Solid perfume. Tot een paar maanden geleden, wist ik niet eens dat er zoiets bestond als een solid perfume. Elke dag gebruikte ik mijn spray parfum. Ik gebruikte het op mijn kleren wanneer ik niet al te fragiele stofkes aan had. Dan las ik online over solid perfume die je gewoon op je huid kan smeren. Je ruikt er goed van én het is nog is goed voor de huid. Dat moest ik proberen!

In plaats van meteen naar de winkel te lopen, probeerde ik mijn eigen versie te maken. Ik testte veel mengelingskes en hoeveelheden en dit is het resultaat. Een DIY zodat jullie ook zelf je solid perfume kunnen maken, misschien wel als eindejaarscadeautje. Easy peasy!

Deze maand ben ik 1 jaar samen met mijn vriendje en dat moest gevierd worden! We gingen samen naar de kerstmarkt in Brugge! Hieronder kan je wat foto's zien van deze zeer gezellige markt. Deze staat nog in Brugge tot 2 januari 2014 en is zeker een bezoekje waard!

De stad is erg mooi versierd tijdens de kerstperiode en als de avond valt zie je de kerstverlichting mooi tot zijn recht komen. Een aanrader!

Terwijl buiten de wind wild tekeer gaat, branden binnen de kaarsjes en staat de tafel al helemaal gedekt. De gezelligste tijd van het jaar staat nu echt wel voor de deur.

Geniet vanavond en morgen maar eens extra van je familie en vrienden en maak er een sfeervolle tijd van. En eet jullie buikjes rond natuurlijk!

Sinds ik in de post over de gift guide voor mannen ook een stukje in het Nederlands geschreven heb, begint het toch wat te kriebelen om gewoon al mijn posts in het Nederlands te doen. Het is mijn moedertaal en ik kan mij er het gemakkelijkst in uitdrukken. Aangezien ik ook het meest reactie krijg in het Nederlands is dit misschien niet zo'n slecht idee.

Vanaf het begin blog ik eigenlijk al in het Engels. Waarom? Om mijn Engels wat te onderhouden, zo simpel is het! Ik hou enorm van vreemde talen en vond het dan ook een uitdaging om in het Engels te bloggen. En toch ervaar ik soms moeilijkheden ook. Nederlandse uitdrukkingen die in het Engels helemaal niet tot hun recht komen bijvoorbeeld.

Omgekeerd heb ik die moeilijkheden ook ze. Ik kan dan wel op een woord in het Engels komen maar in het Nederlands is dat woord soms ver te zoeken. Misschien moet ik gewoon een mengelmoes van de twee doen, en dan betrekken we mijn andere liefde, het Spaans, er van de eerste keer ook maar bij!

Ik denk er nog is over na :)

I'm thinking about writing in Dutch. It is my mother tongue and the language where I can express myself in best. I also get more response on my blog from dutch speaking people so that's someting to think about.

Of misschien doe ik wel altijd zo'n samenvattingske in het Engels, dan hebben de verre vrienden er ook iets aan.

My Christmas wishlist got such a great response that I decided to make a Christmas gift guide, but only one for men! With the holidays comming up, some of us get crazy looking for presents for the men in our lives. Right, I'm one of them. And everytime I find 10 gifts for women and 0 for men. Men are soooo difficult to buy presents for unless they really really need something like a new phone or shirt or something like that. So that's why I made this gift guide. I'm only making one for men because they are the most difficult ones to buy presents for!

At the bottom, you can find a little extra gift but it's a gift idea only for the dutchies! And only for the ones from Belgium ;)

In case you haven't noticed, christmas is coming up! While christmas trees and decorations are now all you can see in the streets and stores, I'm thinking what to buy for familiy and friends. We don't have the tradition to buy a little gift for someone you picked out of a hat. I just buy every member of the family a little something. I like giving gifts, it makes me happy too!

While I'm scanning the web for the best presents, I often think "hmm, I could use that" or "ooooh, that looks pretty". After a lot of those ooooh's, I made my own christmas wishlist. Some things that I would like to get from Santa.

November flew by in the blink of an eye! I can't believe how fast a month can pass by. We're december already, a month that's all about winter and holidays. I did a lot in november, take a look!

Words. Or quotes. I love quotes. I love the way they can describe exactly what you think or feel in just a few words or lines. Some of the quotes you read online are very cheesey and describe that your boyfriend or girlfriend is THE ONE. I'm not talking about that kind of quotes. I'm talking about the ones that say something about life or that can exactly describe how you feel about something. That's why I like quotes!

I see those statement necklaces flooding my Pinterest and Instagram
but what are those things?
A statement necklace is a very big and chunky necklace, a necklace that makes a statement to be exact. You can wear this with a very sober outfit, this brightens your outfit in a heartbeat. You can find them in any shape, colour and length. You have chokers that, what's in a name, kinda chokes you. It's a very short necklace. You also have the longer kind with less choke intention.

I was wondering if I couldn't make such a statement necklace myself. I found these cute teardrops at the fleamarket and got started right away. My necklace doesn't have as much teardrops as I would have liked but I didn't had much of the little teardrops so three pieces it was!

Let's get this party started!

Last weekend I went thrifting again. I went to two fleamarkets near my hometown.
I found some treasures!

 
Bitstrips, it's a new phenomena in Facebook and smartphone-land. I
saw them appearing on Facebook since a few weeks and now everybody
is bitstripping themselves.

Last month, I kinda rediscovered Instagram so I snapped alot of them. I have this app for quite some months now but I didn't use it that much. Now I'm having fun capturing every little moment and sheltering them with a filter.

Every month I'm going to make a "instamonth" post where I will show you all of my instagrams that I made the past month. If you want you can follow me @rayalammens.

This is how my month looked like through my iPhone.

Senses. We have 5. Taste, sight, hearing, touch and smell.

I'm a person who is very sensory oriented. When I hear a song, it can remind me of a passed event. When I see a face I remember that face for quite a long time.

Sounds and visuals are very important to me and they can trigger different emotions. I have some daily sounds that really soothe me.

These are the last, the last of a-picture-every-day, the last of a month in pictures.

25. decoration// This is a very old and very decorated clock.

26. leaf// It's autumn so the leaves are turning yellow, red and orange.This is a beautiful yellow one that I found.

Last week I went to the biological shop to get something for my sister. When I was looking for that, there were these little dolls that caught my eye. These dolls are calles worry dolls. I've got such dolls from my mom when I was little so I felt a little nostalgic and I had to take a few home with me.



The worry dolls are little and colorful dolls that are made in Guatemala. The people there make them from wood or cardboard. Out of that they make a human-like frame with a head, torso, arms and legs. They also use cloth and traditional woven fabric to make a costume for the dolls. They also make a cloth pouch to put them in.

The third week of the challenge and how fast time can pass us by. I'm just shooting a picture every day and realizing now, after 3 weeks, that it has already been 3 weeks since I started this challenge. Time can fly, that's for sure.

But anyway, brace yourself and see what I saw through my camera this week.

17. late// Days are getting shorter in Belgium because we're heading for winter. This picture was taken around 18.30h so not very late but after this all my pictures would have been black.

18. on the wall// Gotta catch'em all, POKEMON. While I'm working at my sisters, I'm also sleeping here. I get to sleep in one of the boys rooms and there are pokémons all over the wall. I feel pretty safe at night ;)

My second batch of photo's for the photo challenge. I apologize in advance for the computer pics but this week I spent alot of time working for my sister and I need a computer for that ;).

So here is the sneak peek in my week (I can rhyme :) )

9. friend//He's my best friend these days. That sounds very sad but now that I'm helping my sister I don't see my friends very often and he keeps me company, every day!

10. enjoy// I can really enjoy good food. This maybe looks not that tasty but is very yummie! It are vegetarian balls with sweet and sour sauce.

I like wearing dresses. Even if it's winter, I don't care. I just wear thick thights underneath.
There are a lot of dresses in my closet right now and I just keep buying more. Don't understand me wrong, I'm not a shopaholic or something like that. Most of my dresses are from thriftshops so I don't spend that much money on them.
This is my top 5 of dresses for this moment. Oh, and the quote in the title is from Coco Chanel ;)

This is my favourite dress! I wore it on my 21st birthday party and that was an awesome party ;). It's a pretty thick, green dress with great detailing in the print. You can actually feel the print! ZARA - €45

The dress has a low back so you have to wear a sticky bra with only cups ;)

The detailing. The picture is not that good, sorry.

1. ground//you can see it, there's a spider on the ground underneath that cup. I'm not that fond of spiders so I let it sit there untill my sister came downstairs to set it free.



2. organize//I'm not a very organized person as you can see. This is my box with materials to make body butters and stuff but I have to reorganize I think. Although it's very messy, I can always find what I'm looking for (or most of the time ;) )



3. share//I share a cookie with Max, my sisters dog. He's the cutest and kindest dog that I know!

I've never joined such a challenge but I thought it was about time I did!
I found the perfect challenge here and I'm posting my photo's every week instead of every day because that would be a bit boring ;)

So here's the challenge and let the plays begin!

Do you have a bucket list?
Guilty!

Yes, I do. I think it's a hype nowadays because I see bucket lists appearing everywhere. This could be a hype for quite some time now but as you know (or don't), my little country is a bit behind in that kinda stuff ;).

Maybe I should give an explanation first about what a bucket list now actually is.

A bucket list is a list that someone makes with things he or she wants to do before he or she dies. Sometimes you can see terminally sick people do so. This phenomena has become very popular after the film 'The bucket list'. The film is about two men who coincidental meet after they both got diagnosed with cancer. Both are terminally sick so one guy, who previously made a bucket list, now let that thought go. But the other convinces him to take on his bucket list and together they work their way through eachothers list.

But okay, back to my bucket list. My list is on pinterest, you can find it here if you're interested. There are very trivial matters on there like find the perfect little black dress or learn how to juggle. But there are major things on there too like go deep sea diving or move to a different country or have my dreamjob.

I have to say my bucket list is quite short on pinterest at the moment but I'm expanding it ;).

This is my top 5 that I definitly want to accomplish in my life:

Yes, it's true, I'm a little addicted to fleamarkets! Sometimes I just buy some dress that is way to big for me but then I edit it at home and with some help from my mom I make it my dream dress.

It were summer holidays here in Belgium so I had a lot of time to do some little projects.
First I made some polymer clay necklaces. For the one's who don't know what polymer clay is, I'll explain it!

Polymer clay is a type of hardenable modeling clay. The clay can be found in every colour possible, from bright white to dark blue and from fluo pink to earthy brown. You can shape it as you want. You can make little puppets or animals or you can make necklaces out of it like I do. When you made a figure you just have to put it in an oven for half an hour and your figure is solid as a rock ;)


Now the necklaces!

The 26th of June this year was a milestone in my life. That was the day that I officially graduated as a pre-school teacher! I am now ready to teach children from 2,5 to 6 years 'how to'. How to write their name, how to draw a dinosaur, how to make cookies, how to hold a book, how to stack blocks and many more of those how to's.

Being a pre-school teacher is a very exciting and rewarding job. You can get so much affection from a little child and the look in their eyes when they learned something new from you is priceless.

So after that milestone, I'm now finding myself on a crossroad in my life. I do not know where to go next. One road is leading to the job market that is not very promising for a starting teacher, another one is leading to college and one another one I'm heading for another year abroad.

Time will tell I think ;)

“I see myself at crossroads in my life, mapless, lacking bits of knowledge - then, the moon breaks through, lights up the path before me...”
― John Geddes, A familiar rain 

 

Time is passing by really really fast!
I still remember typing that I was going on an adventure, now that adventure lays in my past.

Time flies and that's still an understatement.

When I was studying abroad, I kept a separate blog with all my findings and thoughts.
I'll drop the link below and after my internship I'm going to work on this blog again.

http://rayainvalencia.blogspot.be/

It's in Dutch but I added a translation posibility so you can read it in every language on earth!

Hasta luego amigos! (yea, I went to Valencia and fell in love with the Spanish language ;) )

Okay, I have great news.Remember when I posted that we always wait and fun moments are often postponed? I had to change this!

Exactly 37 days from now, I'm leaving on an adventure. I'm going to study abroad for four months, Valencia to be exact. It's a decision that I've already made last school year. A decision which I still don't regret but I start to have some nerves.
 
How will it be there? Will the school be happy to take me in? Will I manage to live independently? Will I miss my friends and family? Can I get used to living abroad? Am I going to miss my boy really bad?

All these questions haunt my head but next to these questions there is also the tremendous enthusiasm to go there.

Meet new people. Living in another country. Getting to know another culture. Live completely independently. Enjoying the student life.

I am now fully occupied by my exams but I have actually still much preparation to do. My flight isn't booked yet, I still have to search for an apartment, and many other things.

I'll keep you up-to-date!