Hello everyone! How is everyone enjoying NYE? I am currently on a trip to Dublin and celebrating it there with a group of friends :-D Love this HUGE red Christmas ribbon on the Clerys department store on O'Connell Street! (Love the sale signs even more though ;-) ) The hotel we are staying in is the Academy Plaza Hotel. Definitely recommend it! Affordable rooms and great service are always a good combo!

When we arrived the first thing we went to see was Trinity College, Ireland's oldest university, founded in 1592.   Notable people who studied there are Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and - more recently - Jack Gleeson (King Joffrey on Game of Thrones :-P). More specifically, I wanted to visit the Old Library and the Book of Kells exhibit, but unfortunately, both were closed during the entire holiday. SOOO bummed about that! I hate it when that happens!

Luckily the next stop was in fact open for visitors, so we could take a look inside Dublin Castle, the centre of British rule in Ireland for more than 700 years. To keep warm I was wearing a soft pink cashmere sweater and a faux shearling black coat.

The inside of the castle (the seat of the Viceroy of Ireland) was very beautifully decorated and also still very festively! Below pictures of the Ladies Drawing Room and two of the ceremonial rooms. 

After that we took a stroll through the infamous Temple Bar district, with some of the most ' Irish'  pubs imaginable. Don't they look adorable?!

P.S. If you're looking for me, I'll be here!

Hello everyone! Currently, I am celebrating Christmas with my family and I just wanted to wish everyone a very happy holiday! 

Also, I want to thank all of you you so much for following Tatiana's Delights throughout the year. Your support has been such a gift to me! 

The Vandersluis family is a family filled with cats (5 of them at the moment), so of course they had front row seats during the present unwrapping... 

I hope Santa brought you everything that you wished for, and that your day is filled with warmth, laughter, and lots of food!  

Although I love the clutches Kate uses (Stuart Weitzman's Muse clutch, the L.K. Bennett Natalie clutch etc.), they are not very practical for everyday life. But there is one bag of Kate that is VERY practical and I have been in love with that one ever since I saw it: her grey leather D-bag from Tod's. Unfortunately, it turned out to be very hard to find a decent and affordable replikate (since I can in no way pay for the original). Luckily, after months of searching, one savvy Tatiana's Delights Facebook follower pointed me to a great one on Ebay:

The verdict: not the same medium grey colour as Kate's Tod's D-bag, but a great alternative nonetheless, especially considering the low price (and that for a real leather bag!). 

Everybody's mind is on Christmas now, but I am already thinking ahead. Just after New Year's I am going on a skiing holiday to the French Alps. Have been excited about that for several months now, because I love to ski! Unfortunately, the odds apparently aren't ever in my favour, since I dislocated my knee two weeks ago and I now need to keep using my knee at an absolute minimum. Which means that I (most likely) will not be able to shine on the slopes this year (or actually, not be able to give other people the opportunity to make fun of how bad I really am). Boohoo! 

Since I organised the trip (with a group of friends from law school) I am still going, but the main consequence  is that now the skis, the skiing boots and the goggles stay at home, and my 'apres-ski wardrobe' needs to be expanded.  And when it comes to fashion, Kate and you, my fellow Replikaters, are always my source of inspiration!

So here's a look at Kate's skiing outfits over the years...

            March 2004                                          April 2005                                         March 2008                          March 2010

              March 2009                                                      March 2012                                                               March 2005

I feel like red, white and black is a recurring theme here. Would there be a reason for that?

And here's a look at Kate's 'off-duty' style during her visits to the Alps....

       March 2009                             March 2013                                       March 2010                                       March 2013

She sure loves those black furry boots!

So, here's the deal: since I now really need to add some pieces to my wardrobe for a fashionable apres-ski look, I need help from you ladies to find the most awesome items available! What are in your opinion absolute fashion essentials for the snowy slopes? What would Kate wear? Any tips on how to pass the time when everybody's away?

To gather the inspiration I started a board on Pinterest (think: cable knits, faux fur and nordic prints). If you know some great additions to it, you are very welcome to join in!

And of course I am really interested to know about your skiing plans and anecdotes ;-)

I feel like the Middletons and William are just sitting there, judging my fashion choices. The pressure's on!

Some new items are up on the Tatiana's Delights Etsy shop. Be sure to place your order soon, because the shop will be closed for Christmas and New Year's Eve between Monday 16 December and Sunday 5 January!

Hey everyone! Sorry for being so quiet last week! After having to study for an exam and going on holiday I had some catching up to do. But I promise I'll make it up to you with some great posts this week! Firstly though, I thought I'd share  some pictures of the last few days of my vacation in Kuwait. 

On day 4 Joeri and I wanted to visit the largest mosque in Kuwait, very originally called 'The Grand Mosque'.  We already heard it wasn't easy to visit the mosque, and indeed when we arrived there was a notification at the entrance saying that tourist visits were only possible by appointment, which you could make by calling to some mobile number. Luckily, the guard on duty noticed us and told us that it would be OK to visit if we returned at 5 PM, because then there wouldn't be any prayers going on. 

Since it didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped I was prepared for the worst when we returned at 5 PM, but that turned out to be completely unnecessary. Instead we could enter the mosque immediately, and there we received a very friendly welcome from the mosque staff! After being stuffed with tea and cookies, Joeri and I got a private tour of the mosque. Of course it was expected of me to wear a long dress with long sleeves and a headscarf before entering the prayer hall, but as this wasn't my first mosque visit I came prepared (something greatly appreciated by the mosque staff btw). Below a photo I took of the large prayer hall, which has room for more than 10,000 worshippers at once. It is only used during Ramadan though. The rest of the time they don't have need for it. 

As we were the only tourist in the Mosque during our entire tour, I couldn't help but wonder how many tourists this "top tourist attraction of Kuwait" (according to our Lonely Planet) sees every year. When I asked our guide about this he said: "No, no, we get LOTS of tourists! We had some French people two days ago!" I didn't even know how to respond to that.... But it did confirm our suspicion that at any given moment there are never more than 20 tourists at once in the entire country of Kuwait. 

Our suspicion regarding the amount of tourists in Kuwait was confirmed yet again when Joeri and I visited the other "top tourist attraction of Kuwait" the next day: the Tareq Rajab Museum. Housed in the basement of a large villa, this museum contains a vast collection Islamic art and antiquities, mainly costumes, jewels, ceramics and early Islamic manuscripts from the 8th and 9th Century. It was assembled as a private collection of by Kuwait’s first minister of antiquities and his British wife. 

When Joeri and I arrived at 10:30 AM, 1.5 hours after opening time, the guards had to put on the lights and open all the doors for us. Looking at the visitors book, the Tareq Rajab Museum can't have more than 20 visitors a week. Such a waste, since the collection is so interesting and enormous. I must say, that basement is HUGE, but it still amazes me how much stuff you can put into it. Just wish more people would be able to see it for themselves....

In the evening we went to eat at the Green Apple, a massive restaurant just around the corner from our hotel, that had so much green neon lighting it worked kind of hypnotising on us during the first 4 days, that we just had to eat there. Turns out that at the Green Apple, every floor has it's own menu and kitchen. First floor: Chinese, second floor: Indian, third floor: Iranian, fourth floor: Lebanese. We decided to be adventurous and go for Iranian, so third floor it was. The food was nice, but mainly the overfriendly employees made me feel uncomfortable in a Stepford Wives kind of way....

Of course we couldn't leave Kuwait without visiting the traditional Souq market, with all its different tastes, colours and smells. I find that you can always find the most authentic atmosphere at a local market. And so we did! Obviously I couldn't resist buying a 'keffiyeh' as a souvenir for my dad (that's one of those headdresses for men that looks like a large tea towel)!

As a sharp contrast to the traditional souq, and because we basically had seen everything else Kuwait had to offer, we ended our last day in Kuwait at the largest shopping mall of the world: The Avenues. With over 800 shops it basically means that if you name it, they've got it. Including the most awesome Cheesecake Factory I have ever seen!

Well, that basically sums up the rest of my vacation in Kuwait. It just amazed me how a country with next to no history or nature can still be so interesting to experience. I am pretty sure though that if I were to visit Kuwait again in 20 years, it would be unrecognisably changed again.