Tiger Stores Have Opened in Belfast & It's a Real Life World of Kitsch

Scandinavian brand Tiger have opener their first Northern Irish store, in Castle Lane in Belfast (near Lush). We discovered  Tiger in the summer in Dundalk, and spent a small fortune on bits & bobs for crafting, homeware, toys, etc. and the best thing is the price, it's tiny!

Here is a snap shot of just some products Belfast has on sale for the Christmas season. I got two rolls of tapestry print wrapping paper, £1 each! The matching advent calendar is for me too.

I've picked up an advent from Lidl which you build yourself into a little village of Christmas houses. So I was able to buy some little fillers for that for Smix in Tiger, growing elf washcloth, set of stamps etc. I also have some fun stuff from today for him to make a vlog about. You can find it at the end of this post.

These are sweet. You stuff them with your cotton wool balls that poke out the back as the bunny's tail. 

Dozens of quirky napkins got Christmas and all year round, £1. 

Also a great selection of bargain cards. 

Tiger don't have an online store, but they do show the items that are new in store that month.

I brought Smix a bag of goodies, here is his latest video. The audio is overlapped at the start but evens out quite quickly.

Eddie Rockets, Dundalk Shopping & The Armagh Planetarium

So I shared with you our lovely accommodation at Dan White's, but what did we get up to during our stay? The next few days I'll share with you what you can do down in the Kingdom of Mourne & surrounding area. Of course there are the outdoor pursuits like mountain hikes, biking trails etc. but if you've young children there are plenty of family activities too.  

Here is a good day's worth of fun should you have rainy weather during your stay. Newry is about a half hour drive from Dan White's and the drive comprises the Mourne Coastal Route which is outstandingly beautiful. You pass through picturesque towns like Warrenpoint where you can stop for fish & chips or an icecream.

Reaching Newry & following the signs to Dublin will bring you to The Quays and Buttercrane, the city's main shopping centres which are side by side. Both centres parking is paid, but it's about a pound for an hour, so it's not terribly steep. 

The Quays has Eddie Rockets, the first of the 1950s' themed restaurant chain to open North of the border. We hit it up for breakfast AND dinner. Their milkshakes are famously amazing, and I highly recommend the bacon and cheese fries. 

The Quays has stores like Topshop, Lush, H&M and Debenhams. Crossing over to Buttercrane you'll find Mark & Spencer and an absolutely massive Primark. Buttercrane also has some kids' fun going on during the summer months, plus an igloo where you can get your photo taken with Elsa from Frozen for £6. 

Leaving Newry & following the motorway to Dublin will lead you over the border to Dundalk, about a further half an hour drive. For those who aren't from Northern Ireland and might be planning a visit, crossing the border is simple. There's no passport check or anything, in fact you only know you've crossed over when the road signage changes from miles to kilometres.

Keep an eye on your phone network too. It may be worth switch off data unless your contract allows roaming, as your phone will switch to an Irish carrier even around Newry. 

Our destination in Dundalk was Marshes, their huge shopping mall. I didn't have a sat nav or map, I just winged it, and found it easily enough. Again you pay for parking, €1 an hour or so. The highlight of Marshes for us was Tiger, which I mentioned before. A really cool home ware store. You'll also find a huge Dunnes, a big Primark (called Penney's in the south) and lots more fashion stores. 

We left Dundalk to cross the border again and head toward Armagh. A good tip here is to NOT follow the signs to Armagh you see round Dundalk town. We followed that route and it was a twisty country road that took about an hour. I think you'd be quicker to fly up the motorway to Newry again & through to Armagh that way, on roads where you can do 70 mph rather than twisting through tiny towns doing 45 mph most of the way. Michael got really car sick that route too.

But eventually we got to Armagh & the planetarium. It's free to come in and walk about the displays, but you must be over age six to enter the dome shows. They run on the hour and we arrived in time to catch the 2pm show. Each programme runs for about 35 minutes, so we ended up staying and watching the 3pm & 4pm shows too, making rockets in the crafting room in between.

The shows cost around £5 per person & are well worth catching. We had a lot of fun that afternoon, and have decided we will call back again when we are down again in a few weeks' time. 

Scrapbooking. Making Memories in the Digital Age.

Do you ever get that awful sinking feeling imaging if your iPhone got wiped and those thousands of personal, family photos you never quite get round to backing up got deleted? I've an iPhone 4 that has about three Christmases worth of photos on it, literally thousands that I haven't backed up. I try to reassure myself that I've enough of a breadcrumb trail of uploads on here, Facebook, Instagram etc. There's no way I could afford to print, or even store the amount of photos I take these days. 

So a compromise is to create a snapshot of days out, by Scrapbooking. 

When Michael was little, I picked up a photo album in TK Maxx in the bargain section, and started Scrapbooking. I kept the odd nursery scribbling, tickets to events we would go to, that sort of thing. I think I got two books filled, then it tailed off.  

Here are a couple of examples of those first books. 

Now that we are starting our first summer as just a twosome, I've decided to start Scrapbooking again, to keep a record of our memories to pour over once Michael has flown the nest some day. 

I bought this lovely paper in Tiger in Dundalk (http://www.tigerstores.co.uk) and I think I'll pick up some more when we are down in a couple of weeks' time again.

The scrapbook is actually a photo album from Easons. It has dividers for photos, but they can be separated to slide the full page of paper in instead. It was a hefty £15.99, but TK Maxx didn't have anything suitable either.

The backing paper is a little too big, but I used the off cuts to make a pretty paper chain for the kitchen. 

While I have mentioned Tiger, I must sing its praises. Until yesterday I didn't know it even existed, never mind not knowing that there was a shop out there that sold everything in my taste ever. I literally could decorate the whole house from just that store. I can't wait to visit again and pick up more goodies.  

This Tealight bottle was something crazy like just €2. The felt bowl I bought to keep tea lights in was a similar price.

Their cards and postcards are two for €1 and I picked up this holographic bird and orange frame. 

This was my entire haul, but I will be back, and with a bigger basket! The Eames' atomic over-the-door hanger was just €4 MADNESS!