After the excitement of the engagement on Monday, our main focus and attention was straight over to our New Years eve fancy dress. I was going to go dressed as Oscar Pistorius (controversial I know) and Uns as "Here's Johnny" from the film The Shining. So yesterday morning the two of us headed off into Clon to grab a few things there, followed by lunch at De Barra's Pub. After eating we made our way back and into Skibb for a few last minute items for last night. While out there we decided to pop into Liss Ard Estate and have a chat about it being a possible wedding venue. Certainly not wasting time are we? :) After chatting to them there we headed home for dinner and prep out costumes.

We all met up at Noel and Megan's place first for some snacks and pre-drinks, as well as a few celebratory glasses of champagne for myself & Uns, as well as Declan & Jane and Dan & Orla. We were there a good time before making our way down to Mary Anne's for the build up to the New Year's countdown around the tree, which unsurprisingly was a few minutes after the actual strike of midnight!

We all had a really good night there, with a good mix of fancy dress outfits - Megan as Mr T, Noel as Michael Fatley, Lorraine as The Mask, Brian as the cleaning lady Consuela from Family Guy, Dan and Orla as the Royal Family as well as the Red Devil, Smarty Pants and the Incredible Hulk. In the end it was Megan who won the bottle of champagne for her costume, and probably deserved to as well.

This morning was a slightly slow start to the day as could be expected, and then after breakfast and after a bit of lazing around the house, we made our way down to Noel and Megan's place to see the others off who were heading back up to Cork and Dublin. After a little while down there with everyone we returned back up to the house, had some dinner, packed our bags and headed up to the airport with Claire and Michael who were driving back up to Cork then. We were quite lucky this evening with the weather being OK for us, glad we weren't flying Monday or anytime this week - the forecast is meant to be pretty bad out there. Certainly not looking forward to work tomorrow, but at least it's just the two days this week and then we got a weekend to look forward to!