photo by Alexandra Bertels

Welcome to the new and improved Au Pays Des Merveilles!  It’s been six years since I started blogging under the name Au Pays Des Merveilles and while I still love the name and the sentiment of everlasting wonder behind it, I felt the need to take this blogging thing a little bit more serious.  When I had to take a break from blogging to focus on graduating, it seemed like the perfect time for some blog reflection.  After a much longer break than I anticipated, it is much more clear to me where I want this blog to go and I’m super excited to share more beautiful homes, fascinating people, impressions of cities and their most interesting places, still complemented by collections of all kinds of pretty things.

A little word of explanation on this whole new design: if you go to hello > about, you can find a few words about me and the blog, but also a list of all the cities and countries I’ve visited.  This gives you the chance to browse through the posts by city.  If you go to wanderlust, you can find my Lisbon guide and soon guides for other cities will be added.  I will keep these up to date with new discoveries, so keep an eye on them when you’re traveling to these places!  Under topics, you can find all the categories I’ll be writing about.  Architecture contains all the posts I’ve ever written concerning architecture.  Collection will replace pretty things but the concept stays the same, I’ll regularly share a collection of certain items.  Explored will cover all the places I’ve been to and want to recommend to you: coffee bars, restaurants and shops, but also parks, beaches or cool buildings.  Fragments will show snippets of what I’ve been up to, a broader image of a city I’ve visited and a bit more personal stuff.  Insights gives a peek into someone’s home.  First up is mine, but others will follow soon.  These will focus on people who, just like me, have just started their career or are still figuring things out, who don’t have that much funds (yet) but care about making their place feel like a home anyway.  You won’t see design filled houses but real homes, with hand-me-downs, thrift shop discoveries and surely some Ikea.  For sundaze, I will tag along with someone on their favorite weekend activities, to see their city through their eyes.  Lastly, you’ll find some of the results of my job as a freelance photographer under work.  Everything else is pretty self-explanatory, but if you have questions (or discover some things that don’t work yet), feel free to let me know!

PS.  I’d like to give a little shout-out to Light Morango, who designed this theme.  If you’re in need of a new wordpress theme, be sure to check out her shop!  Her designs are not only super pretty and affordable but they come with a really helpful guide that helps you set up your new lay-out in no time.  On top of that, she’s happy to help if you’re not entirely satisfied with the result or run into some problems.  Two thumbs up!