Time for Coffee: Spitfire Espresso - Glasgow

Hello everyone,

Today was another innovating day in my Glasgow student life: I had class, four very long hours to be precise, struggled with the Scottish accent but survived once again. After the lectures I met up with my German friend Luise, who's exchange student as well. Luise and I have a special love for drinking coffee. We complain being poor on an hourly basis, but find ourselves in cool cafe's again and again, spending the money we could also spend on for example, a weeks worth of sandwiches. But a coffee lover's gotta do what a coffee lover does, and that is drinking coffee.

I have decided to write a series of posts about my hunt on cool places here in Scotland. From restaurants, to coffee places or simply just hang-outs. First up is a place in the Merchant City of Glasgow called Spitfire Espresso and which is a little gem. The café is filled with light because of its tall windows and has a vintage, airy touch to it. It gives you a bit of a 50's feeling, with the cute coffee cups, Elvis Presley tunes playing from the retro speakers and pin-up paintwork on the wall. On the counter is a variety of mouth-watering pastries and cakes on display, all looking equally delicious, which made it very hard to make a decision. Eventually Luise ordered a cappuccino and a warm croissant, I took an americano and the most amazing looking rocky road. The rocky road was fabulous, I think I can best describe it as edible heaven. Or an angel peeing on your tongue, something like that. The coffee was made with a beautiful dark red La Marzocco FB70 machine: a real eyecatcher producing lovely coffee.

source: yelp.com

source: yelp.com

Spitfire offers free Wi-Fi and a number of power outlets, which makes it a nice place to get some (home)work done. The staff is very friendly, welcoming and relaxed. One bearded barista even helped Luise with some of her vocabulary revision.

The place has an all day eggs menu, Meaning: we will certainly return some time for a good hangover-brunch.

See you later! Ayeee

Best of... LUSH

Lush, oh Lush... How I love it. There's so many reasons why Lush is my all time favourite when it comes to cosmetics. You can smell their shops from miles away, and when you finally get there, blinded by the colourful happy window, you enter a girly glitter unicorn dream. Not only their shops are as satisfying as chocolate, their cosmetics are organic, handmade and not tested on animals. Sit back and read about my Lush favourites.

First, let's talk about the Lemony Flutter. This buttery substance is meant to make your cuticles nice and soft, but believe me, it's a little miracle for every dry patch of skin. I massage it into my hands, feet and elbows before going to bed and wake up with a healthy and incredibly soft skin.

For my hair I love to use the R&B hairmoisturiser. This creme is basically a hair mask that you leave in. It smells amazing, like a creamy orange dessert. I squeeze it into my dry hair every morning resulting in me having loft, shiny and more voluminous locks.

Some people don't know this, but Lush has a line of fragrances too. When I bought the R&B hairmoisturiser for the first time, the shop assistant tipped me on adding some drops of perfume to the creme. She showed me Sun, a little perfume bottle that turned out to be filled with sunshine. It honestly smells like summer. She added some Sun-drops (ha, see what I did there ;)) to my hairmoisturiser and put it into my hair. Wow, this combination is AMAZING. Since both of the products have citrus scents, they fit together perfectly. Your hair smells lovely all day, giving you a ray of sunshine even at rainy times.

As you might have seen: I love citrus scents. Lemon, orange, tangerine, I cannot get enough of the sunny fizzyness. Fortunate that Lush seems to love it too!

When Life Hands You Lemons...

I have a little problem that buggers me and I think many of you can relate to it: not being able to be productive early in the morning. I'm the kind of person that likes to wake up without an alarm. This gives me the space to wake up peacefully, reflect on the dreams I had that night, and plan the day. However, as life is, we don't get the chance to wake up without alarm that often, resulting in me being a big bag of sand in the morning. I've been trying several options to have more energy in the morning: sleeping longer, waking up with a nice tune, not checking Instagram right away, etc. It all seemed to help little bits but now I have found something that has made significant changes. It's simply amazing: lemon water.

It's basically just lukewarm water with pressed lemon juice. I know, so simple! And its effects on my body are great. I drink a glass first thing in the morning, resulting in me feeling fresh, cheerful, and ready to start my morning routine. Besides waking you up, lemon juice is good for your digestion and skin. As many citrus fruits do, lemons contain a high amount of Vitamin C and we all know Vitamin C makes miracles happen when it comes to your immune system. The lemon juice will keep a cold or fever on a safe distance.

And not the least important: it tastes delishhhhh.

Reasons to Love Tame Impala.

Tame Impala. I have got some serious love in my body for those men. Their tunes do not only make me warm inside, they own the capability to make me feel dreamy, fierce, energized and relaxed at the same time. I get happy instantly when hearing one of their psychedelic melodies. Yet, there is a lot more to love about these aussie boys.

Number 1. This is a representation of what Tame Impala music does to you:

Number 2. Their album and single covers are amaaaazing            And LOOK, some of them even do THIS

Yeah, woah, I know right? Amazing. There's more:

Oh my god, such cool.


Number 3. This is their lead singer: Kevin Parker. He's really talented.

Does it gives you summer festival feels already?

This is him too.

And this is him on a cute couch.

Number 4. Kevin Parkers vision on music is on point. Quote:

Eh…. I feel like music will be free sooner or later, and I think I’m all for it. There’s all this talk of music needing a monetary value, this ownership of music, even that it needs a physical form. But intrinsically… it’s MUSIC, it should be better than that. Some of my most important musical experiences were from a burnt CD with songs my friend downloaded for me at a terrible digital quality… I didn’t care… it changed my life all the same. For me the value of music is the value you extract from it. You want to know a story? Up until recently, from all of Tame Impala’s record sales outside of Australia I had received…. zero dollars. Someone high up spent the money before it got to me. I may never get that money. Then Blackberry and some tequila brand or something put my song in an ad. Then I bought a house and set up a studio. I know what you’re thinking… “Wait so…when I bought an album I was helping some businessman pay for his mansion on an island somewhere, and when some dude bought a mobile phone he was helping to pay an artist? WHHHYY?” I’ll tell you why, IT’S MONEY. It doesn’t always go where you want it to go. It’s like a shopping trolley with a bung wheel. As far as I’m concerned the best thing you can do for an artist is LISTEN to the music…fall in love with it…….talk about it………get it however you can get it….Let the corporations pay for. This is just my brain rambling remember, I’m sure there are holes in my theories… for example I realize not everyone’s music is suited to a mobile phone ad, and it would be lame if artists tailored their music for that purpose.


Number 5. A third studio album "Currents" is on the way and will be released this year. As you might have guessed: I cannot wait.

If you don't know Tame Impala yet. Please, get to know them.

Pulse in the Pages

BOOM SHAKALAKA BACKGROUNDS: February

The pixels that cover up the blank spaces of my phone background. 

 Pixy Cut Flower Girl

 Sexy Rock 'n Roll Poet Babe

 Same

 Bikinibottom Situation

 "You can't sit with us"

 The HAIR!

 Just Kids

 The Boyfriend

 Ehrmahgerd Dernersersssss. And Wednesday.

 Pancake to Egg: What U Looking at

 Bae Gripling

 Space Slothie

 Bae Lightfoot Stealing Hearts

 As IF

Montgomery Havin Some Quality Time

Books With A Life: Second-Hand Books!

BOOKS. I've got so much love for them. Countless cozy afternoons I've spent in bookshops, wandering around without any pressure or sense of time. I could shop for books every single day, but as much as I love new copies, I've got a special place in my literary-heart for second-hand books. There is just something about them that charms me. Maybe it's the life they have had already or the yellowing pages; I adore them even more than spaghetti and I luuuurve the spaghetti.

Here's a little pile of second-hand books I've bought in the last year or so. I like the search for secondhand books. This kind of shopping is not like normal catalogue shopping: it's not the ordinary that's on the shelves. You have to hunt for the pearl. Sometimes you find beautiful picture books, or incredibly odd ones that you'd never come across in normal bookstores. A lot of times you can find books with autographs in them. Quite a surprise if the book is from one of your favourite authors! (Patti Smith: I will look for you, I will find you.)

A week ago I was shopping in my local bookstore where they store their second-hand books in the cellar. I was nosing around the war books when I came across this gorgeous picture book with photos of Amsterdam during WWII. One of my best friends is living in Amsterdam and is really fascinated by war stories. She's even an intern at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam in order to learn even more about the matters. So, when I had the book in my hands I knew I had to buy it for her. I'll give it to her on her birthday in May and I'm sure she'll love it. That's a thing with second-hand books too: it gives me the feeling it has to be passed on to keep it alive.

I often find books with little messages in them, probably the books had been gifts before. One books about motherhood reads on the first page: 

"To Johanna. Just a little something to make you laugh when you get five minutes to yourself, Philip X X X X X."

It makes me wonder. Was Johanna Philip's wife? Are they still married? Philip seems like a nice dude. I love these little messages. How did this book end up for 50 p on a sunday market? Didn't Johanna like it? I would never give the book away if there was a hand-written message in there for me. Look at this one on the right: it's written in a second-hand Looking for Alaska by John Green. Lieke, a friend of mine gave it to me as a gift when I went abroad for some months. I love it dearly, and I'm sure I'll never give the book away. 

I often buy my second-hand books at thift stores, or second-hand sections in book shops. The books are most of the time dead cheap and I dig bargains. I also like to google English bookstores whenever I go on vacation. Almost every bigger city has their own English bookshops that are often selling second-hand books too. This way every trip becomes a teeny tiny treasure hunt.

Going Abroad Gift Guide!

I should be studying for my Marketing Communications exam for the day after tomorrow, but as you see: I'm not. Instead I'm browsing the interwebs in search for fun little tokens to give a friend who is going abroad for a while. She's going to Taiwan, which is FAR and I consider her a very brave person for daring to go to a country she doesn't know the language of. When I went abroad to London two years ago I was suprised of the effort that my family and friends put into their little gifts for me. My father's best friend made a hand made recipe book with his children. He even added some CD's I could listen to while cooking with songs they had chosen themselves. I loved it, SO cute. Other friends gave me little photo albums, dutch sweets, or secondhand books with little messages in it. I felt so warm and filled with love when they all came to my parents' house on that New Years' Day to say goodbye.

A lot of people around me are going abroad for a while, for studies, interships, or just for travels. I can imagine I'm not the only person on this planet looking far and wide for small presents to give their friends that are leaving, That's why I've made a list with ideas for the buddies out there with that same problem. Here we goooo

1. A Special Necklace/Bracelet/Ring
I'm not really a fan of giving people money or digital stuff. Personally, I love receiving personal gifts and that's immediately the reason why I prefer giving them too. If you are very close with the person leaving, give them a little jewel that means something to you. Or if you're afraid of them losing it: buy a new one! Give it to them as a lucky charm. An additional idea: make it a jewel that you give back once in a while so the both of you can wear it. This way it travels with you both :).

2. A Little Notebook
Do you know the Paperblanks notebooks? I love them. They have the most beautiful and sparkly designs and come in different sizes. One of the smallest are the Micro Paperblanks. The little books are as big as the palm of your hand so don't take in a lot of space: they fit in every bag! Even in the smallest clutch. I'm giving one of these to the friend that's going to Taiwan, so she can write little notes, ideas and addresses in it.

3. An XXL Sleeping T-shirt with Photos on It
I got one from my best friend when I left for London. She came with my family to the airport in Amsterdam to wave me goodbye, and gave me a wrapped package. "Open it when you're up in the air," she said. It was such a nice surprise when I opened it: a white shirt, with all kinds of photos of us together on it. I'm always sleeping in big ass t-shirts, which she knew, so for me it was a perfect present. You could also do this with, for instance, a pillow bag. Most of the time you can just design and order them online.

4. A book!
If you read books on a regular basis, you could give one that you really enjoyed yourself. Scribble a note in it, and you have a personal gift that can be read on the plane/bus/train.

5. Letters
One for every month that your friend is gone, or for when he/she is gone for a shorter time: for every week. Write down a nice message, make a funny drawing, just anything to deliver a good start of the week or month.

6. A Leather Journal
If your friend likes journaling, as in writing, doodling, or something similar, give him/her a nice journal to pen down their journey. I personally find leather 'wrapping' journals really nice and pretty, but of course, everyone has a different taste so do buy what you think is right. If you like leather ones: they sell good ones at Barnes & Noble.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you give. Bear in mind that people that are going abroad don't have a lot of space in their luggage, so keep it small and light. Even a hug could be enough!

Doodle #1/2015

Tonight it's rainy in Holland. The wind is blowing full force against my windows and I'm here snuggled up in my small bed, doodling about happy raindrops.