paris, paris, paris

We're leaving for Paris tomorrow morning! I'll report back in five days with loads and loads of pictures. Au revoir mes chèries x

Je chante les flots et je chante les fleurs, je fais des bouquets avec tous les nuages

Laïs - Serenade Portugaise. The perfect song for a summer evening.

Oh, summer has really kicked in, finally! This should be the cue for lots and lots of summery afternoons, ice cream, swimming in the sea and floaty dresses, but instead I'm way too busy working, as usual. It's such a drag to stand in an airconditioned shop up to eleven hours per day, trying to sell clothes you think are ugly to people you think are annoying, while outside everyone is freely walking around wearing shorts and tank tops.

But times will change! I'm going to Paris with my boy next week, and I'm looking forward to it so much, I smile every time I think about it. After that I'm home for a week (in which they'll surely punish me at work for having the nerve to go on holiday by planning me in for six days straight) and then I'm off to Sweden with my family for two and a half weeks! We're staying in a house in the countryside in a tiny place close to Örkelljunga, with no big cities closer then two hours away, so I'll definitely get a break from all the fuss there. (Fortunately Göteburg and Malmö aren't terribly far away, because I'm a city person at heart!) We're also staying in Kopenhagen for a few days. In short, I have enough to look forward to, and that makes everything bearable! And, of course, I'm still doing enough fun stuff like laying around in parcs to balance out all this working:

I also managed to squeeze in some shopping time (I'm balancing on the verge of being shopaholic I think, but hey, who can resist when it's sale everywhere? I'm doing my best for the economy) where I bought this adorable little tee. It reminds me of the things children wore in the 70's (to be exact, it reminds me of the things children wore in the Pippi-tv series from the 70's); it's a really vintage-like fabric and it has buttons on the shoulders. I bought it in a store in Alkmaar, where they sell all these cute retro-style clothes. (Voor de Alkmaarders: Pepito Bonita op 't Fnidsen). 

 I also found a cute skirt at Mango with 50% off, which I'm definitely going to wear in Paris, so you'll see it soon enough! So anyway, I've been rambling for long enough now - enjoy your week, loveliest readers!

p.s. oh yeah, the clothes: in the first set of pictures I'm wearing a Primark top and Zara shorts and my boyfriend's sunglasses which he bought at the New Yorker, and in the second set I'm wearing a tee from Who's That Girl? and H&M denim shorts.

när alla hjältar är döda lever kungar kvar

Laleh - Prinsessor
I imagine that listening to Swedish music will improve my Swedish, especially when they have poetic lyrics like this one (like I found out when I put the lyrics into Google Translator. Ha).

DRESS - MY MUM'S, BAG - FLEA MARKET, NECKLACE - SIX, BOLERO - THRIFTED (OLD NAVY), FLATS - FRENCH SUPERMARKET

 
This dress is very old - it used to be my mum's, and she thrifted it, so I can't be sure how old, but at least 20 years. I still wasn't quite sure about the concept of a maxi dress, but after wearing it for a day I've decided that it's the most comfortable piece of clothing that was ever invented! It looks best with bare feet, which makes it the perfect dress for going to the beach - except that I always go to the beach by bicycle, it's absolutely impossible to ride a bike in this thing!

Not long after my big rant in the latest post on how busy I am, I finally got some days off from work (three whole days, to be precise) so I got to spend some time with the cutest boy on earth. We made pasta salad and sat in the sun and it was blissfully perfect.

Oh and some of you asked questions in the comments on my latest posts so: I work in Forecast, a Dutch shop. The clothes really aren't my style but the people I work with are great. My job is to be the typical annoying shopgirl - overly friendly and helpful. It's a lot more fun than it sounds.
And I'm going to study "Taal & Communicatie" (translates to Language & Communication) at the University of Amsterdam, where apart from studying communication- and language-related subjects (and do a lot of writing) you also get to study a foreign language. I'm choosing Swedish or English, I'm not sure yet. I'm going to study this because I'd like to be an editor - maybe at a publishing house, or (hopefully) at a magazine.

je suis une poupée de cire, une poupée de son

Fumie Hosokawa - Poupée de cire poupée de son. I've been so addicted to this song lately!

I bought this top in H&M for 5 euros during lunch break - I felt like I really needed a sky-colored see-through blouse. Or something.

So, somehow it's well into June already and I still feel like Summer has yet to start. I've been working so much lately I'm even busier than when I was still in school - so much for the oceans of free time I'd pictured before! On top of that, the weather's been crazy lately. When I went out yesterday morning, I had to put on a jacket and a scarf and I was still cold. In June! Due to all this working I've always been terribly absent in the blogosphere lately, my blog reader has over 60 unread posts and I haven't commented back to anyone yet! So, overall, I haven't had much time to enjoy the summer, until yesterday evening when the sun was almost under and shone right on my chair.

it was 1954

Finally - the pictures of the 1950's-themed prom! I had to wait a little while for everyone to put them on Facebook and such, and I'm sure there are a lot of pictures made by different people (like teachers) that I haven't seen yet, but I've never been a patient person and I think you can get a fairly good look at The Dress:

When I saw it in Mango, in all its vintage-inspired, cream-colored, multiple-layered dreaminess, I had to have it. Even though it was €80 (more then I've EVER spent on one item of clothing). On the night I paired it up with a H&M hairpiece, vintage necklaces, Primark dotty tights and New Look shoes, and I felt pretty (like in the West Side Story song "I feel pretty! Oh-so pretty!", you know? I really hated that musical though). Of course my dress wasn't the only pretty one that night - I managed to get a few good pictures from Facebook of other dresses I loved, but there were some great outfits I didn't manage to get photos of. So there may be a follow-up of this post!

So there we went, looking all prim and proper - and then all properness melted off once we stood in the (very hot) club where the prom was held:

Overall, it was a pretty great night, though the shopping and the dressing up were the height of the festivity - but it's always like that. 

why is a raven like a writing desk?

bebel gilberto - tanto tempo

ALICE IN WONDERLAND T-SHIRT (Truly Madly Deeply via Zipper), TULLE SKIRT (H&M), random TIGHTS with a hole in them (oops), OVERKNEES WITH LITTLE BOWS (River Island)

I went on a shopping trip to Amsterdam with a friend, and it was absolutely great. It's so nice to go shopping with someone who likes clothes as much as you do, and can keep it up for as long as you can (we walked for, I don't know, seven hours straight?), and makes the same squeals when faced with a gorgeous piece of clothing - in other words, who is as much a shopaholic as you are. We had to walk through a thunderstorm, with the rain pouring down and our umbrellas flipping over all the time, which actually felt quite adventurous. We both found our perfect prom outfits - I'm not going to tell what they look like yet, of course; got to keep that element of surprise, right?

I also found the Alice in Wonderland shirt shown above, which I love because Alice has always been one of my favourite books (I read it so many times when I was little, and I still pick it up now and again). The print features one of the original Alice illustrations by John Tenniel, which I did some googling on and have quite an interesting story behind them (you can read a little bit about it here).

I also found these shoes. Actually, Vera found them, in this great vintage shop in Amsterdam called Laura Dols (if you visit Amsterdam and are into ballgowns, chique accessories, and quirky stuff, you have to go there) but they were my size. They're a bit odd, very Mary Poppins and I love the color:

(The stripey shirt and tights are H&M and I borrowed the tutu skirt from my sister - she found it in the H&M children's section.) 

In completely unrelated news: I'm done with finals (yay!) so Summer holidays have officially started, and my hair is already turning blonder:

That's all for now! I'll update with my prom outfit in two days. I hope you have a very, very nice week!