Ah Sweden, a beautiful city full to the brim with Scandanavian cuteness!

We hired this cute apartment for the 4 days we were in town, which was an incredibly lovely home away from home.

I have particularly fond memories the first day where we headed to the “Old Town”, also known as Gamla Stan.

Such adorable building here, all painted in shades and colours unlike a lot of other European cities.

And the shop windows! Oh my goodness. Too many great ones to photograph and share them all, but here are some of my favourites.

Cutest (closed) toy shop with mechanical bear and child, straight out of a fairytale.

Tourist shop with the greatest clogs and swedish Woolen goods.

Again, more clogs. *drool*

Multi coloured amazingness in all forms of print and pattern.

And this super bright thai-inspired sneaker shop.

Hand made candy!

And crazy taxidermy animals in a great vintage shop.

We also visited the Skyview, the biggest global building in Europe, with a magnificent view of the country.

We also spent time with this lovely lady on a particularly rainy second day in the city.

We ate cake and perused vintage shops. What else could you need?

I picked out this amazing wooly poncho in one of the many great vintage stores because I can not resist a good amount of floral embroidery!

And I also made a clog purchase on our last day in town! As well as meeting up with another instagram friend who randomly lived in the same suburb as we were staying in!

And to top off a great time spent in beautiful the city, we found GREAT coffee at Drop, which was recommended to us by Carolina and Bean Hunter. And the best (and only) Cardamon scroll I’ve ever eaten. Kx

Wow has it been a long time between drinks, hello everyone! Hope you’ll forgive my absence, as I have some photos to share from the Amsterdam leg of my trip! I’ll go in order of how the events unfolded.

Starting off with Laura Dols Vintage. On thursday before Trev had to head into work we swung by this super cute shop, full of beautiful authentic 30′s-70′s vintage dresses, bright floral linen (like…a room full of it), aprons, dress up outfits, accessories… you name it, they have it. Friendly ladies who work there, great selection of everything which was a little on the higher budget side of things but all worth the pricetag. I was pretty chuffed to see a dress I purchased in Australia for $5 on the racks for 90 euros, clearly worth every penny I paid for it.

On Friday I met up with the very lovely Nikki aka Liefgeval, who was SO incredibly fun to hang out with! We had a great day and luckily got along really well. As with meeting anyone you dont know personally, its a daunting and risky business, but Nikki was super friendly and together we wandered around Amsterdam in search of some vintage shops!

We had a quick coffee at Cafe Gartine who serve organic food grown in their own garden plot! I recommend you visit it if in town.

We then proceeded to Zipper and Marbles Vintage where we both made easy purchases. It was a fun day and it was so nice to meet someone living on the other side of the world! (p.s. Nikki wrote about our day here too)

The next day I checked out Episode Vintage on Nikki’s recommendation. Oh. My. God. I could have (and may have) spent HOURS here. This place was HUGE and so full of stuff you would not believe it. I later found out they have another shop on the other side of Amsterdam too, very dangerous!

There dress selection was rather mind-blowing. I picked up a number of amazing 70′s cotton sun dresses for around $3o AUD.

But then….I head back outside and found the flea markets on Episodes’ doorstep. These so called “rummage piles” are like…well…christmas. I bought 5 or so vintage cotton dresses for 5 euros each here. SO amazing, I had to calm myself down several times.

And there were lots of funny gypsy type people selling all sorts of stuff! Even their dogs….(no not really).

After all that crazy shopping I stopped off for some frozen yoghurt in the sunshine. I must say I think I was amazingly lucky with the weather in Amsterdam. It rained on and off a little bit, but no major downpours the whole time!

Just on the border of the markets was a cute little place called “Shop De Ville” which sold Miffy and Rabbit Lamps, furry animals (not unlike made590′s very own creatures) and lots of cool homewares by people like Donna Wilson. The owner was a very lovely guy and had on the skinniest purple jeans I’ve seen in my life.

There was also beautiful fruit stalls at a little deli/cafe type place around the corner…

And this shop! 1953 retro en chic. One of the prettiest shops I’ve seen in Amsterdam (my photos do it NO justice at all). Everything about it oozed special and despite the generous price tags, I felt everything was worth the money. Very special (and authentic) pieces indeed.

Here’s a quick pic of  (some of!) the dresses I nabbed in my travels.

And the pretty Amsterdam canals!

Which are filled with REAL SWANS!! just living there, floating around.

Dutch pancakes from the pancake bakery :)

And some cute market stalls from Nooderplatz markets. Crockery and shoes galore here. Sometimes I wish I wore heels (but only for a fleeting moment). I also wish shipping things home was a little cheaper, as my bags are already full again!

I think thats about all for now. Sorry to slam in all into one huge post, but the internet here has been BEYOND crap, and nowhere in holland or the UK has allowed tethering from an iphone, which means we cant get on our computers to do anything! We’re in the UK countryside at the moment, after leaving London a couple of days ago. All in all its been an amazing trip so far, as you can probably tell I especially LOVED Amsterdam) and I cant wait to share more. Kx

Some photos from our gardening adventure yesterday. We planted some flower boxes for our front windows where we (and Juno) have taken to sitting in the sun every weekend to eat breakfast. We also planted some herbs for our patio after a little trip to Gardens R Us, which is a great garden centre in Kingsford Lynds told me about who also happen to serve Toby’s Estate coffee at their cafe (this is always a drawcard for us)!

Unfortunately Juno ate the parsley almost quicker than I could plant it, so all the herbs will now be going on the top shelf of the plant stand! She was also a little unsure of last weekend’s project, the wire fencing trev put up which now stops her squeezing through the fence and wandering down the street (oh and she wandered!). Hope your weekend was as lovely and productive as ours. Kx