International lolita day, winter.

9th of January

This day our community, the Portuguese Lolita community had organized a small gathering in my town to celebrate the winter loliday with a huge delay. Better late than never, right?

Anyway the weather was a disgrace, it was raining a lot and barely anyone was in the streets. 

It was scheduled at a lovely chocolate/cake store in which we had too many yummy sweets. It was great.

I had a lot of fun just looking at lolita magazines, eating and chatting with everyone and I love how everyone looked so different too. 

My friend Su came all the way from Lisbon to attend and stayed at my place which was a plus. <3 

Su, I adore you Su.

After getting dressed I went over to the meeting spot where soon all the participants arrived. Sadly it then started raining (a lot!) and we had to go all the way to the shop under heavy rain (my feet were super wet) but once we got there we got pretty confortable.

The counter full of tasty chocolates <3

We chatted and looked through lolita magazines and just spent a lovely afternoon. I really do wish we had these more ofen but the truth is, we just don't..

Group photo. Everyone looked super different, which is really cool. 

I am going to leave you with some photos of the goodies. The food was super yummy and just perfect for a dark and wet afternoon like that one. <3
I had my favorite drink (cappuccino) and a slice of chocolate / passion fruit cake, it was amazing!

Also Su brought me an adorable present, this cute cupcake shaped box which is now being used as decoration downstairs <3 My daughter also got treats, a princess crown and scepter which she loved.

You spoil me too much Su!

That was pretty much our day. 

The next day Su had to go back home but we booked lunch at our favorite restaurant, Ichiban.

Su loved it which is what's important. The view there is usually amazing because its right next to the sea but the weather was even worse on that sunday so just getting out of the car and into the restaurant was a freaking nightmare. 

Anyway I hope you liked hearing about my special weekend. I really want to have another one in my town just like that but nothing is scheduled for the rest of the year hehe.

I love you, thank you for following even if i'm too busy to post often. <3 I really really do appreciate it. <3

Japan 2015 Haul Post

Hello!

As you might have noticed I will not be posting other entries about my trip this year. I don't feel like it to be honest but I am still going to post my trip haul. I bought a bit too much again this year and will now be saving to pay off my extravagant buys for a couple of months haha but its always worth it, shopping in Japan is a lot of fun!

The photos are a bit small but if you click on them you should be able to see things a bit better.

These are all the lolita related purchases. In total I bought 5 dresses, 1 used and the other 4 new. 

I cannot post individual photos of everything so if there's anything you'd like to see please comment below! 

This is all the makeup/beauty related products I got during this trip. I even got these cute plastic containers to put in my room because they were too lovely to pass on,

And these are mostly stationary items, a couple I got from liemzie too (thank you) and of course the rilakkuma x hankyu plushie is not stationary, his job is to look cute and gather dust. :X

I buy a bit of this stuff there because I LOVE penpaling. I don't write a lot of letters unfortunately but I like being prepared. I don't collect these although i wish i could (who has space for that), I really use them. 

Lastly these are my doll related buys this time. I did not visit any doll stores unfortunately so I just got a magazine and a couple rement items because they are adorable. My BJDs got nothing this time.

And other than that we also bought a ton of food. Now I am poor, again. haha

I hope you liked reading about my shoppaholic side :|

I love this sort of post I must admit, looking at what other people buy is a sort of sadistic hobby.

Love always,

Jo

Hello everyone!

Strangely I do have new pieces to post and they are all from taobao which is unusual. One of them, the dress was actually bought a while ago. The other is a long underskirt I got from another lolita.

Dear Celine underskirt in ivory, very well made, I really love it. I have to admit that the quality is pretty good. It is the best piece i have ever gotten through taobao. <3

The other piece is SouffleSong / Neverland and Gloria Oil Painting jsk. I loved the print when it came out and ordered it. Unfortunately the print is blurry and the details are just so-so quality. I can't really say I love it as I'd like. Both the quality and finish as well as the materials are below the quality I am used to which is more disturbing than i thought. Plus taobao prices aren't that affordable anymore, i could have gotten a nice second hand dress for the price i paid which was about 100 euro with ship, fees and customs. 

 I decided to dress up for loliday, I had been outdoors before and worn a moitie necklace with my regular outfit but I really wanted to wear lolita for something, even if just to chill out at home.
For some reason summer really makes me wanna wear sweet a lot, its probably the colors. I went for a strawberry sweet lolita look. I really love green in lolita and I also love fruit prints in lolita too. You probably did not expect thar.

At some point my hudband got me cheesecake which made me very happy. At least my day was "sweet". 

As a way to celebrate loliday i also decided to either make something lolita or finish a lolita sewing project so that's what i did. I got a nice dramatic sleeved bolero in my trip to london for enchanted and i always wanted to make it rounder in the edges and add some ribbon ties. I also later decided the sleeves were too poofy and this is the end result, much easier to wear!

I was a bit sad that all my plans for loliday kinda got ruinned by timing, distance and last minute cancelling but honestly since it was so ridiculously hot (and it was worse today, what's up with the weather?!?) but I had fun this weekend with my familly, could have been much worse than it was and I still managed to wear lolita as I wanted. 

I do think about what it'd be like to live in a country with a big, active community though, all those photos of ild meetings made me a tad bit jealous still. I am positive and am sure things will be better soon. Now I must focus on getting everything finished at work. I have so much stuff to do, Its a bit overwhelming.

How about you? Did you do anything that day/dress up?

Love,

Jo

9th March

After an odd night that Saturday, (We changed, went out for kebabs and witnessed a robbery and waited 15min for the police to arrive while noticing that apparently nobody cared and reported it - despite a lot of people walking by - sad huh?) we had a more relaxed Sunday.


First my family was gone, so no mom and my brother also went to rest due to having gotten a cold and second Sunday's are always a bit... slow.


We hanged out at home a while and then in the afternoon finally left to walk around town a bit and for Mari to run around because that's her favorite thing right now.


I recently got another dress, its not really a new dress, but a dress I already own in another color way. One of the local lolitas has it in yet another color so I thought it would be fab if we did a trio. Sadly we never heard back from said Lolita so it ended up being me and fla twinning again. I changed the outfits in order for them to kinda be a twin and off we went. My favorite outfit is fla's. I just adore the burgundy ribbon on that dress, I think its pretty unexpected. Obviously I matched it with burgundy pieces and I think it works out quite nicely.

I am not really sure about this cut on me actually, for casual outings sure, for actual proper Lolita like this... I'm not sure it suits me. It makes me bulkier than normal. I do adore the print on the dress and the fabric though so I'm sad to let these go. They were not super cheap either.

Eventually fla had to get ready to leave which was sad.... we will miss having her around, I felt so... appreciated... actually no, I felt like someone considers me to be a good friend and wants to hang out with me which is something I have not had for a while nor did I know that I was not getting.
That made me get very gloomy these next days, I think you only miss things when you acknowledge them. I got so used to being with my family and only meeting certain people on some occasions that spending a whole weekend with someone dedicating their full attention to me kind of spoiled me.
I now plan to kidnap fla and her boyfriend and "force" them to move to the most amazing Portuguese city of them all, Porto.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading and looking at the photos.
I had so much fun twinning, I want to do it again soon!
Love,
Jo

7, 8 of March

            I was going to post a bit more, stuff other than just this weekend but I ended up procrastinating and I'll only post about the weekend in the end. I hope you will like reading, it was a very happy time for me so hopefully you will.

7th March - Friday
Two events took place on friday, my inlaws sent a package full of food again and that arrived which is always a colorful fun event for me and my husband. Mari had fun taking everything out of the box and putting everything inside again and so on...

Later that evening, around 10pm my dear friend fla arrived from Lisbon. She wanted to come over to visit me and my familly and would stay with us for the weekend!

8th March - Saturday

We woke up at decent time i suppose but took our time around the house. We decided we should go have lunch somewhere and everyone got ready.

Me, my husband, Mari, my older brother and fla all got in the car and my husband drove us to the nearby city of Vila Nova de Gaia to go to his favorite restaurant. 

My friend fla brought gifts, yes i know.... what a nice girl! 

She got things for Mari and also made some things for both Mari and myself. <3

She got Mari a set, a H&M red dress with pink dots and she made a matching bear headdress. How cute is that? 

I keep telling her that I adore the floral headbands she makes so she made me one. She made it in red, white and gold. It is huge I wonder if i can pull it off. 

She also made me a bear black headpiece. She did it out of a sort of spike things, as a dare. I shall wear it just for the lolz. :P I wonder if i can pull it off?

I also saw her wearing these tights and i loved them. I told her so and she got me a pair. I had no idea they were from Primark. They look amazing in pictures, everyone should get a pair.  

In the afternoon we had scheduled a Lolita meeting. One of the local girls, Isabel, had scheduled it before fla even knew she'd come over. It sounded like fun but we had other plans so we knew we could only stay for a bit. Still we got dressed and went. We had decided to wear the same dress since we both own Metamorphose temps de fille room print in the white colorway. Of course for fla that means her confort zone: sweet lolita and for me quite the opposite. It's fun thought and i think i pulled it off.

 We ordered one cake and shared. It was ok, i think the presentation is better than taste there but the kitchness of the decor of that place won me over.

We had to leave a bit earlier (aroung 5.30) because we had a classical music thing at 6pm. We got in the car and off we went. Unfortunately that weekend there was a ton of traffic and, in the end, we could  not get there on time. So that means no show and leaving the meeting earlier for nothing! We decided not to let it go to waste and stopped in a nice spot for some shots.

So I guess since we got nice shots I cannot complain but i'm still sad because i wanted to take fla to the show. Oh well....
We both wore the same print (fla wore the op version and I wore the jsk), the same shirt, the same lace socks in different colorways, flat shoes, ankle socks and the exact same bag in different colorways, same accesories etc. I think it was a decent twin experience and it was a lot of fun!

Soon, the next day report. I wonder what we both wore.... :P

I hope you liked the post, i miss her terribly!
Love,
Jo

Last Feb weekends

Hello! How is everyone? I hope you are all well!

I am sorry but i did not post last weekend. I totally forgot and now my memory of what happened has faded a bit. I'm terrible when it comes to remember things. Please forgive me.

15/16 february Weekend
SATURDAY

As you know the 14th of February is Valentine's Day but since it was on a Friday and me and my husband work hard all week we decided we'd be too tired to arrive home, change and then go somewhere. We decided to have a quiet lunch just the two of us the next day at lunch time so we asked my brother to come over and take care of our daughter for a bit.

I feel as if we never do that and should do  that regularly for the sake of our relationship so I might suggest we do that more in the future.

My husband kept the location a secret but I knew we'd go to our favorite Japanese restaurant as usual. haha He or we are not really keen on change and like good stuff so when we know something is good we usually stick to it.

My husband ordered a lot of food and it ended up being rather expensive but it was, as usual, delicious. We took a walk but returned home soon, we didn't want to impose on my brother's good will.

Mari is super into phones and anything that resembles a phone. She loves to play with the intercom so that means people in the street will often hear a baby talking gibberish because I don't really mind that she plays with it. hehe

She also loves the light switches.

One of my friends told me I should wear something special for valentines day so I put together this outfit, the most red thing I could get. I felt really fat that day though and hated all the photos. :P

SUNDAY

My father invited us to go over and have lunch at his place. My father is a fantastic cook so we always know we'll be super well treated there.
My younger brother is studying quite far from my city and he was in town so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get everyone together.

Dad played with his grandaughter a lot this time, she always picks up some new tricks when she visits. Not sure this one was a positive new thing since it was basically to throw things everywhere haha but she had fun.

My father made a codfish dish and a squid dish, both in the oven. I'm not too keen on codfish but i love squid so I had the later. It was incredible, i'm not sure how he does it but his food is really great. I, however, am terrible in the kitchen. My husband does the cooking around our place, i'm in charge of cleaning which is worse imo. But since he cooks better than I do its the natural order of things.

We spent most of the afternoon there and went home at dinner time. I did some work that had to be done before that monday and everyone went to bed early. I don't really like sundays anymore, i can't say i'm going through a phase where i'm looking super forward to go to work. I do not hate it... but i'm very tired and I miss having as much free time as I did last year.

22/23 february Weekend

SATURDAY

It had been a while since we had any lolita meetings scheduled. Since I missed the previous one it seemed like ages really. So when the girls scheduled a new one i was terribly excited about it. I ended up going with my brother, Mari and my husband (I asked and they said i could take them) it ended up becoming a familly time thing as well. We ended up being 4 (i mean in lolita that is) and 3 of us went in some shade of red which was funny. Everyone was so well dressed! When that happens i just feel so proud of the Portuguese comunity... its not easy to afford lolita in this country, it really isn't. 

The place was a small coffee with lovely handmade cake and there were games for kids as well. It had an artsy feel to it. The occasion was also special, on the second floor a japanese music event was taking place. When I say event i mean there was a dj playing some music and there were some people selling handmade things as well. It was not like an anime con or not even any sort of music related to that at all. My husband actually enjoyed it immensely as the music was up his alley. 

I also saw some people I had not seen in a while and that was a bonus. I had fun, it was a quiet nice time but that's the sort of thing i enjoy best, i'm not much into big crowds and a lot of noise anymore.

SUNDAY

This day I figured we'd take a walk because it wasn't raining again. You have no idea how much rain we've been getting lately. I'm not a sunny weather sort of person but even I feel like its enough. Mari loves to walk so we went for a walk, i tried giving her my hand and letting her go on her own but she started getting upset and wanted to walk without holding people's hands which is obviously not safe so i ended up picking her up and she made a tantrum and started crying. Oh babies...

But we eventually got to an area where she could walk a bit and she had fun doing so. It was quite chilly though so we stayed only for a bit. It was still nice.

I spent the rest of the day home with my mother, my older brother and of course my husband and my daughter. 

I do not like sunday's very much but this one was ok I guess.

And now its weekend again. I know nothing much will happen today but hopefully tomorrow i'll have something to post about again. Please tell me if there's something you'd like me to talk about in the future. <3

Jo