feather’ your hand out like a giant fork and gently combine the ingredients. This should take no more than a minute and the mixture should only just be combined. 

Flour your work surface, and tip your mixture on to it. Roughly shape the dough into a round {don’t knead it, just pat into shape}. Transfer onto your baking sheet and top with the remaining cheese. Bake in the oven for 35 – 40 minutes until golden brown and well risen. 

See an example of Hugh’s wonderfully lumpy bread below. I luckily read the comments section on the Channel 4 website before I made this bread, because Hugh’s original recipe calls for waaaay too much liquids. So I didn’t include half as much as the recommended amount.