I went to my first ever irish blog awards this Saturday and it’s Monday night and I’ve just about recovered, but only just mind. I’ve removed my nail polish from the L’Onglex Ladies Tea Party (with L’Onglex nail polish remover of course- acetone free and given to us in our goodie bags- yay) and sitting down to recap on it all. I wonder is there any way to map the massive upswing of irish blog posts that much surely follow the awards every year? If the amount of traffic on twitter is anything to go by it must put a terrible strain on the internet altogether.

So- what of the awards then? they were in Galway this year, and I headed down from Sligo with fellow lady blogger (and fellow model staffer) ladydotty on a lovely sunny day. The whole sunshine/spring thing made me fall back in love with Galway, which I hadn’t felt in a long long time, so that’s good too, but more on that anon.

We checked into our B&B, fretted about what to wear (what could we wear out at 4pm that would still look good at 4am? to heel or not to heel, how dressy is it, arg), got dressed, managed not to eat the free kit kats in the room and wandered into town for a feed. Well, we were going to be drinking all day and night so eating seemed like a good plan.  We did a bit of foursquaring but no tips were forthcoming so denise spotted Buskers with her real eyes and in we went. Great food, delish salads and great piri piri fries (think I posted that as a tip).

Le Suite of fabulousness

Quick taxi to the G hotel and we landed at the Ladies Tea Party and my oh my do I want to get back to the G hotel as quickly as I possibly can.The lobby is incredible (great spot to kick off a stylin’ night in I’d imagine) but we were most spoiled with the Linda Evangalista suite which is beyond fancy.  Rooftop balcony with lovely views, fancy ass sandwiches (with the crusts off!) and scones (chocolate scones!) with cream and jam, oh, and delectable desserty things on silver platters. Seriously. And not to mention the extremely good wine from Curious Wines that we were poured giant glasses of- mostly of the gorgeous rose. And then, to top it all off, there was a DIY nail bar in the bathroom (one of the bathrooms) sponsored by the aforementioned L’Onglex. Which for some reason we all decided to hit after we had a million glasses of wine, rather than at the start while our hands were vaguely steady.

And even better than all of that was meeting a roomful of lovely, friendly, bright, engaged and passionate women who have something to say for themselves. Sabrina Dent is nothing short of a super hero for organising it all every year.

And so then to the Blog Awards at the Radisson Blu….I had no idea what to expect. Well except that i was thinking probably there would be lots of men and not so many ladies but i was totally wrong on that account, delightfully so. I’d say a 50/50 split actually- which you can tell from eolai‘s (winner of best specialist blog btw) pic of the bar from the balcony.

Pic courtesy of eolai

And so it was great fun. The award bit was funny, quick and lovely- beautifully hosted by Rick O’Shea with highly entertaining styrofoam invasions courtesy of Made in Hollywood and a few video’s to keep us going. The gongs went to deserved winners (The Model blog had been up in a long list but never made the shortlist – something to aim for next year!) from what I could tell and everyone was lovely. Then the bar re- opened and everything is a blur from there on in. I hauled myself to bed at 4am (I think- dratted hour change) and most kept going until the even smaller hours.  I met some great people in “real life” and had a whole bunch of great chats all night.  Brilliant stuff, and of course with twitter I can now stay in touch with them all!

Huge thanks to Damien Mulley and the team behind the awards. I’m sure they don’t get paid and I know just how herculean a job it is to organise those things, specially ones that look effortless, that takes a hell of a lot of paddling below the surface to pull off.  Official pics of the event here if you want to see it all go down>

I’m so glad I went to the blog awards and finally met “the people from the internet” and I’ll be back. And I’ll get better about blogging- I promise.

oh- and p.s I had a truly awesome breakfast at Bar 8 the next morning- best brunch in Ireland I’d say. I thoroughly reccomend healthy looking fry, outstanding home baked granola and fan bloody tastic pancakes with smoked apple and maple syrup. wowzers. Pics below:

Awesome brunch- best in ireland perhaps?

awesome pancakes

awesome space