i heart london

as you can see I was very tired when this photo was taken on the last day, haha

I just got back, utterly exhausted but very happy, with my suitcase bursting at the seams from all the shopping. It was so much fun walking around London, watching all the cool kids, hearing lovely British accents everywhere, eating in cute restaurants, shopping until we dropped and then getting up and buying some more, riding an empty tube or one completely crammed with people, taking loads of pictures, walking until our feet dropped off, and then going to bed way too late and rising way too early to start all over again.

under the stone there's a stone-fish

(the top is from SPS. Trying to channel cute 1930s beauty ads and failing miserably, haha)

Good things today:
♥ Today was the first day it was warm enough to sit outside a cafe to have drinks. 
Oh, I'm sorry about all this spring ranting, does it make me seem some kind of season-obsessed freak? I'm just overly excited that I seem to have survived winter again (I don't know how I always do that) and that my nose was burnt red by the sun today (my nose burns very quickly, I'm not sure why), which is always a good sign.
♥ I bought two H&M blazers (the €10 off-thing they have right now is great)...

♥...and I still have enough money left to shop outrageously in London, buying as many sun dresses and cute shoes as I can find, starting... wow, already the day after tomorrow!

♥ I'm in love with this song, End of May by Keren Ann:

♥ I'm done with exam week and therefore have an ocean of free time stretching out in front of me. 

yeah, i'm a human fly

I have absolutely no clue what Aldo is - is it a brand? Because then I'm quite sure we don't have it here - but I  love the clothes in this shoot and oh my, Jessica Stam is really rocking it.

and suddenly, it was spring

Finally, the second-to-best season (summer remains the best one) has reached the cold Netherlands. The weather is sunny and (relatively) warm and just lovely, exam week is almost over and I didn't screw up my math test, I'm going to London (!!) in three days, and overall, things really couldn't be better. Just a few more months and I'm done with school - I can hardly imagine

CARDIGAN, H&M  / FLOWERED BUBBLE SKIRT, H&M / BELT, VINTAGE 

"My outlook has always been that people in the streets aren't dressing to please me, why should I take them into account when dressing myself?"

- Rumi Neely of Fashion Toast on not being afraid of what everyone will think about the way you dress 

Quote found at Kiss Me Quick

hello.

I've refrained from saying anything about this, because I don't want my blog further spoiled with this crap than it already is, but since I start getting comments on my every single post, and I'm going to put this up in a very big font because I'm afraid this person doesn't really read anything. Somehow I still think all this might just be a stupid joke, but here you go:


Aris. I can't begin to imagine what you are trying to achieve by leaving these comments. I guess you are just a filthy-brained man who has to express his sexually frustrated mind by commenting on random girl's blogs. I hope you are not a psychopath and I really hope you don't harass girls in the street with comments like these. It's not normal to write stuff like this. I'm sick of hearing all about your sexual fantasies concerning my legs. It's gross and very offensive. I always delete them, but it's still tremendously nasty to have to read them every time.

Please stop commenting on my blog.

the girl that got away

Well, I've decided this was the best photo. And put up the other "best" photo as a Facebook profile picture, haha. It just seemed a waste to never use it!

note: I would never, ever venture out into the street wearing such a short skirt with such sheer tights. But more is acceptable in photographs, I think? Or I hope.

YANN TIERSEN - LA VALSE DES MONSTRES

si tu n'étais pas là

SHIRT, ZARA / BELT, MY SISTER'S CLOSET / SKIRT, H&M / TIGHTS, H&M

To take my mind off school a bit, I made pictures this afternoon in the hallway in front of my house. I quite like how they turned out - a bit too much maybe, because it's hard to choose which ones I like best! I have some sort of one-picture-per-entry policy on my blog, because I think it's better to put one large picture in a blog entry, than fifteen tiny pictures that look very alike and make it look like you're creating a comic book. I do quite like how this shot turned out though, and I'll put up a picture of the whole outfit as soon as I've decided which one I like most!

i am the queen and you are the king, it's only natural for us to spend the night

I found this leather bag at a flee market for €5,- and when I visited Laura Dols (a famous vintage store in Amsterdam) this weekend I saw that they sell old leather purses for up to 30 euros there. The ones they sold there were in quite bad condition and most of the time they're not even that old, more like someone's grandma's leftover handbag from the nineties. There's so much more fun in finding a hidden treasure somewhere in a flee market, thrift store or Salvation Army than to find something at a vintage store that you know is worth a fraction of the price you're paying and was hand-picked by someone else.

p.s. I'm on bloglovin now! click


LUCKY FONZ III - JANE ON THE ROOF

eiffel tower necklace

Eiffel tower necklace from Six. It was sort of against my principles to buy it because one of my friends has been wearing a miniature Tour Eiffel around her neck for ages, but then I saw that it has a key and a bird and a little pearl on it so I just couldn't resist.

It's exam week, the last one before the finals, and so right now my life is mostly a lot of studying, eating and sleeping. I did have a very nice weekend, but somehow that makes it even harder to focus on math and French? By the way, I never thought I'd need to memorize "Quelle belle combination de ski!" or "Ne me touche pas, ça va un peu trop vite!" for school - they've decided to test our knowledge of French by role-playing and one of the situations will be Rendez-vous avec un inconnu, in other words, a blind date, in which I will have to talk to a teacher and tell them their ski gear/car/dancing is so nice and whether they'd like to have another drink with me. I'll bet it will be one of the awkwardest things I've ever done. 

polka dot

I can't think of anything lovelier than a boy who lends you a cardigan from their closet when you're cold and that cardigan turning out to be utterly awesome. And then, their letting you borrow it for a few days so you can walk around in school feeling all cozy, and make pictures in your messy room and turn the hue to pink because that's the colour that describes your mood the best right now.

JANIS JOPLIN - SUMMERTIME

Devendra Banhart - Feel just like a child

He is like a pirate in boxershorts. I love everything about this.

des chaussures

I bought both of these pairs at Tango, which miraculously seemed to be the only store left where they had pretty shoes (oh, Zara had some pretty ones too, but they never have my size and the girls who work there are completely obnoxious.). 

LA ROUX - I'M NOT YOUR TOY

houndstooth tights

I love these tights so much. They were given to me by a friend because they were too short for her, and while I'm not as tall as she is even for me these are a bit short (I'm 1.68 and these are a size L, pretty strange) but they do fit when I pull them up a lot and they are so sixties, I adore them.

I went outside to make these pictures with a tripod and I didn't even get any weird looks; my street isn't really busy so I thought I could risk it, but there were people passing by on bikes and an old lady who was working in her garden and they didn't even look! I think that's sort of a Dutch thing; yesterday quite a well-known comedian (Sara Kroos, van de Lama's) came into the place where I work, and we all acted like everything was normal and just sort of ignored the fact that she was there. In Holland, people always tend to ignore each other, which is sometimes nice but also sometimes a bit dull.

BERET - PRIMARK / CARDIGAN, ZARA / SKIRT, H&M / TIGHTS, H&M / SHOES, TANGO

KAISER CHIEFS - TAKE MY TEMPERATURE

i simply remember my favourite things and then i don't feel so bad

I've added a list of my favourite sites to the sidebar of this blog. In the 'lovely girls' section are all of the personal style blogs I love and read daily; the 'inspiration' list consists of blogspots and tumblrs that I go to for pretty pictures; 'streetstyle' speaks for itself I assume and 'art & photography' are blogs and sites of artists and photographers I admire. I wanted to add a 'random' list, but maybe Blogger has a limit of links you can add because all of a sudden it didn't work any more!

p.s. If you'd like to be added to the list, just email me or leave a comment or something and I'll take a look at your blog!


EMILIE SIMON - CHANSON DE TOILE

miss, why are you wearing a bubble?

LACE SHIRT, SUPERSTAR / BUBBLE SKIRT, H&M / TIGHTS, H&M / SHOES, TANGO

What better season to start a new blog than spring? When the sun starts shining, it's like everything suddenly has come alive; all of the colors are much more vivid, you hear birds sing all the time (why don't you ever hear birds sing in winter? Do they just shut up when it's cold? I can't say I blame them) and you abruptly realize you're in dire need of a lot of new stuff.. So I've spent this month's entire paycheck (oops) on clothes. I can't say I found most shops very attractive; all we have here are high street shops and, apart from H&M, everything feels much the same as what I saw last year, and the year before that. I did find some great things though, the first of which you can see above. The lace shirt I found at Superstar, at a discount from €50,- to €15,-; I can't imagine why nobody wanted it, it's a lovely shade of mint green. The tights came in a two-pack with the polka dotted ones I was getting, so I never even meant to buy them, but I actually like them a lot. The bubble skirt is an "old" (old being last winter) favourite - I wear it quite a lot - and the shoes. Oh, the shoes. They're ankle boots with quite high heels and I found them at a store called Tango, that I normally find too tacky. I love them -I will do another post on them, to give them the attention they deserve.

welcome to the paper bird love songs

I could never have lived long without a blog. Where else would I have to put on all my pictures, and all the things I'm inspired by, and the things I wish I had - and where else could I ramble on and on about clothes? So, here it is, the new Appelflauwte. It will have better pictures, and less random stuff than the previous one, but will also be much the same; welcome to

paper bird love songs.

(P.S, I made the bird out of old magazines and postcards. It's really quite a nice thing to do when you're bored - it takes a lot of time and the results are pretty satisfying.)