29:09:14 Me time!
My kids will be mad when they read this blog post!
This morning the family car was booked in for a service. The garage is within walking distance of a shopping centre. It was an early booking and I offered the kids to get dressed and come with me or stay home and "veg" Can you guess what they chose?
Fast forward on an hour. The car was booked in and I had done a couple of small errands and still had some time to pass. Then I spotted this little box of Lily O'Brien chocolates! They are made in Ireland and I felt it was my duty as an Irish mother to buy them and support this amazing Irish company. I sat in a cafe and sipped a cappuccino in peaceful serenity while slowly savouring each and every one of these cute chocolates. It was a stolen half hour of pure "Me time" which I enjoyed every minute of.
The rest of the day was not as calm as this lovely start suggests. It involved bills, supermarket shopping, cleaning and a car who's low tire pressure safety alarms kept sounding as I drove home, requiring me to pull onto the hard shoulder and phone through to the garage for assistance. But you don't want to know all that and I don't want to remember that part of the day. I just want to remember my little piece of heaven...
Lily O'Brien's Chocolates started life as the brainchild of Mary Ann O'Brien who, having
recovered from a debilitating illness in the early 1990s, discovered her true
passion for all things chocolate. Embarking on a journey of discovery, Mary Ann
honed her chocolate-making skills among world class chefs and chocolatiers in
both South Africa and Europe before starting her own mini enterprise from her
Kildare kitchen in 1992. With little more than two saucepans, a wooden spoon
and her then toddler, Lily, acting as production manager Mary Ann began to
create high quality chocolate recipes for friends and family.
Not satisfied
with the scale of her enterprise she soon expanded in the hope of positioning
excellent Irish chocolate on the world map. Naming the company after her
daughter Lily seemed like the most natural thing to do at the time and since
then Lily O'Brien's chocolates has established itself as one of Ireland's
best-loved chocolatiers.
With Mary
Ann still at the helm of the business, the passion that first inspired her
chocolate honeycomb hedgehogs is still present in every aspect of the business
and family values remain at the very core of Lily O'Brien's. Based in the heart
of Co. Kildare, Mary Ann and her team continue to develop mouth-watering chocolate
creations using the finest quality ingredients.
"Each
and every chocolates has been created from the passion and pleasure we all
share - we hope you enjoy tasting them as much as we enjoy making them for
you!"
