Vintage Hairstyles & 1920s Party Photos

When I posted some personal photos on Instagram back in December from my work 1920's themed Christmas Party, some of you commented on how you loved my hairstyle! Well as I admitted here; a lot of us ladies had our hair professionally styled by Jess from Powder Puff & Pin Curls who specialises in vintage hairstyles. We recently received the professional photos from the party and thought I'd share some of the gorgeous black and white pictures that really add to the whole vintage feel of the event :)

More photos after the jump....

New Year: Create a Memory Jar!

A new year = a new start! I personally love the idea of fresh starts and using New Years as a time to reflect on everything that happened in the year and from that set new goals and resolutions for the year to come! 

One of the things I am going to do in 2013 is keep a memory jar :)

Also I love the below for my goals this year. It is a great reminder to always find joy in life :)

Do you have any specific New Years resolutions?

HAPPY HUMP DAY EVERYONE!

Merry Christmas to you!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! Here some Instagram photos of my last few days! I'm celebrating the holidays with my family in The Netherlands but we also made a quick overnight trip across the border to Germany to browse around the Christmas markets in Münster.

Enjoying the Weinachtsmarkt in Germany. Lights everywhere, glühwein, lebkuchen and bratwurst!

I baked a traditional Dutch Christmas bundt cake! Christmas tree bauble, feeling festive in my reindeer socks and Christmas crackers for the table decorations.

Preparing Christmas dinner; we have some vegetarians in my family so this year it's Jamie Olivers cranberry & pistachio nut roast as one of the many courses for our Christmas day feast. Last night we went to the Christmas midnight mass and today I did even more baking; the most delicious gooey chocolate crinkle salted caramel cookies ever... (recipe to follow!)

A quick run at the beach earlier today and now I am relaxing, eating and drinking with family...

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with family and loved ones! Xoxo

 

DIY Instagram photo collage

A little while back I was thinking about what to get my flatmate for Christmas and thought a photo collage of our favourite pictures from our holiday to New York together would be a really nice idea. I wasn't really sure how to go about this project until I stumbled across this brilliant website! Printstagram is the perfect way to enjoy and share your Instagram photos. The website connects to your Instagram account where you can select your favourite images which you can then get printed in several options; memory boxes, squares, calendars, mini books, stickers or even a poster.

I opted for their squares to start my little DIY photo collage project after I had found some examples of making a collage with these in the Internet. For the squares they have two size options; mini squares (2.5 x 2.5 inches) in a set of 48 or their standard squares (4x4 inches) in a set of 24. Once you select the images you want, they are then printed on quality paper with a nice matte finish plus a neat white trim. You can pay via PayPay (easy!) and then they are posted out to you! I had a mix of NYC holiday photos and some of my other favourite pictures I wanted to get printed so I decided to get 2x sets of 24 standard squares which only cost $25/£15. It was so easy to order and when they arrived on my doorstep after about 2-3 weeks I was very excited! I LOVE them; they are such great quality and look super cute :)





Now the next thing I needed for my DIY project was a photo frame. I found this great simple large white frame at Marks & Spencer's but IKEA also has some lovely frames with cool raised edges (link).

 

The frame I bought came with a premade insterted border for 7 photos but I didn't need that so I just took that out and was left with a large white sheet of paper which I could use to adhere my prints to. Most photo frames come with these back sheets which is perfect but if yours doesn't, then don't stress, you can easily improvise by using any kind of paper/cardboard and cut it to size.

Next up was the fun part; choosing and arranging the photos. In this frame, it perfectly fit 20 squares (4x5) I had about 30 New York photos to pick from so it was still a tricky task to decide which ones wouldn't make the cut ;)

 

 

After a bit of playing around with the squares I was left with my final collage!

 

Now that you have the images all in their right position, all you need to do is adhere your photos to the white cardboard. For this you can use any kind of glue stick, nothing fancy required. So I got out my trusty Pritt!

Apply the glue to the back of the squares and then just stick them onto the sheet in the order you want. I was very lucky that with this frame it was a perfect fit and they all aligned perfectly which meant no little trimming tasks where needed.

 

It didn't take too long to do and quickly my sheet was filled with all the pretty squares! I popped the sheet back into the frame, placed the glass back on and TADA my DIY Instagram photo collage was done!

 

 

I absolutely loved the end result and couldn't wait for Christmas time to give it to her! We exchanged gifts on Thursday and she seemed to love it so mission accomplished :) I still have more squares left so think I will get myself one of the IKEA frames soon for my own personal Instagram photo collage!

 

 

Do you think this is a project you might try for yourself or as a gift? Oh and if you would like to follow me on Instgram, I am 'dutchessroz'!

 

Tim Walker - Story Teller at Somerset House

One of my favourite photographers is Tim Walker. I think he is, without a doubt, the world's most visually exciting and influential fashion photographer. Walker's work is dazzle with life, full of magic, and plenty of humour. You can imagine my excitement when I found out that Somerset House is currently hosting a major exhibition of Tim Walker's iconic photographs and props at their East Wing Galleries in London.

Supported by Mulberry, Tim Walker: Story Teller showcases 175 of Walker’s most fantastical works from the pages of the world’s leading magazines: British, French, American and Italian Vogue, Vanity Fair, W and The New Yorker among many others. A couple of weekends ago I made my way to Somerset house to check out the exhibition! Here some sneaky pictures I took during my visit to share with you all..

 

The exhibit is free and open to the public until 27th January 2013 (link)

I love going to museums or exhibitions in the weekends, do you?

Mint winters day OOTD & new cross bracelet

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you would have already seen my picture post of two bargains I picked up in the H&M sale last week. I was quickly popping into my local store buy some socks (of all necessities) and got distracted by the sales racks where I found this lovely cropped mint knitted jumper for only £15! Even though it's now winter and you might see mint as more of a spring colour I see no reason why to shy away from brightening my winter days with colourful outfits. This is me in my new jumper on Sunday, where I combined the mint jumper with my favourite bright pink winter wooly snood scarf.

Do you like this colourful look for winter?

To keep warm I paired it with my super snug tan UGG boots!

I have also been meaning to show you this new fine side cross bracelet that I got from ASOS a few weeks back. It is from their ASOS collection and you can get it in silver, gold and rose gold. It looks more gold in this photo but mine is the rose gold one.

Get it here for only £6 (link)

I was back home (yet again!) this weekend to celebrate St Nicolas with my family. It is my favourite Dutch tradition because it is an evening full of laughs, presents and the most yummy St Nicolas treats!

I definitely indulged in a fair amount of Speculaas this weekend....

Dutch Speculaas Chunks - you can find my recipe here (link). The gym is definitely calling my name this week after my indulgent but fun family weekend but hell it was worth it ;)

One door closes and another one opens...

Happy Hump Day everyone!

Weekend Brunches: Lantana Cafe

Happy Sunday everyone! It's a stunning winters day out there in London today, very cold but the sun in shining and the roofs are white from the overnight frost (no snow yet this winter..) and with this sun streaming into my cosy bedroom while I'm enjoying breakfast in bed I have to say it's a pretty lovely start to my day!

Yesterday I ended up checking out a cafe in London that had been on my brunch-places-to-visit list for a while now. So I rugged up in my leather jacket and a warm tartan poncho/scarf and hopped onto my bike to meet my friend in Fitzrovia for one of my favourite weekend past times; BRUNCH :)

Lantana is a bustling little café tucked down a laneway off Goodge Street in central London. This Aussie-run place proves once again that when it comes to brunch the Antipodean's do it best. The downside to it being such a popular brunch spot is that you are going to have to be patient to get a table. Note to self get there early or be content to wait. My friend actually arrived around 11am and annoyingly was told she could not get a table until I had arrived and was asked to wait outside (in -1 temperatures I might add) until I got there to be seated. Not such a brilliant start to the day for her.... 

She in the end managed to convince the staff to give her a table and ordered herself a coffee and banana bread until I had made my way over through London traffic. 

The menu at Lantana changes regularly but staples include sweetcorn fritters, poached eggs and Cinnamon french toast. Everything on the menu looked rather tasty but I went for my usual poached eggs on grain toast with smashed avocado and smoked salmon. 

The eggs were poached perfection and I always love myself some avo + smoked salmon but only thing that bugged me about this dish was that the bread wasn't really toasted and I have to say I prefer my bread nice and crunchy!

My friend had the corn fritters stacked w streaky bacon, fresh spinach and slow roast tomatoes served w an avocado chilli lime salsa and crème fraiche.

Wearing my new 'NOIR embellished' T-shirt from ZARA (link)

Even though I really didn't need it, I couldn't resist ordering the toasted banana bread with spiced mascarpone and fresh passion fruit as my brunch 'dessert'!

I loved the cinnamon spiced mascarpone and the passionfruit tangy twist with the sweet banana bread. And yes I finished all of this.......

Overall I'd say Lantana is a great brunch spot in central London; delicious food, good coffee and a buzzing laid-back Aussie vibe. Oh and if you are in a hurry, or can't be bothered waiting in line for a table there’s a takeaway counter next door selling tarts, salads, sandwiches and oh-so-delicious-cakes....

 Crack cake anyone? Haha ;)

Lantana is open 7 days a week, serving breakfast and lunch Monday to Friday and all day (9am-5pm) brunch on the weekend. 

Lantana Cafe, 13 Charlotte Place, Fitzrovia, London W1T 1SN 

www.lantanacafe.co.uk

Focus...

That time of the week again! 

I feel it is very important to keep a healthy sense of perspective in life and keep focussed on the good :)

Also as you know I was at home in the Netherland last weekend so here a quick collection of pictures:

Attending my sisters PhD ceremony - feeling very proud of her for this amazing achievement! 

When at home I can never resist a delicious piece of traditional Dutch apple pie

Comfy and casual outfit of the day; distressed jeans, leather converse high tops, leopard print scarf

Strolling around the picturesque town of Delft - check out the lean on the church tower ;)

Yes it's that time of the year again; indulging in Oliebollen! 

Showing my friend around Delft

We spotted several 'horse parking spots' for St Nicolas shopping loading zone haha

 My hometown, beautiful The Hague!

Parliament building and Grote Markt square at night

On Saturday we made a little day trip to Amsterdam where we biked around, caught up with friends and walked around the rainy, but still very pretty, canals. Lunch was a grilled goats cheese sandwich with walnuts and honey at Cafe Nielsen in the Nine Little Streets area of Amsterdam (which has lovely boutiques and restaurants). Dinner and a couple of glasses of red were consumed at Boca's in the Jordaan; a fun casual platter restaurant/bar.

On Sunday I took my friend for a walk along the beach but we experienced some crazy winds that day; we almost struggled to move! After being completely blown away on the beach we warmed up again over hot chocolates and poffertjes.....yummmmm!

Ps: If you fancy being friends on Instagram, you can follow me at Dutchessroz

Happy Hump Day everyone :)