19 blogs and vlogs I’m absolutely in love with

Writing a blog doesn’t just start: you get inspired first. That is why I’d love to share some of the blogs and vlogs that inspired me and that thought me a lot about life, fashion, body care, beauty, psychology, career moves and food.

Lifestyle:

• Zoella
  • What is not to like? Initially, I started watching her vlogs about make-up, but as time went on I became more and more interested in all the other content, as well on youtube as het blog. I am hopelessly jealous of her gift to create beautiful rooms and combine outfits that I would have never though of, but I also have great respect for how she opens up about her anxiety and how she uses it to help others get over it by sharing her story.
• NSMBL
  • This is one of the most famous Dutch blogs and I get why: I don’t know any blog that speaks this openly about subjects that sometimes seem a little awkward, but that you do want to know more about. The second reason it belongs here is definitively the humor, lots of articles get you laughing from the start. That is why I put it in the lifestyle section, those real-life stories and awkward articles are my favorite topics on the blog. It is the perfect blog for ‘the normal, non-perfect millennial’.
• Esmée Lifestyle
  • This blog I love for as well the focus on career as the lifestyle aspects, especially her ideas for interior design. She has a style that makes you immediately happy when you see it, because of the nice colors and prints she uses. The business articles she writes are in my opinion quite divers and are really helpful when you are just starting at the labor market, like what defines a good business card or what do you really need when working at home?
• Plastic free Amsterdam
  • This is actually a store in Amsterdam that supports the zero-waste lifestyle, but they have a very blog as well. If you are interested in this lifestyle, it can be really inspiring!
• Marie Kondo 
  • As much as it pains me to say this; I love using the Marie Kondo method of organizing my room. I am not an especially cheery person (especially not when it is about cleaning!), so the level of cutesy is a little much for me, but by watching ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’ on Netflix, I really got inspired to be efficient with my space. She does not (as far as I know) have a blog, but there are a lot of articles and YouTube films made about the method. Therefore, when you want to start tidying up, I would really recommend researching this method.
• With Good Intent
  • This blog has awesome low-waste/environmental tips that are actually do-able when you live a busy lifestyle. For instance, they wrote an article about how you can make your house smell great without being wasteful and some things I had never even thought of!
• Bobby Berk
  • Because, well, I am first of al IN LOVE with queer eye, and second of all because I adore Bobby’s style. I like that anything Bobby that Bobby makes is actually interesting, without being too busy. Also, it is a well-rounded blog with a lot of different topics, without being to chaotic. Love, love, LOVE!

Food:

• Liezl Jayne
  • She is way better at dieting in a healthy way than I am (I cheat to much and exercise to little), but the basic idea is the same, so she is my ultimate healthy food hero! I love how she balances fun and delicious cooking with healthy ingredients. Her cocoa balls recipe were so delicious!
• Chickslovefood
  • I love how they make eating healthy a fun and manageable way of life! Especially their cookbook ‘Skinny Six’ was a great eye-opener for me when I just started (Sweet potato breakfast muffins are my favorite breakfast now!). Breakfast was for me the hardest task, because I don’t really like eating in the morning and they made it something to look forward to! What I also love about them is that they understand that not everyone can go to exotic supermarkets and spend hundreds of euro’s on food, so their recipes are very student proof!
• Uit Pauline’s Keuken (from Pauline’s kitchen)
  • This is another Dutch Foodblog (so sorry) that I love. The recipes just fit my tastebuds perfectly and I find the recipes very creative in terms of combinations of flavors, for instance their zucchini burger with haloumi.
• De Groene Meisjes (the green girls)
  • Dutch again… But this is a great blog for eating healthy and for eating with friends of mine that eat vegetarian or even vegan. These recipes are also very delicious and the blog also helps you with living a greener lifestyle in other aspects of your life. Even for a non-vegetarian, this blog is a great way to make your life just a little greener.
• I Love Health
  • Sorry for the many Dutch blogs in this section, but I did want to mention this one as well! This blog is all about health and actually fits in all the categories in this post, but I use mostly the recipe section and the articles about (healthy) food.

Body care and beauty:

• Cruelty Free Kitty
  • When I started orienting in the world of cruelty free make-up and body care, I found it al very confusing: ‘There are brands that are cruelty free in Europe, but they do sell in China and then they have to test on animals, so they are not cruelty free, but Oh wait! They sell in Hong Kong only, so then it is okay again.’ By providing a clear list of brandnames that are completely cruelty free, they made life so much easier!
• Pixiwoo
  • Next to being a huge fan of Real Techniques, I also love these sisters, especially in their videos. They have the perfect balance between professional and personal and on top of that, I sincerely think of them as true experts in the field. I also love how down to earth they are and how they come across, it feels like they are right there in the room with you while chatting away.
• Vera Camilla
  • Vera Camilla is one of those bloggers I love, because I trust her opinions on skin and beauty products a 100% and she never let’s me down. It does not matter whether the products cost 3 euro or 30, she will rate them spot on!

Career:

• Patrick Wessels
  • I am a psychology student who is interested in marketing and when I tell that to people, they are shocked. ‘But a psychologist is supposed to give therapies, right? Did you choose the wrong study then?’ Patrick Wessels, ‘the consumer psychologist’ writes about everything that I would love to study as a psychologist and he makes this field of psychology so much more known in the Netherlands. Apart from being thankful, he is also kind of the example I strive towards in my career and that is why he definitively belongs in this list!
• Psyblog
  • I love almost every psychological topic thinkable (if we leave out the field of statistics) and this blog makes psychology fun again! Studying psychology at university is often very interesting, but can also become a tough chore when you start the third book you’ll have to read for the exams and those times, it is easy to forget why you love psychology. By reading the Psyblog, I remember it again because of their understandable way of talking about psychological topics.
• Amy Landino
  • Amy is such an inspiring person to me! She knows a lot about planning, getting your life in order, etc. and besides being good at that, she is also very entertaining to watch her on youtube about all of this. I find that a lot of people making these vlogs seem ‘to perfect’ to me, which often discourages me, since I can be the most chaotic person ever sometimes, but Amy makes you feel like she understands. She understands you want to snooze, you want to sleep in, you don’t feel like planning and you need coffee and instead of telling you you should do those things, she also tells you why and how. This makes it feel a lot more of a reachable goal to wake up early and to not procrastinate and I love her for that!
• Classy career girl
  • In this blog, Anna Runyan tells you all the stuff you need to know: how to start a company, how to manage your money, how to negotiate and much more. Next to the solid, wise advice, I also love the podcast posts she also shares there. Here calm voice makes me really listen, even when I am busy and all over the place and she makes me really trust her advice. Next to being a badass career woman, she also comes across as a genuinely lovely person that wants to help people and balance her work and her family. This makes her advice seem more doable than I have found with other blogs.

Sorry that so many of the blogs and vlogs are still Dutch, but the honest truth is that these are the ones I read most of the time now. I will keep updating this list as I go, so please keep looking to be inspired. Do you have any good blogs and vlogs for me or others? Let me know in the comments below, so that me and some other readers or listeners can try them as well! If you’d like to see more, please follow me on Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter or subscribe and get a free e-book on saving money.

Lots of love,

Lisa