David Condon Finds

LEGO collecting as an adult can get out of hand very quickly. What starts as one set for nostalgia, display, or a bit of quiet building time can slowly turn into helmets, UCS sets, retired models, display shelves, and a mental list of sets you still hope to buy one day. That is more or less how it happened for me. I didn’t start writing about LEGO because I planned to become a LEGO expert. I started because certain sets kept catching my attention. Some were sets I already owned. Some were sets I had built. Others were sets I kept looking at online and wondering whether they were worth the money, the space, and the time. This page brings together my LEGO posts in one place. Some of these posts are based on my own LEGO collection and building experience. Others are collector-style or affiliate posts where I look at LEGO sets that may appeal to adult collectors, Star Wars fans, film fans, and people who simply enjoy display-worthy models. If you are interested in LEGO Star Wars, UCS ...

Starting a new blog is exciting in a very particular way. You’ve written your first proper posts, and hit publish with the quiet hope that something will happen fairly quickly. Your heart and soul is poured out in those first few lines, and your words feel as honest as you can make them. Those first few posts usually feel great too. They’re often better written than you expect, more thoughtful, more structured. You add internal links where they make sense, you avoid fluff, and you genuinely feel like you’ve put something useful out into the world. I have already written a broader post about my blogging journey from complete beginner to a slightly more experienced writer . This post is a little different. It is more of a one-year check-in: what has improved, what still feels slow, what I have learned, and what it is really like trying to keep a small blog moving when Google has not fully decided what to do with it yet.

Ireland is not always easy to explain from the outside. Some parts are obvious: the scenery, the music, the history, the pubs, the weather, the humour and the endless ability to turn a simple conversation into a story. Other parts are harder to pin down. Why do Irish people ask “what’s the craic?” as if that is a completely normal thing to say? Why did so many of us spend years learning Irish in school and still feel awkward trying to speak it? Why does the 1990s still feel like such a special time in modern Irish memory? And what does it actually mean to be Irish today, when the country has changed so much but still holds on to so many older habits, jokes, contradictions and traditions? This page gathers together some of my Irish posts in one place. Some are light-hearted. Some are nostalgic. Some are more reflective. All of them come from my own experience of living in Ireland and looking at the small things that shape Irish life. A generated image but it gets my points across. Irela...

Craft supplies can be one of those things you do not think about until you suddenly need them. A bit of ribbon for a gift. A ready-made bow for a hamper. Wedding ribbon for invitations or favours. Stickers for Christmas crafts. Something small to finish a package properly without having to order from three different places or wait weeks for delivery. That is one of the reasons I started writing more about craft supplies on David Condon Finds. Image created for this post to represent the kind of ribbon, bows, stickers and craft supplies I write about. The actual products I sell are carefully selected, good-quality supplies that I would be happy to use myself. Why I Now Supply Craft Products I'm a woodturner by trade, which might seem like an odd starting point for posts about ribbon, bows and craft supplies. But through my main business, David Condon Woodcraft, I also stock a growing range of practical craft items. Over time, I found myself answering the same kinds of questions agai...

LEGO is not just something children play with anymore. For many adults, LEGO has become a hobby, a display collection, a nostalgia trigger, a design interest, and in some cases, even a form of investment. That does not mean every LEGO set is going to become valuable, or that collecting LEGO is a guaranteed way to make money. Far from it. But it does explain why adult LEGO collecting has changed so much. Some sets are bought to build and enjoy. Some are bought to display. Some are kept sealed in boxes. Others disappear from shelves, retire, rise in price, and suddenly become much harder to find. That growing value has also brought a darker side to the hobby. LEGO is now valuable enough to attract thieves, resellers, and organised retail crime in some places. That sounds strange if you still think of LEGO as a simple toy, but once you look at the prices of retired sets, it starts to make sense. This hub post brings together my LEGO collecting posts that look at the bigger picture: ad...

Tralee is one of those towns that can be surprisingly easy to underestimate. For some people, it is a shopping town. For others, it is a base for exploring Kerry. Some people pass through on the way to Dingle, Killarney, North Kerry or West Kerry, while others come for the Rose of Tralee, a weekend away, a family visit, a night out, or a few days of slower exploring. But Tralee is also a real working town. People live here, work here, eat here, shop here, socialise here and make a life here. That is why I think local guides can be useful. Not the polished tourist-board version of a place, but the practical version. Where to eat. What to do when it rains. Where to go for a pint. Where to find a thoughtful gift. Where to grab lunch. What to do when you are tired, hungry, or trying to fill a few hours. Illustration inspired by Tralee, created for this local guide to things to do, places to eat, pubs and gift ideas. AI-generated. Over time, I have written several Tralee-focused posts on ...