Interning at a fashion brand

After an initial couple of weeks of pinching-self-excitement that came with assisting at a LFW event, sitting front row at a fashion show (yeah, still can't believe that actually happened) and getting to assist during the filming of a new TV show, the hectic first impressions of London settled down and I started an internship at a fashion company. A good two months later and I've slowly picked up a routine of living and working in London, with the odd weekend trip to Brighton or abroad. Coming to London has somehow thrown me into the world of fashion magazines, show room events and volumes of clothes that leave me dizzy, and even though I've started to get accustomed to my role as an intern, some things still feel slightly crazy and perfectly normal at the same time... So here goes an attempt at giving you a glimpse what it's like to intern at a fashion company.

• Someone at Jimmy Choo was charming enough to send a thank you note for sending over clothes samples. Yes, people working at Jimmy Choo are regular people as well, but I smell "frame-and-hang-on-bedroom-wall" potential for this one.
• These jeans are not "destroyed", they are super loved destroy with a let our hem, mind you. Did you see the signature shirt in fatigue? No, not my current state - the colour, obviously. And what do you mean this t-shirt is black? It's caviar and the one over there is washed black oh and this one is true black. Got it?
• Dumbbell bicep raises are overrated. Just steam a couple of hundred shirts and you'll be on your way to arms made of steel!
• No need to pull an Andy and appear at work in a jumper too large and your grandma's skirt but when it comes to dress code, chances are that more people will be wearing jeans and trainers at the office than heels and lipstick.
• Not-so-vegan-fact: steaming cotton shirts is an absolute pain. Silk ones, however...
• Knowing what Ellie Goulding's perfume smelled like at last week's performance isn't unusual, sitting at your desk sniffing the shirt she wore, however... Serious question: does touching clothes Anna Kendrick wore bring you closer to immortality? Thought so.
• Saving cash has never been easier than when reading magazines isn't an option but compulsory as part of your job description.
• Instead of wearing a wrinkly coat that you can't be bothered to iron or get professionally treated, you can make the de-wrinkling-process a DIY project and steam it at the office once you're done with every other piece of clothing in the show room. Give it three to four hours.

5 things University has taught me

Even though it's been almost two weeks since my big graduation ceremony, it still hasn't quite hit me that my time as an (undergraduate) student has come to an end. It seems like only yesterday that I moved into my tiny on-campus room, experienced Freshers' week and got lost in Brighton's busy streets. Whilst I'm still trying to figure out what my next steps are, I can't help but compare my 18 year old pre-Uni self to 21 year old me now, having just finished her Bachelor's degree abroad. University has changed and shaped me, which sounds oh so cliché but it's also taught me a few things that I thought I'd share, including bits that might help you get through your own studies or work life.

Environmentally friendly, safe & comfortable periods: menstrual cups

Periods are a tricky business. On top of their monthly visits making you feel uncomfortable, moody, hungry, tired or simply in pain, they are also really damn expensive and wasteful. Whether you use tampons or pads (or a combination of both), the amount of waste that is produced every month, resulting not only from the product itself but also its packaging, isn't only potentially icky to dispose off but extremely bad for the environment. Apparently, the average woman uses up to 11 000 tampons during her lifetime, which all take centuries to degrade! With a box of tampons or pads costing between £2 and £5, the use of disposable feminine hygiene products amounts to a lot of money spent on periods during a lifetime, money that would definitely be more enjoyable to spend on a cup of coffee or a magazine.

I'm still here

Hello, it's me. After a a more or less unintentional break in all things blogging, I'm back. I spent most of the past two weeks in the library, trying to push through my last term and all the work that comes with it. Between trying to understand strange theories and coming up with ideas for my dissertation, I often felt uninspired and quite frankly, lazy, when it came to blogging. If you follow me on Instagram or Snapchat (noraameliie), you know that I am alive and well, but blogging simply hasn't been a priority lately. Right now, I'm on a 10 day holiday in Mallorca with my family, which doesn't mean I won't have to do any work, but I'll at least have the chance to unwind a little bit before going into full on work mode for the last couple of weeks of University. I've packed alllllll my spring clothes for Mallorca, so fingers crossed that the weather will play along and I can take some nice outfit pictures. Do you have any requests of posts that you'd like to see from me? I'm feeling very low on inspiration at the moment but I don't want the blog to become too one sided, so do let me know!

January inspiration & plans

pictures via my tumblr

One week into the new year, a total 11 000 words worth of essays submitted and I can finally enjoy the month of January. Up until this morning, my main focus (and source of stress) were my deadlines today, which have been keeping me busy for almost two months and were one of the reasons for the lack of updates. Now that I'm free until the end of January, I can finally focus on blogging a little bit more again, before my last term of University starts. 

The one thing I'm looking forward to the most this month is the trip I'll be going to in two days: I'm going back to New York City - and this time for even longer than the last time I went! I'm incredibly excited to visit the city in winter, walk around wrapped up in my coat and scarf, warm up drinking coffee in the cutest spots, go ice skating in Central Park and discover more of the city. Naturally, I will be taking lots of pictures during my stay there, so stay tuned for travel and outfit posts as well as the one or other Vegan Eats post - if that's something you'd like to see more of for New York?

At the end of the month, I'll be going home for a week to spend some more time in Luxembourg and with my family before coming back to Brighton for the craziness that the next term will bring. Apart from my deadlines today, this month seems like the perfect start of 2016! What are your plans? Are you going anywhere exciting this month or in 2016 in general? Did you make any new year's resolutions?

In 2015...

Back to reality

After having been on the road for almost four weeks, hopping from one country to the other, my friends and I finally embarked on our last long journey home on Thursday afternoon. A journey we were already prepared to be very long was stretched even more due to Germany closing its borders because of the massive flows of refugees arriving in Europe and trying to enter Germany, which ended up in us changing from trains to buses and back to trains for hours on end, adding up to a journey of a total of 26 hours. Yesterday, I mainly did errands, unpacked and re-packed and avoided any other responsibilities connected to University. I'm flying back to the UK today, my first day of class is tomorrow and I'm already knee deep in preparatory work for next week's classes. I can already feel the load of work coming towards me that third year of University brings with it and I'm both looking forward to getting back into a routine and terrified of being almost done with my undergraduate degree at the same time.

Blogging wise, I took tons of pictures during my trip, a few of which will go towards outfits posts, quite a few Vegan Eats posts which I'll probably be combining in separate posts to avoid spamming the blog with only this category of posts and lots of photo diaries. Unfortunately, I found out that quite a lot of pictures I took were taken in a different setting than I usually use yesterday, which I didn't notice until I actually got to look at the photos on a laptop screen, so the quality varies.. Either I'll fix it a bit or we'll just have a bit of variety photo wise over the next few weeks when I'll be publishing photos and texts about my trip!

The benefits of a plantbased diet

pictures via tumblr

A while ago, someone left me a comment with the idea/suggestion to tell you guys a bit about the benefits I've been experiencing since I started eating a plantbased/vegan diet. I first and foremost thought about how the change of diet affected my health and overall feeling of health, but I never really got around writing this post because I always felt like there was more to the benefits of eating a vegan diet than just a few (positive) changes in health I've observed. However, let me start with what I've noticed has changed body or health wise since I've decided to drop meat, fish, dairy and eggs...

Kindness: spread it like glitter

Today, I had my last day at work (I worked as waitress in a hotel restaurant) and while it was quite challenging and annoying at times, I definitely learned a couple of things. Not only have I gotten more open towards complete strangers or learned how to mix long drinks, but I've also had the time to experience different people (customers) and their attitude towards others. It might only seem like something small, but I really noticed how the kindness and sympathy a client showed towards me completely changed my view of them. Once more, something I like to keep in mind when I'm in a bad mood and hate everything and everyone around me, became more important to me: kindness is key. In all different kinds of situations in life. Especially when a person works at a place where they have to face strangers - customers - all day, be that in a restaurant or store, every single person can have a small impact on how that working person feels. Luckily, I had a lot of very lovely people sitting at my tables, some I even had proper long conversations with (and I did get a lot of great tips as well haha) but whenever I had unfriendly customers, I immediately felt just a tiny little bit.. pulled down. Even if the service is slower than usual - for what reason whatsoever - or someone who serves you makes a mistake, why would you make them feel even worse about it? A reassuring smile or a kind word can help in a lot of situations in life, so why would you not choose to spread kindness instead of a bad mood? 

Before this text gets too long and I start rambling, I guess the conclusion I'm trying to steer towards to is: kindness - starting at a smile or an entire conversation - can improve each and everyone's lives. Not only do you improve the person's experience you've been kind to, but (and this sounds very karma-related) it comes back to you! Be kind to others and they will (most likely) be kind to you. Not that hard, is it?

"The highest form of wisdom is kindness." - The Talmud

A new friend to join me on my travels

After reading about them on Not Your Standard, I decided that I was in need of an Olympus compact camera. For a while now, I'd been wishing to own a smaller and possibly lighter camera, something in between my DSLR camera and iPhone. Don't get me wrong, I love my DSLR camera and I've carried it around with me for hours on end (I had it with me in New York on most days for example) but while I love it to take outfit pictures and sometimes carry it with me when I'm on holiday in a new city, I often get tired of its size and weight when I always need to carry a bigger bag with me or end up with tired shoulders because I've been carrying it around all day. Especially now that I'm planning to go Interrailing with friends at the end of summer, I decided that it was time to finally take the plunge and get a smaller camera that still takes high quality pictures. Since I didn't want to spend too much money, I had a look around on Amazon and ended up buying an Olympus Pen for 200€. The pictures above are the first ones I took with it so far and I'm more than happy with the results! Now I don't have to decide whether to take my big, heavy camera or clog up my phone's memory space with hundreds of pictures when I leave the house for a longer time but want to have a camera to snap some pictures.

Instagram Diary

1: I've been using snapchat a lot more lately, so do add me if you'd like to see more snippets of my days! Find me under noraameliie 2: Instead of dragging myself to the gym, I've spent quite a bit of time going for walks around the neighbourhood in Brighton and I've discovered some cute spots here and there 3: £2 roses from Aldi - definitely need to buy flowers more often

1: Is there anything better than half a liter of freshly pressed orange juice on a sunny terrace? 2: Gorgeous sunset 2: Last weekend, my best friend from home stopped by Brighton for a day and we had a day filled with coffee, sunshine and... getting matching tattoos

1: I finally found papayas that don't cost me a fortune in Brighton, so I love having them for breakfast or a snack (I'm talking about papayas that are over a kilo in weight, by the way) 2: On Thursday, I finally made my way back to Luxembourg after almost three months. These pants were part of the most comfortable outfit ever to travel, plus I felt so chic - win win! 3: I want to keep on going for walks back home, so I had a nice one hour stroll with my friend yesterday

I've been so busy with all sorts of things, especially Uni work, that I completely neglected the blog over the past few days... On Thursday afternoon, I arrived back in Luxembourg and so far I've spent my time here relaxing and going to my first small Blogger_LU meeting yesterday. Unfortunately, I won't be able to just relax over the next 3 weeks, as I still have a lot of work to do, but it just feels so great to be home again after such a long time!

My cosy Sunday

I'm the kind of person who enjoys winter for a little while - until I start getting tired of the cold. For some reason, I always have to remind myself that I am in fact, born in winter and spring is still far away. Even though the temperatures are constantly changing at the moment, we still have  a few super rainy days here (I do live in the UK after all) and exactly those days inspired me to write up  a little post on how I spend those days and maybe share one or two things I enjoy doing on those days with you.

Instagram Diary / Life Update

 I rediscovered my love for face masks after not having used them in years | readjusting to the huge amounts of readings I have to do for Uni | travelling outfit when I flew back to the UK

 I had the most gorgeous flight of my life when flying back to the UK, we flew towards the sunset, I've never seen the sky looking this orange and amazing! | typical lunching back in Brighton | saw snow for the first time in Brighton

having coffee with my new house-mate/blogger friend/foodie/Instagram addict | decided to walk to the market last Saturday when the sun was out | Sunday pancakes 

I accidentally let it become a tad too quiet on here, but I'm planning to take outfit pictures very soon (tomorrow hopefully) and I've got another two or three post ideas, so I'll be back with more regular updates. I made the (awful, awful) mistake of going into Primark and some other shops the past few days, so I'm very excited to show you the latest addition to my wardrobe. I'll keep it short for today and wish you all a good week and talk to you soon!

CHANGES

dress: zara

As you've probably noticed over the last few days, I recently decided to invest in a good blog theme and purchased one on Etsy. I'm still not a hundred percent done/happy with the theme and changing small bits and bobs here and there but it feels good to have changed my blog's theme to something else after having a very similar theme for years now. We're already halfway through January, which means that it might be just a tad late for New Year's Resolutions, but since I'm not necessarily a big fan of those anyway, I thought I'd share some things that I want to change/start doing in 2015 that have been crossing my mind lately. Towards the end of 2014, I started organising myself better in order to create better blog content and I definitely want to keep this up - making a Facebook page (which hit 100 likes yesterday, woo!) and changing my blog theme is part of my motivation to keep regular, better quality posting up. However, I've also got some more personal changes I want to make this year (or generally in the future, actually)

Life Update

 exploring the neighbourhood and discovering the cutest houses / love living near the seaside

 typical airport stays: coffee and magazines / left over sushi & ID magazine for lunch

 wise words in a club in Amsterdam / autumny ground, even though the temperatures lately have been feeling awfully wintery

 random outfit / discovered 42 Juice in Brighton a few days ago, they sell all kinds of juices and smoothies - my friend and I got a coffee and matcha shake 

Heal's furniture store Christmas party in London - lots of free champagne, food tastings and laughs

the seaside is the most stunning at sunset

On another note: I'm flying to Zurich tomorrow! I'm beyond excited, even though I'm a bit intimidated by the temperatures we'll have there. Any tips on places to go/see?

10 facts about me

1. I hate aldente pasta, I cannot stand it when it's too hard and it tastes almost exactly as if I was eating it raw! Same goes for rice - hard, barely cooked rice is an absolute nightmare for me.

2. My right front tooth is longer than my left one and even though I generally don't care about it, it really bugs me when you can see it on pictures!

3. When I sneeze, I usually sneeze at least two, and sometimes even up to five times in a row. My entire family finds it absolutely hilarious, my brother even says that my sneezes are cute, haha

4. I absolutely hate being late, it makes me incredibly nervous and uncomfortable. I sometimes think that I feel like this because I know exactly how annoying it is to have to wait for someone when they're late, as I'm used to be somewhere early, since I live quite far from the city when I'm in Luxembourg.

5. I wouldn't say that I have a phobia of spiders, but they disgust me so much. I can manage to kick out smaller ones if they're in my room/house but as soon as I see a bigger one, I freak out and have to leave the room, ewwww

6. I have the bad habit of rather buying clothes for less money that I won't love as long and I will get tired of more easily than investing in something that I will appreciate for a long time. This often results in me selling a lot of things on sites like Depop!

7. I can't stand it when I can feel the need to sneeze creeping up on me while I'm driving - this may sound a bit paranoid but I'm terrified of sneezing while driving, as I'm scared of closing my eyes for even a second, even if it's just because I'm sneezing.

8. I tend to keep way too much useless stuff in my wallet - especially recites I will never need again - until I can't find a single thing anymore and end up throwing everything out in one go.

9.  I am both a very lazy but still ambitious person, which are quite impractical traits to have at once. I either do nothing at all or I work my butt off!

10. I'm not a big bag lover, I will most likely have a couple of bags that I like and wear those until they're torn into shreds and only then consider buying a new one. I will always, always choose a pair of shoes over a new bag!

Life Update

Since moving back to the UK for my second year of Uni a couple of days ago, I've spent most of my time running around Brighton running errands, unpacking boxes and discovering things I didn't even remember owning anymore and buying furniture. I'll be living in a cute little house with two girlfriends for the next year and even though it's all very exciting, I'm slowly learning how tiring being an adult really is, haha! Logically, I had everything but blogging on my mind, using my spare time to stuff my face with take out, but I am planning to make a room tour as soon as my room is completely done and tidy!

Mini Instagram Diary

 1: An outfit I wore about a week ago, as I said in the caption on Instagram, I felt very 'tumblr', aka wearing a cliché blogger look; ripped jeans and holographic shoes and bag, haha! 2: I adore discovering parts of my home country that still swipe me off my feet - sometimes you need to look around you more to see the beauty in your surroundings! 3: I bought these absolutely gorgeous boots in ZARA, would you believe me if I told you that I got them for 36€ instead of 120€ on sale? I still don't!

1: A friend of mine had a dinner with a bunch of girls at her house and it's safe to say that I gave her miniature dog enough cuddles for the following couple of days, hah! 2: Last Friday, I went out with a couple of girlfriends and curled my hair again since my proclamation (so I hadn't curled it in over a year!) I loved how it looked on me but as expected, it didn't last very long and the fact that we didn't have any hairspray to keep the hair in place, didn't help either.. :( 3: After having purchased my choker from asos a little while ago, I finally remembered to wear it (yes, I literally forget about some of my clothes etc) and I definitely have to wear it so much more, I love how it looks!

I'm keeping this post as short as possible but after having spent 8 weeks in Luxembourg and 6 of those sitting in an office, I am finally off to go on holidays with friends! I'm leaving to Rotterdam with a couple of days tomorrow. We'll include a short Amsterdam trip and when I'm back on Thursday evening, I'm already off to Mallorca again on Sunday - so excited! I will most definitely post during my trips, especially since holiday-blogging is my favourite kind of blogging. See you when I'm in the Netherlands! x

Life update

Between partying, studying, moving out and enjoying my last days at Uni, I completely erased the fact that I have a blog from my mind. I arrived in Luxembourg a couple of hours ago and it's safe to say that I'm currently having a post-uni-blues and being a tad tispy from the champagne I just drank, I am a little bit emotional thinking about the fact that I've already finished my first year of Uni. I seriously don't know how it went by so fast, it feels like I moved into my room on campus just yesterday, when I was actually packing and carrying boxes to put into a storage all afternoon yesterday. I'm one of those typical nostalgia-people, - would you believe me that I still sometimes think about school and miss it? Well I do! Anyways, I'll be in Luxembourg for almost two months now, but luckily I'm starting a 4 week internship on Monday, so I hopefully won't feel too bored and lonely while pretty much everyone else I know is still at Uni or away on holiday. This does mean one thing though: I'll be able to update again! And if possible, regularly, ha. I'll try my best to be back tomorrow, enjoy your Friday night x

Veganism

A couple of months ago, I started looking into veganism and slowly transitioned to a plant based diet. Even though I unfortunately couldn't not eat something that wasn't vegan recently, (I had to eat the food we were served on the plane because I was starving, haha) I am more than convinced that this is the way that I want to eat in the future. When I first mentioned veganism on the blog, I got a few comments about why I'm eating this way, how I do it/what I eat or similar questions. Since I don't feel like I would be able to make a good, complete post about this subject, I decided to share a video about veganism from a fellow blogger/youtuber. In my opinion, she pretty much summed up the main points about veganism and she shares the same/a similar perspective as me on the subject. I also wanted to add a few links to documentations you are free to watch if you're interested in the matter! If there happen to be any more questions that you'd like me to answer about veganism and my opinion about it, I might be able to make a little Q&A if I get enough questions? Let me know!

Forks over Knives - Mainly based on the China Study and health aspects of this diet and if any of you have Netflix (at least the UK version of it), you'll find the clip on there too!
Earthlings - You probably heard about this one already, it particularly talks about mass animal farming.
101 Reasons to go Vegan - This is the most recent documentary I watched, which is basically a presentation about Veganism that got filmed. The guy doing the presentation does it in a very interesting and funny way!
Best speech you will ever hear - The first clip I watched from beginning to end and which made me really think about eating habits and health.

Jenny herself also added a few links to documentations in the description box under her video, but I yet have to watch some of them, so I thought I'd only share the ones on my blog that I've already seen myself! If you like this kind of post, then do let me know in a comment :)