Beautiful Blog Award

The ever lover-ly Christina Lindsay of Fashion's Most Wanted hath nominated me for a the Beautiful Blog Award!  Isn't she sweet.  If you haven't seen her blog yet, stop reading this and go straight to hers!  It's filled with fascinating characters, wit and beauty! 

In tradition of the award I give seven things you may not know about me (harder than you think!) and nominate seven others to do the same!  Without further ado I declare this gems to all have beautiful blogs:

A Wolf of Insignificance

Domicidal Maniac

Mystic Domestica

Nick Haus

Victoria Thorne

Down East Dilettante

Tavarua

Onto the seven:

1.  The name of my blog comes from my ancestry.  My mother is full Irish and my father is a mix of Italian and French. "Hibernia" was the Ancient Roman name for Ireland, and "homme" of course is "man" en Francais.

(Sneem, where my Ma's Ma is from)

(Village of Monteforte, where my Pa's peeps hail from...a loud bunch)

2.  I took piano lessons for 11 years.  I never can say "classically trained."  Although I can play comfortably with sheet music, I only have one song memorized start to finish:

3. My Grandma Virginia is who I favor the most.  Our interests are pretty much identical.  She's passed now, but when she died she left me her video collection, pretty funny actually.  This was her favorite and now mine.

(Auntie Mame)

4.  As you can tell, I have an honest obsession with the 1920's.  Almost everything I do for leisure involves it in some way, be it reading, film viewing, music playin' or daydreamin'...seems I'm not alone on this one.  I've gathered that most who read this blog have a similar passion which is my favorite thing about having this blog!

(image from The Retronaut)

5.  My father wanted to make sure we were all hardworkers and had us start working early.  I started full time in summers when I was 13.  First job: pool boy.  Not exactly slave labor.

6.  When I was only 9 months old, my parents packed us up to go down to Costa Rica for a month.  This was a time when there was no Jaco Beach and Manuel Antonio was deserted jungle.  I think whet my appetite to keep traveling and always have a trip planned. 

I would spend hours and hours looking at our globe.  When anyone would come over I'd bring it out, spin it and ask the guest where they wanted to go...my older siblings still make fun of me for that.

(image by Alice Engel)

7.  When I was 19, I saved enough clams to plan a journey to South Africa alone.  Never have I been affected by a place like this, and being solo made it all the more special.  I saw some of the most beautiful (and scary) things and made a really great friend.  I recommend doing things on a whim every once in a while.  Dangerous or not.

(Side note on my pictures from South Africa:  I get off the plane, what felt like 7 days later, go to unpack and realize I forgot all my camera equipment.  I bought a few disposables and this is what I came out with.  Not too shabby!)