Stripes & Leather

top: zara pants: river island coat: cos boots: h&m divided lipstick: sephora

A couple of days ago, my friend and I decided to go to a shop's Christmas party in London after I received an email about the event happening. (more about this another time) Even though I kept my outfit for that evening quite simple, I still felt like sharing it, as I feel that even more basic and simple outfits (which is honestly the kind of outfit I wear a lot) should be posted on the blog. Whenever I'm feeling uninspired or am in a hurry, I somehow always opt for stripes - they're just the perfect piece to build an outfit around! Paired with my current favourite pants, some lipstick and heeled boots for a change (I literally haven't worn heels in months), I was ready to go!

I'm currently quite busy with Uni work, as I'm aiming to finish an assignment before going home in less than 2 weeks (exciting!) and I'll be going on a weekend trip on Friday, so I'm trying to fit photo editing together with listening to audiobooks (yes, even as a literature student you get tired of reading sometimes) and write up blog posts when I have some spare minutes, trying to avoid turning into one big procrastination session, so bear with me, I'll hopefully manage to update regularly nonetheless.

White & Grey Monochrome

skort: h&m divided sweater: new look shoes: nike coat: cos bag: bershka

Yes, this is the same sweater as the one I wore in my previous post in another colour. I had a tough time deciding whether to buy another grey sweater or to go for something more original and go for the baby blue one, so I did what every other shopaholic would do: I bought both, haha! I have seriously not regretted it since though, as I wear both of them on every occasion presenting itself to wear a comfy sweater and having the freedom to leave the house without a scarf. (So basically every day, blaming the awful November weather)

I kept the rest of the outfit quite simple and ended up with only white and grey shades but I really like the outcome and this is a great base to add a pop of colour by wearing lipstick or some more fancy accessories!

Vegan Eats | Amsterdam: De Bolhoed

It is no secret that I'm a big foodie and that one of my favourite things to do when travelling to places I haven't been before is eat myself through the city. Especially since I've moved to the UK, I've discovered new cuisines and having transitioned into veganism at the beginning of the year, I am even more passionate about finding good food without any animal products. Naturally, this means that I am more than happy to try out vegetarian/vegan or even fully vegan restaurants and cafés. I've already been to one or two such cafés/restaurants on trips or here in Brighton itself, when I decided to create a new category on my blog revolving about food (surprise!), vegan food in particular. While not everyone will be finding themselves at the same destinations I'll be featuring in this new blog post category, it might still work as some kind of inspiration. Having said all this, this post will be the first in my new category: Vegan Eats! I will mostly cover vegetarian/vegan places I ate at whilst on a trip in another city but I'll definitely also include the one or other good spot in Brighton. Let me know if you like this idea of the new category and of course don't forget to tell me if you end up at one of the places I wrote about on the blog! Enough blabbering now, here's the first Vegan Eats post...

Amsterdam Photo Diary

I thoroughly enjoyed my 2 day getaway to Amsterdam and returned with way too many pictures of houses and foods as usual. Most of the city my friend and I explored by walk, (we only used the tram and taxi once when we went out on Saturday night) which is by far my favourite way of discovering a city I haven't been to before. I love the feeling of being tired but happy in the evening after having walked kilometers and kilometers or the reward of finding a cute café to refuel with good coffee and tasty sandwiches, warming up from the autumnal weather outside. While we did a lot of the touristy things, aka a lot of walking by the canals, going to the red light district, etc., we decided not to go to the Anne Frank museum due to the huge queue and the weather being too sunny and nice not to spend time walking around the city. The Anne Frank house is still on my must-visit-list though, so I'll definitely have to pay this beautiful city another visit! I really fell in love with the vibe of the city and my friend and I were often reminded of Berlin but also found a lot of things that reminded us of Scandinavian city, however Amsterdam still remains wonderfully unique. If you follow me on Instagram, you will have seen other snapshots from my mini-holiday, but I thought about maybe making a post with Instagram/pictures taken with my phone - haven't fully decided on that yet!

PS: I also discovered my love for juiced beetroot and am now obsessed with it in combination with other fruits and veggies and in absolute need of a juicer for myself... anyone looking a Christmas present for me this year?

Baby Blue

sweater: new look pants: river island bag: bershka boots: h&m coat: cos

If you're following my Facebook page or Instagram, you might know that I flew to Amsterdam with a friend yesterday evening. While I will be posting pictures of our stay here as well, I thought that I'd start with sharing my today's outfit. I got this gorgeous blue turtleneck sweater from New Look 2 days ago and it's already one of my favourite things in my closet. I'm really surprised by the amount of nice sweaters you can find in New Look lately, as I hadn't been particularly drawn to that store since I moved to the UK. I feel like I should add that this sweater is a size 16 though, haha - I didn't want another cropped/tight sweater, so I simply sized up and there we go!

Blog post roundup #1

After seeing and loving one of  Jane's Click these posts - basically posts containing links to different blog posts she enjoyed - I've been copy-pasting links of posts that I liked reading into a Blogger text box to make such a post myself. I lately have been feeling more of the blogging community and am really enjoying it when I discover great posts or blogs through blogs I already follow, so I decided to share some love and give you something nice to read! Do leave any links to posts that you've enjoyed lately.

• Let's talk about Instagram - A brutally honest (and so funny!) post about the truth of Instagram. Whether you love or loathe the trendy app, you'll most likely read this post with a little giggle here and there, so what's keeping you from having a look at it?
• November 2014 (Reflecting on my blog stats) - Sara discussing her goals and ambitions in blogging and how she makes sure she achieves said goals.
• 10 ways to be like Alexa Chung - Because who doesn't love a little bit of Chung in their life? Extra points to Saranne for using the coolest GIFs.
• The ugliest H&M designer cooperation pieces yet - A refreshingly different perspective on H&M cooperations of the past, including the latest one with Alexander Wang.
• Girls - Anni showing her famous ear cuffs in a cooperation with two friends. The outcome of the pictures is absolutely stunning - I legitimately thought they were right out of a fashion magazine when I saw them for the first time.

Current Favourites

1. Baked apples. I'm not usually the biggest fan of apples, I simply do not enjoy cutting one up and eating it like that. I do, however looove apple sauce and got tempted to try and bake apples when seeing some baked apple pictures on tumblr, so I decided to give it a shot. The result was more than tasty! I basically cut up 2 apples, drizzled them in rice syrup and cinnamon and poured coconut milk (not the can one though) all over them and then baked everything at approximately 180°C for 30-40 minutes. This is the perfect pick me up/comfort food after a long day spent in cold or rainy weather.

2. ZARA Perfume. Whenever it comes to beauty product, I really dislike spending a lot of money, especially regarding perfumes. For that reason, I've been purchasing ZARA perfumes for the last couple of years as they're only a fraction of the price of 'brand' perfumes but smell just as great in my opinion. I got this wonderful perfume for the ridiculous price of £10, what's not to love?

3. Heartstrings by Leighton Meester. It is no secret that I'm a huge Leighton Meester fan ever since I started watching Gossip Girl when I was 14. Finding out that she sings too a couple of years ago made me an even bigger fan of hers, even though I didn't love her music back then. Now she brought out a new album and it's absolutely beautiful. Her voice is stunning, the music is calm and soothing, yet catchy and it feels much more Leighton all around. Listen to her album here.

4. Coconut oil. I typically have quite dry skin and especially in winter I tend to get dry patches, particularly around my nose and under my eyes. I'd been reading about using coconut oil on your skin/dry patches for a while, so I decided to try it myself, given the fact that I already had it on hand anyways. While it makes my skin super smooth in the morning after I've applied some to my face before going to bed, I got terrible break outs at some points. I did some research and found out that for some people it's not the best idea to put it all over the face, so I only applied it in some parts instead of everywhere and my skin cleared up again. Now, I don't know if my break outs were connected to the coconut oil or not, but I either way am a big fan of it, simply because it's perfect to hydrate dry patches now that it's getting colder.

5. Suits. After having been told to watch Suits for 2 years but never actually doing it, I started watching it a few weeks ago and I'm absolutely hooked on it. Not only does the gorgeous Harvey Specter make it more than worth watching, but I'm also really loving the whole character development and I think I'm kind of starting to understand some law stuff?

Bloopers

Since I have been getting quite a bit of good feedback the last time that I posted 'behind the scenes' or blooper photos of outfit shots, I've been adding more funny/weird pictures to my folder and now that I finally have gathered a couple of them again, I thought I'd make another post like this! These pictures show everything from random little dances, weird face expressions and pure sillyness that you would encounter when taking pictures of me.

November Inspiration

After days of drinking too much coffee and being too tired and lazy to update the blog after having done a lot of Uni work, I am free-ish tomorrow afternoon once my essay is handed in. This'll mean no more deadlines for me until January, hopefully giving me more time to focus a bit more on the blog again. I will still be busy doing things here and there, getting a headstart on my next assignment but I'm motivated to blog more again and actually have quite a few post ideas I'm currently working on, so stay tuned and enjoy my this month's inspiration board for now. If you want to see more like this, do follow me on Tumblr  and/or Pinterest!

Simplistic: Black & Navy

sweater: monki skort: asos boots: new look via asos

As mentioned a few posts ago (in this one to be precise), I've been developing a thing for the navy-and-black-combo. I still remember reading or hearing about how you "should never wear navy and black together" but as so often in life and especially in fashion - rules are made to break. (look at little rebel me)

I'm a little bit disappointed at the quality of these pictures, but I'd been meaning to shoot pictures of this combination for a while now, so I'll just make it work this way. Obviously, it takes no great skill to put together an outfit consisting of a navy skort, black sweater and boots, but I personally look at this outfit as more of a base for inspiration than a look for itself. Considering that I only dressed up to take pictures for the blog, I felt like I put enough effort into this simply by getting out of my pyjamas on a Sunday and putting on make up, so if I actually wore this on a day where I leave the house, I'd probably add some jewellery, a big scarf, an interesting coat, etc. Do you have any favourite colour combinations at the moment?

PS: I swear I'm not as pale as I look in these pictures.. close to it, yes, but I haven't gone completely white (yet)

ALEXANDER WANG X H&M

Even though I'm a little bit late to the party (as usual), I finally took some time to really look at the collection Alexander Wang released for H&M a few days ago. I've personally never bought anything from a designer collaboration with H&M (shock of the year), simply because the prices still put me off to do so or I never really bothered to really look at what the designers had created. I'd been seeing little sneak peaks of Wang's collection on other blogs, so I kind of had an idea what was coming our way this year. Some pieces I really like, some I find absolutely hideous but in general, I love Wang's concept of sporty day-wear. One of my favourite things about the collection is probably the amount of neoprene used and the boxiness of a lot of the pieces, giving off a little bit of a masculine vibe at times, while there's still plenty of body-con dresses to be found. If I were to spend some money on the Alexander Wang x H&M collection, I'd probably buy some of the things I put together in the picture above. (even though I wouldn't actually get the backpack - it's real leather :( ) What do you think about this year's collaboration? Have you gotten yourself anything?

3 Oufits I'd like to wear

link to my polyvore

Alongside the usual black and grey palette that always comes back around this time of the year, I've been loving the combination of black and navy more and more. The skirt and cropped sweater outfit was actually inspired by my own clothes, as I'd been planning to wear something similar for a while now but never got around wearing it and taking good pictures. I'm currently too broke to afford anything new, so I got myself dreaming a little bit on Polyvore and put these 3 outfits together. I can't decide which one's my favourite though... what do you think?

PS: If you want to help out my empty wallet (or just have a sneaky look at my clothes), then go on and head over to my DEPOP! I've been adding a few items recently and more will probably be added over the next couple of days/weeks.

Leather, Knit and Fake Fur

sweater: asos pants: river island fur gilet: ebay shoes: zara bag: bershka

Today's weather is nothing like yesterday's forecast, it's rather cold and crisp but the sky is blue and the sun is shining so I immediately took the opportunity to wear some items that I won't be able to wear much when it's raining. I got my fake fur vest last Spring but never really wore it that much, especially as the only way I really liked wearing it was combined with my leather jackets. On the occasion of it being sunny, I opted to only wear a sweater underneath and I love the way it looks! To keep it simple but interesting, I added my leather pants and white shoes and bag and voilà - this is probably one of my favourite looks I've worn so far! As you might be able to tell, my friend and I took a lot of goofy pictures and it was a real pain to get some good pictures because it was always either too bright or too dark (#bloggerproblems), so I decided to make this a less serious outfit post, because why not?

Warming & comforting lentil potato dish

Happy first of November! On the occasion of the new month starting and also the fact that it's World Vegan Day today, I finally got around taking some pictures of a recipe I'd been meaning to share with you for a while now. When it comes to Autumn or even Winter, one of the most important things for me is to have warm food, especially in the evening. In my opinion, there's nothing cosier than eating a big bowl of soup or curry on a cold Autumn night. As I love cooking and experimenting, I let myself get inspired by the numerous recipe videos I watch and threw together a poatato-lentil-pea-soup/stew/curry/whatever you want to call it! It's really easy to make, doesn't require big cooking skills and can easily be adjusted with extra veggies, etc. I decided to make this a 'read more' post, so if you're interested in finding out how to make one of my currently favourite hot, comforting meals, then go ahead and click the button! Do let me know if you tried making it :)