My 2017 favourites

2017 is almost over so of course everyone is looking back at what they did and looking forward to new times. I thought it would be fun to make a list of my 'favourites', so either things or moments that made me happy or that I thought were special. Here we go!

3 favourite lolita outfits

It was a while back, but I still really loved the combination of all the colors here, and the bunny details.

Quite some effort got into this coord, it really paid off to put some time into it!

A random coord I threw on one day but turned out pretty cute!

There was one coord I had planned but couldn't wear, which I also put quite some time into but maybe next year I'll wear it!

3 favourite moments

Japan
Despite my husband forgetting that this happened in 2017 ;) , obviously going to Japan was a lot of fun and this is a great memory <3. There are still so many things to discover and do there and visting Japan stays amazing (or we have 'heimwee', a sort of nostalgic homesickness...even when it's not our home..maybe it is a little bit of our heart) so maybe we will go another time in the future?

Swimming in Spain
It was totally different than whatever we did before. Okay, it was superhot in Spain but I love experiencing different cultures and I really loved snorkeling so yeah I'm really glad we did that!

My birthday
Well, I mean that weekend where I went to my friend and had fun playing games in an abandoned hospital and then she bought me food and nice gifts, and we did some crafting and saw a silly movie, it felt so special!

Of course there were many other moments I really enjoyed, such as Dream Masquerade Carnival and the karaoke christmas drinks at work, and Bremen...it's hard to choose!

3 favourite items I bought

My soft-yellow shoes, they were such a great find because it's the perfect shade of yellow!

Toy March jumperskirt, although it's a hard fight with Milky Planet, because I love that one a lot as well! Actually when I think about it I bought quite a lot again this year, haha, oops.

UV Resin. Haha that must sound weird but I really liked toying around with resin this year, it's so easy and fun to make pendants with.

I think 2017 was an interesting year, I did and learned a lot of new things and I like to keep that going. I'd like to thank you so much for reading my blog this year, I know blogs aren't so popular anymore, so I post more in instagram but I love to write once in a while and it's fun to look back on so I hope you enjoyed it too. For the new year resolutions and talk about the future, I'll make another post I think. So see you in 2018 hopefully, and all the best for the new year to you ★!

Christmas 2017 blog #4: Merry days

Oh no, I'm late with the last christmas blogpost, but that is what happens when you only have three days left between the last day of work and christmas itself and then have three days full of stuff to do. Since my husbands family is coming to us (instead of celebrating at his moms house), we spend a lot of time planning dinner(s), buying groceries and shopping for the last gifts, and then some time recharging from all the social activities. So yeah that's why I'm a bit late.

A week earlier
 we visited my family, where we planned a potluck dinner and a nice fire outside where my brothers warmed some gluhwein. It was a nice opportunity to wear the tartan love jsk. A simple coord though, since going outside and walking on grass and such is always the case around my parents house. That's why the day after I took a picture of the coord I actually had in mind with it.

I know it might not be very original, but I just always wanted to wear a coord with a tartan print like this for christmas, I'm happy that I could! The bracelet I've assembled myself with some charms I bought of Ebay, the brooch is also from there and the bells in my hair are bought at the home/garden-store. I also wore the constellation tights with it that I bought from AliExpress (actually probably just TaoBao indie brand).

Later that week I joined multiple work/office-christmas-gatherings and time went by fast. I wore my 'Very Teddy Christmas' jsk to one of them in a casual manner again, so some days later it was time for a very costumey outfit with it. My 'apologies' for those purists out there, but yeah I would not wear this outside anyway (because slippers), and well I don't really do Halloween so some costumey outfit with Christmas sounds fine to me...because I can!

Actually I bought all the accessories at one place, which is a 'cheap' store that I began to love throughout the years because they sell lots of craft-related-items too (for you Dutchies, the store is called 'So-Low'). Some weeks back I came across them, and me and my husband bought these cute elf-slippers because they are just the most cutest christmassy thing I've seen in years and I love slippers <3. We've been wearing them everyday since XD must be really tacky to some but we fricking love it!

So then the actual christmas days came, I ordered a christmas sweater from Amazon.de a bit late but it got here just in time, I matched it witch some cute socks. I also tried my best to get some fancy tableware since we had the family coming here. As every year there were a lot of presents under the tree, I got some really nice things <3.

The second day of Christmas we did some cleaning and took a walk in the forest, because it was sunny outside (hooray!). I also watched the Monte Carlo christmas circus, it's been a while since I've seen it but we often would watch some TV around christmas and I remember loving to watch this...however we don't watch TV a lot anymore. Lucky enough it was still online to watch back.
Talking about circus, I also wore my last christmassy coords..well maybe not pure christmas but it was inspired a bit by those soldier nutcracker dolls and I think the Toy March jsk is pretty festive itself.

I made the mini hat myself, it is based on what the animals in the print wear. It was the first time wearing this blouse and I have to say it's very comfy. It's still hard to match the right hues of navy though, haha. Also the first time I wore these socks, they are quite different from the style I wear usually but I thought they work pretty well with the theme. Maybe it works better with a red blouse but I don't want to wear the same stuff all the time. I really still love this JSK though, made me happy to wear it again!

Yesterday we had our last fancy dinner (thank god ;) ) and we thought of some really weird stuff to cook. We made sushi from vegetables and other weird things. So the 'rice' was made from cauliflower and we made rolls with eggplant as a round base too but I'll spare you te detailed photos of the rest, it looked kinda grose :P .

And that was it for Christmas...thanks for reading, I hope you had a wonderful time yourself...I plan to make some end-of-the-year posts after this..hopefully in time but I really want enjoy some rest and recharge a bit now. See you again soon!

Christmas 2017 blog #3: Bremer Weihnachtsmarkt

Hello hallo, last weekend we went to Bremen! This was a birthday-present from my husband. Last year we went some time away before christmas to do some shopping, which was a lot of fun and we also wanted to go to a weihnachtsmarkt, German christmas market, some day, so yeah it was the perfect idea!

Bremen is not too far away from where we live, it's 2,5-3 hour drive and we took the Flixbus. This was our first time going with Flixbus so it was kind of interesting. A short time after we left Groningen, they had to switch drivers but it took like half an hour so we got some delay already. At the border they had to check our id's and then we had some short stops in between.
Plus: it started snowing! We didn't know it would snow, it was an amazing suprise!

After settling in our hotel, we started to walk through the city-center, Nick needed some better gloves and a warm hat and we went to some interesting shops such as the huge kaufhof, Lush and a GameStop. After that we walked around the christmas market to see all the little trinkets, ornaments and food they sold.

The stalls and booths were really impressive, some don't even look temporary but like they have been standing there for decades. With all the snow and christmas lights, it was a truly fairytale like, idyllic scene, I really loved the atmosphere.

On Saturday we started of with a walk in the big park and afterwards took the bus to the center again. It was interesting to see the architecture, it's quite different from Dutch buildings. Where we use a lot of stone, the flat apartment buildings looked quite...well.. flattened out with concrete and uniform as there are only just windows that looked different because of what was inside.

Later that afternoon we visited the Schnoor, which is the medieval part of the city, they have some supercute traditional houses and tiny alleys. There was another christmas market next to the riverbank, the Schlachte. However, it was raining quite a bit and it was supercrowded...so we did not totally enjoy this market and went on to eat some sushi for dinner.

 While walking back to the hotel and buy breakfast on the way (at the Lidl, where everything was ridiculously cheap...even cheaper than in NL), we saw that it was unbelievable crowded in the city center and so we decided to stay in the hotel for now. The Bremer christmas market is really popular on Saturday-night apparently.

On Sunday we went over the market just one last time to buy some souvenirs and then made our way to the station again for a -luckily- uneventful busride home, where even more winter awaited us.

Christmas 2017 blog #2: Two december coords

Baby it's cold outside,  it sure is...it's snowing at the moment I'm writing this! The second christmas post this year is of course reserved for new lolita coords. This year I took my time to plan some things out, search for materials to craft new accessories and I'm pretty happy with what it ended up looking like.

A song for the starry sky

It's been a while since I've worn this jsk I made myself some years ago. I always matched it with black, so I definitely wanted something different. Then I found this chiffon with golden star/constellation print on it. It actually features the zodiac signs, I loved it! The combination of navy and beige + gold gives it almost a sort of sacred feel, which I think matches the christmas theme pretty well don't you think?.

Snowflake shimmer

We have some snowy days and what better opportunity could you get to wear Sugar Dream Dome. I wore a sax blouse from AP and my handmade bolero. It's also the first time I'm wearing these glitter otks from Btssb. Too bad they are so short though, there is very minimal stretch in it, but I love the shimmery effect and the flowy ribbon print of it. I wore some fuzzy legwarmers with it, since yes it is pretty cold, bought these ones some years ago at Kansai Airport with the last yens we carried. The rings and collar I made myself.

Some weeks ago I came across this snowflake in a cheap store and thought I could corporate it into a coord-accessory. So I made this headdress with it...too bad that the lace was tucked in when I took photos..so that's why I made some extra pics for the details. The snowflake can light up and the colored light changes slowly <3.

Well, I actually also made a matching pendant for a necklace, but the uv resin is still not cured after some weeks...we definitely lack some sunshine and I put a better uv-lamp on my christmas wishlist so I really hope to get and finish that during the holiday.

Do you have any new coords planned for the christmas festivities? I'd love to see them!

Christmas 2017 blog #1: The decorations

Hi folks,

I promised to make some christmas related posts, so here is the first one! Did you put your tree up already? We already did more than a week ago, and before that, early november we already went to our garden center where they always have a pretty christmas show. It wasn't totally finished by then, but it was very pretty none-the-less!

Have a look:

Ok, I have to say it looked more bridal than christmas, but the horses and carriage look amazingly dreamy!

In the next room was an old car filled with christmas villages, what an amazing idea, and details everywhere!

What a cute nice tree!

Of course had to take a picture of the tea room! As you can see the skating figures moved around.

This wasn't totally finished yet but the big toy soldier looked amazing against these classic christmas colors!
I think I love red gold and green the most when it comes to a real christmas feel.

This was the more modern room, but also not yet finished. They sold all kinds of pink, white and pastel things in here

These penguins were dancing (or maybe really just trying to get warm?). So cute and fluffy!

Our Tree

Okay, so last year we bought a fake tree, a pretty nice one actually, besides being from a environment-friendly material it also looks pretty realistic, I'm only missing the pine smell.
And we had already some decorations from years before. Last year we bought very colorful decorations, this year I wanted a bit more of a traditional feeling, but yeah with all kinds of baubles and things it still looks a bit chaotic probably :P. But I love all the unique ornaments so I wanted to share it with you!

No christmas without an old cute candy cane!

Fell in love with these clock-ornaments the first time I saw them, I like extra dangling elements!

This polar bear really looks enthusiastic don't you think?

This doggy looked so cute, Is that a candy cane in its mouth?

Nick choose this sparkling tree-carrying bear, makes you wonder where he is going!

A whimsical bauble, I really liked the fluffy detail on santa!

Something kitschy and cute, sparkly ice cream cone!

And more food, haha donuts are so nice :P.

I loved this golden bauble, looks very festive. And that cute birdy probably loves it too!

Another choice from my husband, a tiny wintery bird.

Totally giving me the warm christmas feels!

You don't really see it, but this bauble is 100% sparkly!

A cute small dear, not hanging in our tree but definitely worth a mention.

This penguin looks like he's ready to slide in the snow.

More wintery bauble.

 So those are our new christmas ornaments, which one do you like the most? I think the clock and the red-reindeer-bauble are my favourite. Did you also buy new decoration or are you still waiting to set up the tree?