Black & Brown and everything in between

Ok, so here is my latest crush!!! 

Aren't these shoes amazing?!! I bought them on Marktplaats.nl which the Dutch version of Craigslist. I found them via Roos from Moderosa. She is one of Hollands best known fashion bloggers! I personally love her simple black & white style and of course it helps that she is gorgeous!

 

Anyway, you can imagine how excited I was when I saw these shoes online for sale!!! They fit perfectly and are stylish and will never go out of style!

 So in case you wonder.... yes those All Stars are also mine.... The clothes and shoes I wear really depend on the day of the week and especially how I am feeling that day... so you never know how I look!

Want to discover Moderosa? Click here to go to her style and blog.

XoXo Lieke

Swirling 30 in 30

So Erin from Living in Yellow is hosting a link up where we can share your list with things what we want to in the year of our life.

For me that is the 30 in 30! I wish it was like 15 in 15 because it was pretty hard to think of 30 things I want to do in this year.... Actually I never thought about it, but once I started it wasn't so hard!!!

1. Run half Marathon! This is easy because I have 1 planned 1 week after 1 turned 30!

2. Do a 1 week Daytox, this a combination of eating healthy and yoga for 7 days.

3. Take my niece to the petting zoo!!! Now I go with my boyfriend and I do all the animal feeding but doing it together with my niece is sooo much more fun!

My favorite friend!

4. Go and sell my 'I don't wear them anymore' clothes at the IJ-Hallen in Amsterdam

5. Make another fabric bag. Made 1 for my brother as a diaper bag I want to make another one just because it is sooo much fun!

6. Not eat so much candy that my jeans won't fit anymore

7. Go out for a fancy smancy dinner with my boyfriend

8. Save more money for a possible wedding and honeymoon.... this is like so far away but still won't hurt to start saving some money

9. Make more clothes myself! I have loads of fabrics but I just can't find the time to make clothes! So if I could make something once every month that would be fabulous!


10. Read all the Game of Thrones books!!!! Am still stuck at book 2....

11. Get a new phone! I now have a BB from work but I want a Samsung Galaxy! BB is to limited for my high tech needs ;)

12. Play pool with my boyfriend! He is really good at this 'sport' and I just want to play 1 game with him and kick his ass!

13. Go to Italy!!!

14. Get 100 followers on my blog!

15. Not buy clothes for a whole month! This is a difficult one... should plan this one in between sales when temptation is the lowest

16. See Train live!!!

17. Visit my cousins

18. Host the first give-away on my blog

19. Drink more alcoholic drinks.... might sound weird but for some reason I just don't alcohol that much... And just a glass of wine more often won't hurt right?

20. Watch all seasons of breaking bad

21. Learn to do the crow and headstand at yoga. Still can't do them properly after 1 year of yoga

Crow                                                Headstand

22. Make a fancy birthday cake for someone.... for myself or someone else.... You know the one with fondant and a cream filling.... 

 

 

23. Get my legs tanned!!! They are always so white and I want them to look more tanned and summery! I have to jump to hide them.

24. Clean and pimp my balcony

25. Meet more Dutch life style blogger

26. Host a blogging event in Holland

27. Go out for a morning run before work

28. Learn how to make the Asian food my mother in law makes

29. Make a stuffed animal for my niece

Felt Animals

30. Do more fun things with friends and family

That's how I would like to swirl from November 4th, 2012 all the way through November 4th, 2013!

Keep on Swirling!!!!

XoXo Lieke

Star Studded shorts

Just a quick post on my True Religion jeans that I recently turned into a short. I have this jeans forever and almost never wear it because it was just way too long!

So what I did is just cut the jeans, just above the knees (don't want it to be too short....). Added these little star studs. Easy does it!!!!

XoXo

Lieke

The Rabbit is out of the hat!

Happy Monday! Did I mean this....? Uhmmm nope... How can Monday be happy... Well maybe it will be more happy after you read this post.

I noticed that a lot of bloggers write about their kids or dogs, so I decided to dedicate this post to Brammie my cute hairy little friend. I must warn you because reading this blog could mean you fall in love.... See what I mean on the below pics:

He looks cute right?! But looks can be deceiving! He looks all cute and cuddly but I can tell you having a bunny ain't all that! Every morning when I wake up I let him loose and give him some food. 

He really loves this, and every morning he start with his morning exercise; he runs through the appartment.  I go and get him some food, and as soon as he hears this he runs back to his cage as fast as he can and jumps into his cage and starts eating. When his belly is all full he lays down and rests. Before I leave for work I put him back into his cage. 

For most of the day he has to stay in his cage. It is pretty big, so he can relax or go to the toilette. Yes Brammie is potty trained!!! He has own toilette where he does his number 1 and 2!  

In the evening we let him loose again until we go to bed. He lives with us for 3 years now and he almost knows all good furniture to climb on.... The couch, on which he is only allowed to jump on when we put a pillow on the floor which he can use to jump on the couch. The chairs of our dining table..... And his new favorite, the dresser where our audio/stereo equipment is placed. He figured out the he can jump on it, and in the back it is a magical world of cables! Which he loves!!! So whenever we cannot find him.... he is behind the stereo equipment... chewing & biting on cables!!! Last week we had an incident... he bit through an audio cable due to which we did not have any sound from the laptop to the stereo :( Thank god my dad had had a spare cable but it was no picnic! 

Below an overview of the damage control we had to do.....

He likes digging in the dirt, you can still see him behind the flower pot.. As is we don't see him!

He likes to sit on the dinning chairs, but he fell of together with all items on the chair....

Ah the cable of the lamp....Where there is tape there was Brammie.

Even though this plant is poissoness he still likes to eat it.. Probably only to get me angry.

Where there is white tape, there was a bunny gently nibbling the cables.....

So this was attached to a cable.....

Beside doing all these things he is not allowed to do he is also very sweet! He jumps around, sits on your lap when he wants to cuddle and he makes us laugh when is he is looking at us just when he did something he isn't supposed to.  

Hopefully later this year I can follow a bunny training and learn how to teach him certain things so we can do more things with him and play even more!

And was I right or what?! Did you fall in love? Do you also want a cute little bunny now?!

In case you need any tips please let me know! I will be glad to help you get your own little devil in disguise.

XoXo

Lieke

Current crush Thursday #1

Here is my First attempt on Current Crush Thursday inspired by: Danielle. It is basically just a short informative post on the crush I have today, you could also call it my obsession of the week.

Today's CURRENT CRUSH THURSDAY is this Mango dress I bought on sale! I absolutely love it! It is a maxi dress and it is very long. I already have 2 other maxi dresses but they are too short for me... I am pretty tall and for me a maxi dress should at least cover your feet. The other 2 obviously don't and this one does!!!! Woohooo!!!!

Another reason why I am obsessed with this dress is that it is in my closet..... and hasn't come out yet due to the weather! As you can see it is a summer dress, and where I live summer is no where to be found! So I really hope that we will have a few nice days which will allow me to wear this gorgeous dress at least once this summer!! Please let the sun shine!!! Please....??!!!

So here you have it, a nice maxi dress which will help me to swirl even more this summer!

XoXo

Lieke

Me, Myself and I Link Party part 1

1. What is my biggest phobia? 

I would say these angry fella’s! Especially when I am enjoying a nice summerday eating a lovely ice cream and one of these buggers joins me! This is

what makes me run!

 Even thinking about them makes my stomach turn. And no I don’t even like them when they look like this:

I2. If I could relive any day in my life, what would it be?

Probably the day(s) me and my family were on holiday in the US. We had the best time ever, especially when we went to Sequoia National Park.

We were going to the General Sherman tree, and my older brother came up with the idea to run to the Sherman tree so I could take a picture of him with the tree…. Bad idea…. The tree is hug, it is actually the biggest one out there and because of its size it didn’t look too far away… but it took a while before he was there, and I couldn’t even see him on the picture because of the distance!

3.       If I could choose to be a certain age forever, what would it be?

Hmmm this is very difficult because I am quite happy where I am now… But probably age 1 year old,  I could just ride on my bike all day and eat candy all day! I would literately go to my neighbors to ask for sweets.

4.       Which celebrity do I get mistaken for?

Well some people say I kinda look like Anne Hathaway. I now see that she was born only 8 days after me in the same year!!! 

Me, myself & I

Anne Hathaway

Now that I look at the pictures can’t say there is much resemblance…

5.       What songs are included on the soundtrack of my life?

- Queen, Love of my life. 

For some reason this song always makes me want to cry

- Adele, Turning Tables. 

This song is empowering.

- Train, Save me San Francisco. 

Only because I want to live there!

- Ed Sheeran, Drunk. 

Not that I want to get drunk, but just love this song.

So there you have it! My first "Me, myself and I" blog party!

 Enjoy!!!

XoXo Lieke 

A cheesy affair

So here is another compilation of the weekend! To be honest I didn't do too much which is also nice. Let's go and start with Friday.

On Friday evening my boyfriend and I had a Burgundy evening. In short this basically means we eat and drink all the good stuff such as; French bread with French cheese and some nice salads. It also includes beer (wine is also possible of course)! I love Rose beer, which is pink... and it is sweet and fruity!

I also have to share with you guys (I actually should say ladies because I don't think I have a lot of male readers.... well to be honest it is more a girly blog) these beautiful flowers my boyfriend gave me! This reminds me... isn't the saying: flowers says I am sorry and chocolate says I love you... or is the other way around... I sure hope it is the other way around!!!

So back to the weekend, on Saturday it was time to put my baking skills to the test! I saw this amazing Cheese cake recipe on Kitchen Boss which I wanted to make. But.... I ended up the wrong ingredients... I bought this complete cheese case base which has almost everything in it what I needed, but I didn't want to make that! I wanted to make a cheese cake from scratch... But since I had this cheese cake base I decided to just make this and try the real one an other time. Maybe it is also better to start easy :) And of course you have to taste all the ingredients you use ;)

So we begin with butter, the crust, the cheesecake base, and some canned strawberries (fresh strawberries if probably much better, but before I started I decided I wanted to make a Strawberry swirl cheese cake and so I didn't have fresh strawberries). So you have to melt the butter and mix the with the crushed cookies, and put this at the bottom of the cake form. Then chop the strawberries and gently mix them with the cheese cake base, then fill you cake form and put it in a preheated oven (160 Celsius / 55 minutes). 

Below the result! Now I hear you thinking "did she eat the whole thing?!", the answer is: no I didn't! I had 1 tiny little piece yesterday (I mean I had to taste it) and brought the rest to work where I shared it with my colleagues! But in total I did have 3 pieces (small pieces to be exact).

 On Sunday I didn't do too much, I went for a run (14 KM) in the morning and afterwards make a very tasty sandwich with Mayonnaise /Old Amsterdam Cheese/Avocado/boiled egg and some spicy saus.

I also coloured my nails this time in a new colour: Champagne nude. Really love the colour!!!

In the afternoon we went to the fair in Oisterwijk. Which is nice small fair and very cosy so to say. In Tilburg each year we have the biggest fair of the Benelux with 4.5KM of stands and attractions!!! It is big but not my favourite.... 

 This is what I took home :)

So I also decided that my next blog will be about Brammie!!!

Can you guess what kind if animal this furry little friend is?! If not stay tuned for my next post this week.

So I wish you all a very nice week!!! Yes I mean that! Even though the week might seem long and tedious it will go by before you know it!

XoXo

Lieke

This is not a drive by...

Okay here is a question... Why is it that men (with men I do not refer to all men, but especially truck drivers and other male persons in cars/on scooters and also construction workers) always feel the need to whistle/blow their horn or shout when women pass by?!

Almost everyday (AGW-WP = All Going Well - Weather Permitting) I go out for a nice (relaxing) walk during lunch. Or so I think! The company that I work for is located in an industrial area where there are a lot of trucks which automatically included truck drivers a.k.a. men...  And 9 out of 10 times when I go for a walk someone feels the need to shout at me, whistle or blow their horn! Which annoys me, and even worst, it always catches me off guard! Especially when a truck passes by and blows the horn! I just cannot get used to the fact that it is something I can expect...

But why do men do that?! What do they expect? Oeeehh maybe I should just start waving back at them! That would be funny because they probably don't expect that :)

 

10 to the jizzle!!!!

1 - is for the first time I became an aunt!!!!

2 - is for 21KM I am planning on running in November

3 - plus 0 is my age per November 4th, 2012

4 - is for 4 eyes.

5 - number of people in my family! My Mom, Dad, my younger brother and my older brother and of course myself is 5!

6 - is for 6 o'clock when I am cooking dinner..... Today an easy light healty meal: 

 

7 - Is for the 7 Kingdoms in Game of Thrones, yes I am a Game of Thrones nerd and I am proud of it!!!!

8 - is the number of week left till my holiday

9 - sounds like "no" in German (nein) which is one of the 2 countries where I will be spending my summer holiday

10 - is the height of my new Mango heels

Almost weekend!!! Woohoo!!!


XoXo Lieke

A Dutch Summer ain't really Summer without some rain....

So who want's to know what summer is like here in the land of the Dutch? Nope nobody?  Well I am gonna tell you anyway:

There is one word.... WET!!!!

Of course we also have a lot of nice days, but lately there is a lot of rain... So what to wear when I go to work (by bike)? Well easy my rain suit!!! It kinda makes me look like a bag of potatoes... But it keeps me dry... Except for my shoes :( 

A while ago when I had to go to work it was raining... and I was like, okay so I can take the car and be dry.... or be tough and go by bike through the rain. So I did the right thing, I went by bike!!! I mean I am Dutch and that is what we do ;) So it was really raining hard and I was cycling in my rain suit as fast as I could, the faster you cycle the less time you have to spend in the rain, the less you get wet. Is that even true??? Well anyway, so by the time I was at work I was dry because I wore my rain suit, except for my shoes (the same as I am wearing in the above pic). I am not sure if any of you ever experienced wet All Stars but it ain't no joke! 

Reason why wet All Stars are no joke:

a) it takes ages to dry

b) the water stays in the shoes

c) they make this soggy sound which is kinda funny

What did I learn from this experience.... well I guess nothing because it felt really good actually cycling through the rain, I mean it is a bolt thing to do right?!

So basically summer hasn't arrived to Holland yet.... Oh well as long it rains when I have to work all day I guess it isn't too bad... And hopefully in September when I have my summer holiday the sum will be shining and 30 degrees! 

And remember this when you are on the rain: most of the rain falls besides you not on you :)

XoXo Lieke

The Bird is the Word!

So this weekend the bird was the word!

Friday:

Shopping with BF and picking up the B-day gift for my mum.

My BF really has a dislike for shopping so it is key to do it quick and painless. We went to 4 stores and bought everything in 3 of the 4 stores so we were done in 2 hours!

After we were done shopping I pick up the birthday gift for my mum, and brought it to my brother where we had to make the gift ready. While I was there I also took some nice pics of the flora & fauna in their garden :) 

I think because I don't have a garden I am always obsessed with other peoples garden... Is that weird?

Saturday:

I saw these lovely boots in the window of the Mango store last week! They kept them aside for me when the window was changed and Saturday morning I could pick them up!

In the afternoon I worked together with my new partner in crime on my blog. I needed to add some things and I want it to be more... me... more personalized and more professional. So now you can join this side via Google friend connect! And find more stories that you might like.  More is to come but that will take some time because some items will be specially designed for me. Excited?! I know I am!!!

In the evening I went to the in-laws to eat fresh homemade fries!!! But before we ate I fed the chickens and took a picture of the baby birds that they have in their garden.

Sunday:

My mum celebrated her b-day, below the gift we gave:

It is this amazing picture frame from Umbra. It took some work to get all the pics in the same sizes as the frames but my sister in-law did a great job!!!

Needless to say, my mum loved it!!!

Oh and here are also some more pics of me as an aunt :)

Enjoy your week!!! And keep me posted on your weekend adventures!

XoXo Lieke

P.s. In case you haven't heard yet: The Bird is the Word