BRIGHT IDEA Ever looked around your dull, grey office, with its bare walls and unnatural lighting, and felt your heart sink?
If so, then a work of art could make all the difference. Talbot Gallery & Studios' art-consultancy programme helps small businesses select a work of art by an emerging artist to suit a particular space; it then lends the artwork to the business for two months. There is no obligation to buy at the end of the loan, although chances are that you'll prefer not to return to bare walls. The gallery (above) is having an open day today, from noon until 3pm; you can meet artists such as Alison Pilkington, Cora Cummins, Mary A Fitzgerald and Jonathan Hunter, as well as Elaine Grainger, the gallery's owner; its first group show is also on view. The airy exhibition space is above Grainger's Bar, at 51 Talbot Street, Dublin 1, in a distinctive 1850s building. Call 01-8556599 or visit www.talbotgallery.com. Eimear McKeith
BUBBLY PEOPLE If ever there's a day to sparkle, it's a Friday. Phoenix, a bistro and wine bar on Millennium Walkway, in Dublin 1 (at the northern end of Millennium Footbridge), is holding Champagne Fridays to help workers into that feeling of post-labour liberation. Sparkling wine and champagne, chocolate-dipped strawberries and platters of meat and cheese accompany a laid-back bossa-nova band headed by Marcos Rosado, a Brazilian who works at the wine bar. There's also a heated terrace. Call 01-8727295. Nicoline Greer
FUNNY BUSINESS Gerry Mallon, a comedian and the manager of Galway's weekly comedy club, at Cuba, on Eyre Square, has decided it's time the city got in on the comedy-festival act. He is a director of Galway Comedy Festival, which takes place for the first time over the Easter bank-holiday weekend. Running from Thursday, April 13th, to Monday, April 17th, it has a line-up that includes Tommy Tiernan (below), Karl Spain, Deirdre O'Kane, Naked Camera's PJ Gallagher and Maeve Higgins, and some of the Joy in the Hood gang. There are even a couple of events on Good Friday - a great way to keep your mind off those pub-withdrawal symptoms. For details, see www.galwaycomedyfestival.com. Eimear McKeith
LIFE STORY If you want to give a little girl a present, how about making her the princess of her own kingdom, where she dances in a ballet and goes to a fancy-dress ball? Or, for a little boy, turn him into Spider-Man's sidekick in the quest to defeat Dr Octopus? The 14 Star Stories books, which cost about €20 each, including postage, incorporate your child, their friends and the town they live in. Other stories include Batman, Three Little Pigs and Where's Wally. "When kids see the book they can't believe it's about them," says SiobháRankin, who runs the business. For €12, she will also created a personalised label for a wine bottle - for grown-ups, of course - for birthdays, anniversaries and other occasions. Cheesy, perhaps, but guaranteed to bring a smile to someone's face. www.starstories.ie. Nicoline Greer
EASTER TREATS TO BUY . . . Fed up with the hollow feeling that goes with a mass-produced chocolate egg? Michel Cluizel makes some exquisite alternatives at his family-run chocolaterie, in Normandy. This milk-chocolate hen, filled with chocolate eggs, costs €19.50 from Terroirs, at 103 Morehampton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4. The Hope and Greenwood range sold at Harvey Nichols, in Dundrum Town Centre, includes many prettily packaged products, such as blue and pink - Henry and Henrietta - chickens filled with handmade chocolate and jelly eggs (€15.25), and a Spotted Dick organic chocolate bar with raisins and vanilla (€7.40). Marie-Claire Digby
. . . OR MAKE Alternatively, head for Kitchen Complements, on Chatham Street in Dublin 2, where owner Ann McNamee is today demonstrating how to make chocolate eggs, bunnies, ducks and more. For McNamee, it seems, life is not too short to stuff a chocolate, particularly when it's with liqueur-soaked fruit. The free demonstrations take place between noon and 3pm, repeated on Wednesday and Thursday. www.kitchencomplements.ie, 01-6770734. Nicoline Greer
KEEPING STATIONERY In the world of moblogs and flickr.com, you'd think the quaint pursuit of scrapbook-making would be destined for the bin. But Annamarie Redmond, who sells scrapbooking material over the web from her home in Drogheda, hopes that in Ireland it's just taking off. "Lots of people aren't comfortable with websites and blogs and all that. They prefer to handle a physical object." A scrapbook, she says, can also have a deep personal significance. "My father died when I was 15, and making a scrapbook about his life has been a great way to remember him - to explore what type of a person he was and what he liked to do. Lots of people get into scrapbooking after a bereavement or in a baby's early months. Others like to make a scrapbook of a wedding or a holiday. Using a bit of coloured paper can help capture a moment, and a newspaper cutting or a piece of jewellery gives a personal touch." Though devoted to this old-fashioned hobby, Redmond is up-to-date technologically: see her wares on www.thescrapbookstore.ie. She also runs workshops around the country. Her next one is at Arc Angel Craft Club, St Gabriel's Hall, St Gabriel's Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3, on Tuesday at 7.30pm. Admission is free. Conor Goodman
DIG DEEP If you're among the more than a million savers waiting for the day your SSIA matures, you're bound to have thought about how you might spend the cash. A new car, an extension, a long-haul holiday? What about paying for a flight, so a human-rights defender can escape danger? How about supplying seven African families with seeds and tools to grow crops? Or why not help environmentalists lobby on climate-change issues? Amnesty International, Oxfam Ireland and Friends of the Earth have got together in the hope that they, too, can cash in on the SSIA windfalls. They are asking account holders to donate €254 to one of the charities, thereby funding one of the aforementioned causes. As that's how much you'll have been squirrelling away each month for the past half-decade, you'll barely notice. Go to www.oxfamireland.org, www.amnesty.ie or www.foe.ie. Eimear McKeith
YES PLEASE Walk along Quay Street in Galway and you can't help but be stopped in your tracks by the sudden flash of continental splendour that Yes Flowers brings to the corner with Cross Street, where there are fantastic displays inside and out. Raytus Gassner (left), originally from Liechtenstein, has been in Galway for 10 years. There is always something going on in his shop; for St Valentine's Day he put up a marquee complete with red carpet, a musician singing love songs and a vast array of hearts and roses. Just now there is a spring display, to celebrate Easter, and in the first week of May the shop will be turned into a small flower-strewn chapel full of wedding notions. His work shows great sophistication and style, and the flowers and plants are original, well tended and healthy, all imported from Holland. His selection of spring flowers is particularly exotic, with ruffled tulips and soft blue primroses. Inside the heavily scented shop are handsome novelties and among the best hand-tied bouquets I've seen anywhere. Thankfully, none of them mixes bird of paradise flowers with whirly bamboo. Yes Flowers, 13 Cross Street Upper, Galway, 091-564373. Patsey Murphy