lovely day

first of all, thank you guys so, so much for voting for me in the weekend blog awards. i landed a spot in the top three of the personal category, and i honestly could not have been happier with that result. it warms my heart to think that so many of you have been enjoying this blog, and i certainly hope you wil continue to do so!

and as long as i'm talking blogging, i wanted to tell you a little bit about the new project that i launched last month. with lovelyday.be, i'm trying to dust off the image of the typical belgian wedding. it's sugarfree - so don't expect teary-eyed accounts of the perfect proposal or 'i do'. instead, lovely day will focus on creative inspiration for those brides and grooms who like to do things a little differently.

already i've been contacted by so many wonderful people in and outside of the wedding industry, who are all very excited to collaborate on cool content and loads of inspiration - so i'd love it if you check in with us over there once in a while. even if you're not getting married soon, i promise there will be lots of cool people, places and things to discover on lovely day!

check out the beautiful pictures of two very real and very different belgian weddings over on lovely day - caroline and philippe were inspired by the canadian rockies, nathalie and philippe had a fairytale wedding in antwerp. first picture by inge nijs, second one by catherine de saeger.

bianco latte

you haven't been to milan if you haven't tried their gelato. last year we tried shockolat - a cremeria specialized in chocolate ice cream flavors. this year we passed by bianco latte and couldn't resist going in for a taste. i loved the place for its cozy vibes, so if the weather hadn't been so good, perhaps we would have sat down for actual lunch, too. as for the gelato? it was incredibly good and the scoops were very generous (i love it when they add just a little bit more on top in the end!)

smells like guitars

i can't get enough of scented candles - especially when they have cool names like bois de guitare. i just have to find out how that would smell, don't you? i'm pretty sure it'll be awesome, as it was conceived by rockstar rad french label april77, who can pretty much do nothing wrong in my book.

mama shelter lyon

to be perfectly honest, the thought of visiting lyon would not have crossed my mind if it hadn't been such a short drive from our home in geneva, and if mama shelter hadn't opened up a location there. where there's a mama shelter, there has to be something worth exploring, so we took advantage of their opening deals and booked ourselves a night.

we loved our stay at mama shelter in lyon. this location is just as cool and exciting as the one in paris. actually, it is so much like the one in paris, i found myself a little disappointed there weren't any twists or local changes to the formula. it makes me suspect the locations in marseille and istanbul are exact copies of paris, too. call me high-maintenance, but i love when a hotel chain makes sure every new location has an identity of its own (as ace hotel new york and ace hotel palm springs do, for example).

that said, we enjoyed our industrial looking room, the free movies on the mac screen, the new bathroom product in awesome packaging, and the delicious breakfast in their downstairs salon, surrounded by inflatables and guitars. if you're a party animal, you'll love the weekend programming, but if you like to get a good night's sleep don't forget to ask for a room on a high floor.

my style

my friend sofie valkiers asked me to document a week in my sartorial life and so i did. as you all well know, i'm not an outfit blogger, so posing definitely didn't come naturally to me. the fiancé stepped up to his duty of snapping the pics, and he nearly died laughing when he saw me squirming in front of the lens. if you want to see the awkward results, or discover where i got that trevor jackson tote bag, head over to sofie's fashion blog.

and because i received so many nice comments via facebook and twitter - i have to ask. is this something you'd like to see on here more often? do you enjoy chuckling at my poor posing skills? if so, i might contemplate sharing my outfits a little more often in the future, because oddly i did have a good time taking these.