15

Alberobello (Italy), in the trulli village.

13

Polignano a Mare (Italy), in the old town.

wonderful wallpaper week 38 (2013 edition)

 

Anchor, by Quinn Luu

wonderful wallpaper week 31 (2013 edition)

Gold and White Chevron, by For Chic Sake

Graphic pillows

On our wedding day we were presented with a big and beautiful folder filled with amazing creations from all our guests; each and everyone of them had put together something on the theme of cows and kangaroos (I'm Swiss, hence the cows and... Mart's Australian so... there you go! :-)) 

There were collages, photos, cards, poems... someone even bought us a cow in a charity and put the certificate in the folder. So many beautiful, fun and thoughtful pieces from everyone.

My mum and my brother actually designed a special fabric for us, which they sent us a few meters of when we got back to the Netherlands. I love it and decided to make pillows with a tiny little touch of neon orange 'cause... I just couldn't resist!

wonderful wallpaper week 10 (2013 edition)

Diamond pattern, by Cotton & Flax

wonderful wallpaper week 4 (2013 edition)

Confetti, by Cotton & Flax

our wedding | a few photos of us

Photo credits | all photos by Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | super simple white and pastel garlands

 
I couldn't have imagined my wedding without some garlands somewhere. They're such a simple and pretty way of making a place feel festive!

Mart and I, together with my brother and his girlfriend, punched thousands and thousands of circles out of white and pastel coloured paper and sewed them together with a sewing machine. The day before the wedding, my brother hung it all in the gallery where our wedding took place, together with several strands of fairy lights. 

It looked just like I hoped it would!

Photo credits | 5: Mathieu Collioud, 6: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | colourful wooden cutlery

 

During a few (very) warm days last summer we painted some 400 wooden spoons, forks and knifes with pretty pastel colours in anticipation for our wedding. 

We also made little pouches that we printed with our names to hold the cutlery and napkins (using the same stamp as here). It worked great with the personalised fish & chip bags!  

Photo credits |  8 & 9: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | homemade cake

It is the tradition in my family for my grand-mother to make the wedding cakes; she's made the ones for all her children and grand-children's weddings so far. I was so happy she could make ours too, even though our wedding was on the other side of the planet!
The cake was a traditional British fruit cake, and it was delicious.
 

For the decoration I was very much inspired by this picture (via). I made the little hearts out of fondant which I folded in half and let dry on an angle... and my mum and my aunty were extremely patient in placing them all on the finished cake. At that point I was so busy running around the place semi frantically, trying to think of everything we needed to finalise before the wedding, that I would certainly have made a complete mess. :-)

 
It is also the tradition to keep the top part of the cake and eat it at the birth of your first child... I'll keep you posted! hehehe...


Photo credits | 1 & 2: Mathieu Collioud | 3,4 & 5: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | flowers

I am ever so lucky to have two aunties who are really good with flowers and who agreed to take on the daunting task of making all the bouquets, button-holes and flower decorations for our wedding. They did such an amazing job; it was exactly what I had dreamed of!

Mart's mum, together with several of her friends, had been saving glass jars and bottles for months, carefully soaking them to take the labels off and cleaning them out. I then spent a few afternoons before the wedding on the back balcony applying several layers of white spray-paint on all of them. They made great vases for the flowers.

Photo credits | 1, 4, 5 & 8: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | personalised fish & chip bags

Once our wedding invitations had been printed, I cut the printing plate and made parts of it into two stamps we could use for our special day. 

One of the ways we used them was to personalise the bags which wrapped the fish & chips we served at dinner. 
I used waterproof ink and simply stamped each bag with our names and the date.

The food was a hit, and the bags were a fun little addition to the evening!
 

 Photo credits | 5 & 6: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | letterpressed invitations

Because we were inviting friends and family members from opposite sides of the planet who spoke different languages we wanted to have a bilingual invitation. Our friend Claire designed exactly what we had hoped for: a graphic, strong and beautiful card, which was then letterpressed on bicolor paper. 

We couldn't have been happier with the final result!

13

Hamburg (Germany), in the city center

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Alberobello (Italy), in the UNESCO World Heritage listed village.

Pain et chocolat

It's only when I moved away from Switzerland that I discovered that some people don't eat bread and chocolate together. Where I'm from it's the staple afternoon/morning tea. Kids love it. Adults too. It's the basic snack.
:-) 

Over the past few years I found out that a lot of people from other areas of the world find it rather strange to just pop a piece of chocolate on a piece of bread and to eat it all. But that's not going to keep me from enjoying this super simple and super yummy snack from time to time. Especially not with delicious Swiss chocolate brought back from my recent visit! 

Still here!

Hi everyone!
I haven't been here much lately; sorry!

It's been b-u-s-y in our neck of the woods! Mart became a doctor, his parents were here to visit, we went to Bruges (Belgium) for a weekend with them, just came back from Berlin (Germany) where we spent 4 days with his mum, work has been super duper busy... it all meant that I didn't have the time nor energy to get to blogging in the evening. 
:-)
And there's our wedding right around the corner which we should be planning, but there has been pretty much no time for that either lately. Must get to it. Soon.

Hmmm... and now that I'm finally logging in on blogger again, it seems like they've definitely forbidden me to use the very (very!) old platform I was so fond of... let's see if I can get used to this brand new and sleek-looking one! 

Sunday brunch

We're finally having real summer weather here in the South of the Netherlands. It's hot, but it's so good for a change!

Happy birthday Rosalie!

Our little friend Rosalie turned two a little while ago. I made her a little play-shopping set, decorated with pretty washi tape.