I’d say my favorite time of year in Amsterdam is the summer. You can swim the canals, bike in the heat, stay up drinking & eating in the parks until 10 pm, with almost full sunlight. But November really pulls my mind back to the canals as well. With no Thanksgiving on the calendar and the sun setting at 4 pm, Christmas blooms early. The canals are decked with lights, the Amsterdam Light Festival begins, and the shops all become little wintery jewel boxes.

Biking home at night as the trees twinkle and the water bounces their light, you decide to start your Christmas shopping early, your holiday party preps begin, and christmas market planning commences.

We were able to spend 5 Novembers in sweet Amsterdam. Living there changed me immensely and it’s sometimes hard to feel like I was able to take all of myself with me when we moved back. I started my business there, I became a mom there, I became a first-time homeowner there, and much more.

Alstampa became a reality on these streets and I wrote about it a lot while living there, all those journal entries are now put away, partially because reading them makes me cringe a little…the way hearing your voice recording makes you feel like “is that what I sound like?”

But not to fret, this won’t be a place of diary entries and journaling. It will be a place to share work, ideas and inspiration for alstampa studio. Although, it didn’t feel right to not start this substack journey with an entry about the place where it all felt real. Sweet Amsterdam.

***Side note: I know it asks if you’d like to do a paid subscription but I won’t be offering that anytime soon, if at all, so just ignore that! This is just an easy platform for emailing my subscribers that’s free!