Parcel Motel: Amazing Service!

I used Parcel Motel for the first time last week to get a new phone cover delivered to me. The item couldn't be delivered to the Republic of Ireland, but it could be delivered to the UK. It's funny how you can get something delivered to Antrim but not Dublin, right?!

Parcel Motel is an excellent service that allows you to get items delivered to you that aren't deliverable to the Republic, or if shipping is free/very cheap to the UK. 

When you register you're given a number that identifies you, when you input this when the delivery address is required as you're ordering online. You then also enter the address of parcel motel: There's one in Finglas, Dublin or one in Antrim, UK. I'm not really sure why you'd use the one in Finglas: Maybe if you're not going to be home when the delivery is due? Or maybe if you want something delivered and don't want anyone else in the house to know!!

The cost of using the service is €3.50 per package, but the first two 'stays' are free! This is great if shipping to the UK is free- You can get it shipped to you for free too! When you register you choose which parcel motel you'd like your package delivered to- There are loads around Dublin! I got mine delivered to a shop about five minutes walk by my house!

This is what the Parcel Motel looks like!

When the package is delivered to your chosen motel you get a text with a pin number. You enter your phone number and that pin number on the touch-screen at the motel. 

Welcome screen at the Parcel Motel

A drawer then pops open and inside it you'll find your parcel chilling and enjoying her/his stay at the motel!  

You just take your package out and you're good to go! 

My package delivered to the Parcel Motel at Spar, Ashtown Grove!

I definitely recommend this service and will use it again. Amazon told me my estimated delivery dae was the 19th and I got a text from Parcel Motel that very same day (albeit at 11pm!) saying my package was ready- I picked it up the very next day. 

The two free stays are excellent, really good value, and at €3.50 a stay afterwards it can still work out a lot cheaper than shipping to the Republic of Ireland. You need a proper email address and a proper mobile phone number to register so it would be tiresome to try to beat the system and get more than two free stays- But it can be done!

All in all, my experience using Parcel Motel was a very positive one and I will be using their service again in the future. 

Tayto Cheese and Onion Chocolate

I finally got my hands on the limited edition Cheese and Onion chocolate made by Tayto. Apparently there's only 100,000 of them going to be made available and myself with others had been looking for them everywhere!

I saw them on sale in Superquinn, Ranelagh so I picked up three. At 99c each they were expensive! Also, the picture makes them look quite large- This is diceiving! They are about the size of an animal bar (tiny, I know!) but a bit thicker.

Tayto Milk Chocolate with Cheese and Onion Crisps

Apparently generic milk chocolate with a Tayto wrapping has been on sale for over a year at the Tayto park. Also apparently there are people who mix chocolate with cheese and onion crisps on a regular basis? Sounds awful... And it IS awful! This chocolate bar was the worst thing I have ever tasted! I managed to swallow one square only- And I'm not one to ever not eat chocolate!

My conclusion: I'm glad I bought, tried, took a picture etc... But never again!!

Great White at the Aussie Barbecue, Dublin.

 The Aussie Barbecue, just off Harcourt Road, does a student discount, buy one get one free. It works out great, a burger is only €4/€5 then! I've tried the Meat Box before and I have to say, I'm not the biggest fan. Everyone raves about it, and I suppose, it is cool that you can order something completely carb-free but I didn't like it. It consists of a breast of chicken (I don't like barbecued chicken, I think it always just tastes of charcoal), one 1/2 pound hamburger patty (nothing wrong with this, just hamburgers aren't so great without a bun and/or sugary sauces!) and pulled pork (the pulled pork is amazing).

My advice, if you're a fan of pulled pork, is to order the Hog Boss. It's just a load of pulled pork in a hot dog bun but, again, the pulled pork is amazing. 

On the walls in the diner there's a poster for the 'Great White Challenge'- See how many Great White burgers you can eat in 60 minutes! So far there is only one challenger on the board and he ate three. I decided to order the great white to see what it was all about.

Yummy Katie-sized Burger!

It looks like any normal burger but each of those two beef patties are apparently 1/2 a pound each. So there's one pound of beef plus, you can't see them but, there's 4 slices of bacon. My immediate thought was that I could definitely eat more than three of these...

I went to take my first bite but quickly realised I couldn't open my mouth wide enough to fit the burger in! No problem, I'll just eat it with a knife and for, sorted. As you can see I quickly devoured half of it!

Halfway Through

And yes, I finished the whole thing- I never leave food on my plate!

All Gone!

Ok, afterwards I wasn't so sure that I could eat three. I'm not sure though. If I had an hour I think I might have been able to... However, I'm not sure if I want my name to be on a restaurant wall for being a glutton!

Nick's Coffee Ranelagh

I swear,  the tastiest coffee in Dublin is to be got only from Nick's coffee house in Ranelagh. It's tiny: just one barista squashed into a corner and only a few benches outaide. So hipster! It's amazing coffee though. This morning there was a queue out the door! 

Also at Nick's,  when you buy coffee beans you get a free Americano! Yay! 

Boots can be really good value!

I absolutely love Boots. I don't know why, other chemists/pharmacies don't interest me nearly as much. When I go in for one item I always come out with ten- There are so many essentials that I absolutely must buy right there and then! I also find myself impulsively buying whatever's on special: Normally they do a 3 for 2 offer- But as a student buying two of something is expensive for me!

Today there were some products that I needed to buy in Boots so I wrote myself a list and I stuck to it! My skin has been awfully dry lately which has never really happened before- I think I'm finally growing out of my youthful 'don't need a beauty regime' phase and now I'll have to start looking after my skin! (For example, Mr Kizzy's roommate once recommended a beauty product to me, it was some sort of face brush thing. I told her to "bear in mind that I don't even use a face wash!" and she couldn't believe how lucky I was to have such naturally nice skin. I think those days are coming to an end lately though!) I decided to buy a big tub of moisturizer  a bar of Dove moisturizing creme to use instead of soap for a while and also a tinted, daily moisturizer to try to give myself a bit of a healthy glow. 

I made such a huge saving in store! I was going to buy Nivea but then I spotted other brands which were on sale. In the end I chose a tinted moisturizer by Garnier and a nourishing moisturizer from Dove, along with a beauty cream bar. 

Garnier Summer Body

Moistuerising Lotion: Sun-Kissed Look

Dove Firming, Nourishing Lotion

Can't Wait To Improve The Elasticity!!

Dove Beauty Cream Bar (Surely it should be 'creme'?)

Gratuitous voucher for No.7 that never gets used!

 The Garnier bottle was €9.99 but I was charged €4.99 and the Dove was also on sale at €3.34 as opposed to the original price of €6.69.

Look at those savings!

From looking at the receipt it appears that the Dove beauty bar was free of charge? I'm confused... 

Total savings today: €9.29!

My student travelcard gets me a nice 10% off in Boots so that gave me another little boost of a saving!

I'm happy with my purchases so!

DoNotTouch.org - A really cool project!

Click here for your curser to be part of a crowd-sourced music video! It's a really cool idea, it tells you where on the screen to point and it records your mouse moves and adds your cursor to the video! It's so cool to see all the mouses working together to create a smiley face- Even though the users cannot communicate with each other!

Of course, there are some people who like to feel special and so they try to stand out by not putting the curser where it should go. Well done you. 

I'm not sure if it's just my computer or if everyone experience this, but I found that the other cursers started moving before the instructions flashed up on screen. So this annoyed me a bit.

I wish I'd seen it when there weren't many cursors involved at all though...

Graffiti on a bus stop in Ashtown, Dublin.

I thought these looked quite cool! 

Don't get me wrong, I don't condone vandalism in any way at all but I thought these sprayed on images were quite artistic. I'm not really sure as to the symbolism behind them though...

Graffiti on an Ashtown bus stop, Dublin 7

Dublin Bus number 1969

Ashtown, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

It's that time of year again... Study, study, study...

I hate exams and I hate assignments. It's a wonder that I've managed to do six consecutive years in university now! I'm currently gearing up to finish the college-based part of my Msc and I'm desperately trying to rescue my grade up to an acceptable level.

I've set up my desk with everything I need: Laptop, pens, paper, water, coke zero etc...

I find one way to motivate myself is to have all my deadlines visually represented in front of me. It's a lot easier to get scared of an upcoming assignment due date if I can see it on a calendar rather than thinking "Oh, I've got five more days before I need to start that!". 

'To Do' lists are always a great help also! This is my to do list for the next few weeks in general.

My Calendar with Deadlines Marked and To Do List

I also like to 'drill down' into my to do list to make it more attainable. For example, I also have a daily to do list. I find that it's very motivational to see things being checked off your list so I always add a few things that I know I'll definitely get done, such as have a shower! It makes me feel better!

Also if I have a very large job I'll break it down into parts. I've done this with some videos on Backbone.js that I need to watch, There are four of them and each one is at least half an hour long. By ticking off each one as I got it motivates me to tick off the whole assignment on my daily to do list!

Nikon D3100 Non VR Kit Camera - Black.

I'm going to be making quite a large purchase tomorrow morning!! Yep, that's right, I'm getting myself my first digitial slr camera! I've wanted one for so long now, and finally I found one within my price range: Check out this amazing deal on at argos!!

Can you believe it?! A whopping €205 off! 

There was a bit of drama actually acquiring a reserve code for this product. Mr. Kizzy came upon the deal on boards.ie, a really good Irish message board site. Unfortunately by the time he saw it the deal had already been live for a few days. I quickly searched every argos store in Ireland (this was around lunchtime yesterday) and found none for sale at all- Sold out everywhere! Later that evening, however, I checked again and actually found a few available. There were none in stock in Dublin but we reserved one in Sligo and also in Monaghan. Then we had to devise a plan to get to either Sligo or Monaghan! The problem was that you can only reserve an item for one day. This meant that at 6pm today those cameras we reserved went back on sale online. We figured it also meant that cameras in other stores might go back online too!

This evening I rushed to the computer as soon as I could to check if there were any to be got within reasonable distance of us (we can't really be skipping college at the moment, lot's of work to do!). I found one in Dun Laoghaire so I quickly reserved that one. I then rang Mr. Kizzy excited that I had one within travel distance of us! He replied that he had reserved one in Portlaoise also (We have a friend there who could have picked it up for us)! Spoiled for choice! It was only after clicking around a bit after that I came upon one available where else but in the middle of Dublin city centre! What luck!

This item also includes 35euro cash back from Nikon, amazing!

I'll offer the reserve codes I'm not using up on boards.ie in case if anyone wants to use them. Here are the stats for the camera:

I'll make sure to post a review as soon as I can!! 

Distance to Mars

I came across a really cool website the other day. It's DistanceToMars.com. You start off by clicking the arrow in the bottom and it then shows you how far away the moon is from Earth (in pixels) if Earth were 100pixels wide. It's quite far away!

Then you click the arrow again and it shows you how far away Mars is. I'm not going to ruin any surprises, but let's just say the result is astonishing!

I'm always fascinated by how vast the universe is. It's almost impossible for a human brain to imagine the size of the universe, in fact, I'm pretty sure it is impossible. Mars is our nearest planet and it's a mighty 225 million kilometres (on average). That's a lot of space between us! 

I feel very small when I think of space. It's scary! I also think it's very self-centred when people say that don't believe in aliens. All that space and time going on that we have no idea about- There must be other life out there!

PS. TIL (Today I Learned!) that Mars is smaller than Earth? I can't believe I never knew this!

I'm A Gym Bunny!

Ever since I pretty much gave up cardio I love going to the gym! I was always scared to touch any of the weights in case I bulked up or got fat or turned into a man with a penis overnight! I was convinced, however, to start lifting and I can't believe the results! It's so easy to lose fat! I also have some sort of resemblance to a booty now- I always had a pancake bottom! Flat Ass!

It's healthy to build up muscle, it improves your metabolism in a huge way.

Barbie With Her Dumbbells :)

Here's what I did in the gym yesterday:

• 10 minutes rowing: 
• 2061metres
• Barbell Squat:
• 5 sets of 5 reps at 40kg 
• 2 sets of 5 reps at 42.kg
• Dumbbell Bicep Curl: 
• 5 sets of  reps at 7kg 
• 2 sets of 2 reps at 8kg
• Barbell Deadlift:
• 3 sets of 5 reps at 42.5kg 
• 3 sets of 5 repts at 45kg
• Tricep Pushdown (Rope Attachment): 
• 1 set of 6 reps at 35kg 
• 4 sets of 5 reps at 40kg
• Benchpress (Smith Mechine): 
• 2 sets of 5 reps at 25kg 
• 3 sets of 5 reps at 22.5kg
• Planks: 
• Three 30 second planks!

Immediately afterwards I always drink a protein shake, just to make myself feel cool of course!

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How To: Glycolic Foot Mask (Softsole, Botanical Choice, Penneys/Primark etc)

It's easy! Just follow these simple steps!

You will need:

Two Foots!

Two Old Socks!

Sellotape!

A Glycolic Peel Mask!

1) Unpack the contents of the packet. The one I got from Penneys/Primark contained only the two plastic socks!

2) Cut the top off one of the plastic sockeens

3) Place your foot into the sockeen!

4) Using a piece of sellotape... 

Secure the sockeen around your foot snugly...


5) Pull an old sock over your foot and the sockeen

Voila! You're ready to relax for 60 to 90 minutes! I recommend 90!

6) After waiting the correct time, wash your feet with warm water and soap! 

 That's it! In 5 to 7 days your feet should now get their snake on and begin molting! Enjoy!