Hi guys, it’s been a few weeks since we last posted anything so we figured it’s time for a bit of an update. We’ve been extremely busy over the past few weeks travelling around Ireland and also trying to plan our upcoming wedding. This has meant that the blog has taken a bit of a back seat but don’t worry, we’re ready to get back into the writing grove. We thought we’d give you a little insight into what we’ve been doing over the past few months and let you know what you can expect to see over the coming weeks here on Pikalily.
Exploring the sights of Ireland
We’ve been busy travelling around different parts of both the north and south of Ireland from September and look forward to sharing our experiences with you in the coming weeks and months. This has been a mix of a culinary adventure but also exploring what this great island of ours has to offer. The places we have visited over the past few weeks include Belfast, Antrim, Derry, Cork, Dublin and Kilkenny, while we will be visiting Waterford next weekend and can’t wait. Check back again soon to find out a little bit more about our recent travel adventures – we’ve had a ball.
Plenty of dining out
You’d think we’d be busy saving for our wedding but we’ve been doing plenty of dining out during our journeys and also around different parts of Northern Ireland as we continue to search for great local and national eateries to let you know about. Some of our recent dining experiences include the popular Balloo House in Co. Down, Bushmills Inn in Antrim, Jim Edwards in the town of Kinsale, Co. Cork and The Potted Hen in Belfast. We’ve certainly been getting our fix of top quality food and getting plenty of inspiration to take into the kitchen. We’ll be publishing these reviews before Christmas and there are some crackers among them!
Getting the Pikalily name out and about
We’ve also been busy over the past month or two getting more exposure for what we do and have been invited to a number of food and cooking related shows, as well as taking a tour of the wonderful Hercules Brewery in Belfast, home of the popular Yardsman Beer. We’ll be letting you know all about these trips as well in the coming weeks and hope to plan many more of these in 2015.
Blog Awards Ireland 2015
As mentioned previously, we had been listed as a finalist for best food blog in the 2015 Irish Blog Awards. We never expected to get this far after only one year and although we didn’t win on the night, we were just delighted to be up there with some great Irish food blogs. We’d like to extend a big congratulations to Conor Bofin and One Man’s Meat which was not only awarded best food blog but also best overall blog. I suppose if you’re going to get beat, it’s nice to get beat by the best 🙂
We’ll certainly be back and hopefully next year we’ll have something to celebrate.
New recipes on the way
We’ve also been busy in the kitchen creating some new recipes as we ram up our efforts for our ultimate goal of publishing our own food book with recipes from the Pikalily kitchen. We’ll be sharing these in the run up to Christmas and hope to add to them with some seasonal festive recipes for you all to enjoy.
Finally, we’re getting married soon
Last but not least, our wedding is quickly approaching and the planning of it has taken up a lot of time recently (Helen’s time more so than anything). We hope to share our big day with you all in some format and are using our honeymoon to Paris, Barcelona and Madrid as a chance to continue our food and travel adventure. We can’t wait to start a new chapter in our lives and look forward to what promises to be an even busier 2015.
Don’t forget to connect with us on Facebook and Twitter where you can keep up with our food and travel adventures.
Welcome to Pikalily, an award-winning food, travel and lifestyle blog. We are Nial and Helen, a happily married couple from Northern Ireland, who share a passion for food and travel among many things. We became parents to our beautiful boy Lewis in 2017. Follow our adventures through the blog.
