Another one bites the dust: Purple Hair - Check!

I think without any further delay I'll cut to the photo log for this one... it says more than I ever could with words!  I reeeeeally loved my purple hair, more than I thought I would :o) Maybe I'll do it again some day!

Before:

Half Way... Aprés Bleach-Pre Purple (this was soooo scary!) :

The Finished Product:

Sky Dive - Check!

Managed to check this one off for my birthday weekend - pretty epic way to spend my last day as a 24year old!  This was the most amazing experience ever and surprisingly a lot more fun and easier to do than I thought.  Because it was a tandem jump I didn't really have to make a decision to jump - it just happened!  The tandem master made that choice for me.  It was a case of up we go in the plane, get to 10,000 feet, door opens, off we go! Totally exhilirating.  I think I kept smiling for about 2 days after this.

The best part is after the freefall, after the wind has been rushing passed my ears for 20seconds and everything is so loud, the parachute opens and suddenly there I am floating in the air in pure silence - amazing!!!

We were lucky that the weather conditions were as good as they were, considering that this is Ireland and it was November when we did the sky dive!  On the way down we even got a chance to hold onto the reins of the parachute and steer for a while - including some 360 spins! Unreal experience, if I could have I would have been straight back up to do another one!

So I did the sky dive with a friend I've known for about 10 years - he did his sky dive for the Jack and Jill Foundation and I did mine for the Solas Center.  

So here's the video of me jumping (including my li'l happy dance at the end!):

And here's some pretty great looking stills taken from the video:
 

On the way up

Checking out the view

Heeeeere we go!

Yup... just jumped outta it!

Happy!!!

Pretty parachute :o)

Thumbs up!

Steering!

Aaaaand we're down again :o)

The Guinness Brewery - Check!

I had a couple of days holidays booked from work so myself and the other half headed to Dublin for a couple of nights.  The Thursday we headed to the Guinness Brewery.  This was the other halfs first ever Brewery tour, I've previously done the Heineken (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Carlsberg (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Stella Artois (Leuven, Belgium) Brewery's.  Being Irish I felt it was a bit odd to have never been to the Guinness Brewery before - hence why this was on the list.

So we walked from O'Connell Street in the centre of Dublin to the Brewery - we had kind of underestimated this walk and probably should have taken the Luas but it was dry and warm so the walk was nice - if a little long.  Anyway we arrived at the Brewery and had pre-booked our tickets online for a 10% discount so headed straight to the pre-booked ticket machines and headed on in.  There is a little customer service desk where we were fortunately allowed to leave our shopping bags so that we didn't have to lug these around with us.  We were both gasping so headed to the Café Bar first for a drink and a snack before starting the tour. 

We learned about the four key ingredients - hops, yeast, barley and water and how the four ingredients are combined to create Guinness.  There are little areas around the brewery then that taught us about the transport involved in getting Guinness from one door to another, a section all about the barrels that are used to store the Guinness and another area about the famous advertising campaigns.  My favourite part of the brewery tour was that we got to pour our own pint - and drink it!  Having never poured a pint before in my life this had a novelty factor to it too.  So here's the steps:

Here's me trying it out:

Glass ready

1st pour

Leave to settle

2nd pour - top it up

Finished - leave to settle

The best bit - tasting the result!

Oops! Kinda forgot about updating here!

I may have forgotten to do my bit of blogging! BUT! And that's a big but, I have been crossing some things off my list.  I'll do a li'l post on each over the next few days.

I'm also well on my way to crossing off a few more too because for Christmas presents in 2011 I received voucehers for a flying lesson to fly a plane and a voucher for a spa weekend.  I'm also jetting off too South America (which is another continent to tick off ) in February for Carnival in Rio and I'm signing myself up to run 10k for the Flora Mini-Marathon in June so lots and lots of things to look forward to!

The blog postings will be coming through thick and ready in the next couple of weeks.

Anti-boredom fun times! Corcaigh!

So for a weekend of fun times we headed off to Middleton to visit the lovely Chantelle and Leo.  Before our weekend of fun I did of course have to get my coffee fix in Gloria Jeans (we don't have one in Waterford) - which involved a lovely very vanilla espresso chiller followed by an expensive raid of MAC in Brown Thomas (also don't have this in Waterford - thankfully for my bank balance!).  I might do a post another time about my crush on MAC makeup! :o)

Saturday night Leo was working so we stayed in with Chantelle and had a couple of beers while playing Scrabble and CountDown... as boring as this might seem to some people we're avid fans of Scrabble.  We've all done a stint of back packing and your love of Scrabble tends to develop over this time.  Top scoring word for the night was Sherbet for a nice 36 and I'm proud to say that of our 'Z' words there wasn't a zoo in sight!

Sunday we headed to Fota Wildlife Park - neither myself or Slim can remember how old we were the last time we were there.  It was sooo much fun!  Ice-lolly's, pretending to be flamingo's, feeding the ducks and hanging out with giraffes was the agenda of the day, throw in some funny masks and some awesome looking monkey and a super friendly kangaroo and you get the recipe for an awesome day!!

Here's some photo's of the laughs from the day :o)

Brady bunch?!

Hanging out with the flamingos!

Feeding the ducks!

Giraffes + beebie giraffe :o)

'It's so fluffy!!!'

Cute baby bison, not so cute grown up bison! Wouldn't mess with that parent!

rarrrrrr!

S'up skippy?

 Also a little note for the cutest train station I've seen in Ireland and the adorable baby swallows nested in the shelter...

Baby swallows. Tweet tweet!

We finished the day in Leonardo's Bistro - a local Italian in Middleton - delicious food!!!  I had deep  fried brie wedges with cranberry sauce for starter and chicken tikka tagliatelle for my main.  Unreal!  Soooo not Weight Watchers friendly but sometimes you just have to forfeit for amazing food! :o)

Then it was time to get the bus home again - two happy campers after our fun weekend!

Cork? We'll be back!

'Sky Dive for Charity' crossing it off for a good cause

One of the things I've always wanted to do is a sky dive! but I never had anyone to do it with - until now. Went for a pizza with two guys I've been friends with for years and we ended up chatting about the sky dive, there and then Ed and myself decided that that's it we'll do it and we'll do it for charity. So I'm gonna do my jump for The Solas Centre and Ed is doing his for the Jack and Jill foundation.









Unbelievably excited to finally do this! So far I think Ed has raised over €500 and I'm on target with a total of €360 so far. We'll book the Sky Dive soon enough so we'll have a date for it, hopefully the end of August. One step closer to crossing something off the list :D

If anyone out there wants to help out, head on over to www.skydive4charity.ie, hit the 'sponsor a fundraiser' button and put in Tara Sherlock 2082 to donate funds for the Solas Centre or Edmund Doherty 2081 to donate funds for the Jack and Jill foundation.

The Bucket List

As I mentioned in my previous post I have a 'bucket list'... I wrote it while in work on one of the quieter night shifts to pass some time. I had been thinking a lot about the things I've always said I would like to do and haven't done. Don't get me wrong there's a looooad of things that were once on this list that I have managed to cross off but there's still oh so much to do. I'll maybe write about some of these things another time.

But for now here's the list as it stands now, it'll be added to as I come across more things that I'd like to do. Most likely when someone mentions something and I think 'oooh I'd like to do that'.

1.	Lose Weight – once and for all!!!
2.	Run 10k race
3.	Helicopter Ride
4.	Pilot a Plane - Flying Lesson
5.	Swim with Dolphins
6.	Photography Course
7.	Writing Course
8.	Publish a Book
9.	Ride a Segway
10.	Donate Bone Marrow
11.	Sky Dive
12.	Fly First Class
13.	Ride a Gondola in Venice
14.	Swim in the Dead Sea
15.	See the Pyramids
16.	Visit all 6 Continents
17.	Ride on the back of a Motorcycle
18.	Learn Sign Language
19.	Swim with a Sea Turtle
20.	River + Sea Kayaking
21.	Dye Hair Purple
22.	Shoot a Gun
23.	Bake a Giant Cupcake
24.	Go on a Cruise
25.	Ride in a Hot Air Balloon
26.	See the Glaciers in New Zealand
27.	See the Northern Lights
28.	Trans-Siberian Express, Oriental Express
29.	Go Paintballing
30.	Ride a Jet Ski
31.	Go Wakeboarding
32.	Eat a Space cake
33.	Get Married
34.	Have Children
35.	Foster a Child
36.	See the Orang-utan’s
37.	Ride a Mechanical Bull
38.	Tattoo my side
39.	Go on African Safari
40.	Carnival in Rio
41.	Visit Alaska
42.	Get a PHD
43.	Have a Ginger Cat for a pet
44.	Join Toastmasters
45.	Go Skiing
46.	Sleep in a Castle
47.	Learn to Drive
48.	Foster a Child
49.	Finish a 365 Photo Project
50.	Cross the Intersection at Abbey Road
51.	Experience Zero Gravity
52.	Stand on Equator
53.	Kiss Under Mistletoe
54.	Milk a Cow
55.	Get Hypnotised
56.	Shoot a Bow and Arrow
57.	Go Scuba Diving
58.	Island Hopping in the Caribbean
59.	Build and Fly a Kite
60.	See a Major Rugby Game
61.	Be a Member of Audience for a TV Show
62.	‘Build a Bear’
63.	Have a Gallery of Own Photos
64.	Cage Swim with Sharks
65.	Print and Album all of my photos
66.	Have a Picnic – The Works!
67.	Have My Portrait Painted
68.	Bring Mum on Holiday
69.	Create Family Tree
70.	Drink a Bottle of Expensive Champagne
71.	Climb a Mountain
72.	Stay in Ice Hotel in Sweden
73.	Submerge in a Submarine
74.	Go on a Holiday Alone
75.	Go Llama Trekking
76.	Own my Own Home
77.	Visit a nudist beach
78.	Quad-biking
79.	Base-jumping
80.	Shoot a bow and arrow
81.	Go Go-Karting
82.	Be photographed naked
83.	Go to Germany for Oktoberfest
84.	See the Grand Canyon
85.	Go to Electric Picnic
86.	Go to Glastonbury
87.	Have a psychic reading
88.	Have tarot cards read
89.	Go on a silent retreat
90.	Volunteer for local charity
91.	Visit the Guinness Brewery
92.	See the Burren
93.	Visit every county in Ireland
94.	Visit every country in Europe
95.	Go Tubing
96.	Drive a Speedboat
97.	Go snowboarding
98.	Go snowmobiling
99.	Ice skate on a frozen lake
100.	See the Giants causeway
101.	Own a designer handbag
102.	Milk a cow
103.	Go inter-railing
104.	Camp on the beach
105.	Create and maintain a blog
106.	Have a spa weekend