Frock On! - Day 1 (saturday)

Hello everyone!

I have been quite busy and will probably be even more busy in the near future so I am not sure if i'll be able to finish my Japan trip reports.

I am not back in Portugal and two days after returning from Japan (and heading straight to work) I had another trip scheduled. I would attend the London based event Frock On!.
There's many things I was looking forwards to regarding this event so i'll make a small list of the main ones:
- It would be my first time ever in a country that has english as its nº1 oficial language (and so, my first time in the U.K.);
- I'd be getting in a lolita fashion event (getting a new sparkle of love for the fashion) with my best friend, miss Lucythewhite (and we had a blast the last time we did this so I was looking forward to that);
- I would be meeting a lot of new lolitas and seeing some of my dearest lolita foreign friends as well <3.

I got off work earlier than expected. There were still a few hours left till the meeting time at the airport but i decided to go straight there anyway ("best not to risk anything go wrong", that was my reasoning). As a result I ended up sitting down and waiting for a long time. I took the oportunity to buy some flu medicin as I got sick before leaving which was much unfortunate.

Eventually Lucy arrived and we proceeded to the gate area where we ate something and waited a bit more since the flight got delayed. We also got our bus tickets to get from Stansted to the city center.

Lucy gets totally freaked out from flying so i tried to talk talk talk as much as possible during take off and landings. I wanted to chat with her during the flight too but i was so tired from my job that i slept during the entire flight!

When we arrived the plane was late and we were at risk of missing the last shuttle bus to Victoria Square so we had to run again which I hate doing but always end up having to do. -_-;
We finally figured out where it was and fortunately managed to get in the bus. The bus ride was long and i don't remember if i slept or not.

We finally got to the town center and I got the scare of the trip! As I got out of the bus this woman was leaving the are with a bag that looked like mine. I ran to her and asked "excuse me, are you sure this is your suitcase? Because it looks exactly like mine!" She looked at it and said "oh... it might be similar but not mine, you are right!" - I gave her a really scary evil glare because for crying out loud, who at 3am just takes any bag without checking? I mean what would she and I do if she had ran off with my bag? Gah.

After this ridiculous (but apparently it can happen to any of us) Vânia checked the address and we decided to walk to the hotel. It took around 20 minutes to arrive there but at 3-4am with nobody around i must admit it was kinda nuts. But the metro was not working anymore and we'd have to call a cab on purpose so this was the fastest and cheapest way.

We ended up getting to the hotel just fine and the reservation was confirmed and we could finally sleep.

Saturday 31st of August

We woke up with the alarm in the morning and started getting ready. I took a shot of the room. It's a student lodging "hotel" so the room looks just like that, a student dorm room. There were a lot of shelfs, two desks the whole nine yards.

The best part was the view! The window was pretty small as you can tell but damn, i wouldn't mind having that view myself.  

We both took a bath and started getting ready. It did not take too long to get ready, having outfits already picked out makes it easy. I can see why most people plan outfits ahead of time. 

This is what I wore and this what Vânia wore! We are matching in a way, colors and also my socks have the same print as her dress!

 In the elevator! Love this photo, its nothing out of the ordinary but its one of my favorites of the day. We just look very excited and amused.

This is the façade of the hotel. If you ever are in london, want to crash in the town center and do not want to pay an extreme amount of money, I recommend it. (LSE)

And this is the other side of the street, there was a Sherlock Holmes pub that we did not visit. It was a lovely sight every day though.

We grabbed a latte and a cake of some sort as breakfast and spend a couple of minutes sitting and enjoying our breakfasts. After that we decided we should go as early as possible since we did have Super VIP tickets that enabled us to get in faster. 

Outfit info:

Wig: Cyperous

Hair accessory: Triple Fortune

Dress: Metamorphose temps de fille

Socks: Juliette et justine

Bolero: Atelier Pierrot

Boots: Queen Bee

Bag: Ahcahcum Muchacha

When we got to the venue there was nobody outside so we wondered if we were in the right place. We were then greated by the doorman and got in. There were only around 10 lolitas there. I said hi and tried chatting with them for a bit but they did not seem too interested in carrying that conversation for longer so i met Lucy outside again.

After a while a lot more people were finally coming and soon the entrance looked a bit more crowded.

We chatted with some other people ( Isa <3) and met some others as well while waiting.

After a bit Kyra and Michaela came down the stairs and started telling us what we should do. 

We got in different lines depending on each one's ticket and started heading over to the reception desk to get our tickets and our goodie bag. When i arrived they did not give me a tea party ticket. I noticed that a bit after.

The first thing we did was look at all the sales booths had and eventually spend some money. Vânia checked Juliette et Justine first and was disappointed because there was nothing from the old collections and the only new design she liked that was there was the dress she is wearing on these shots.

We fell in love with the milly fleurs amazing shirts (i always want one when i see them but they are out of my price range for shirts), the atelier pierrot high waisted skirts, the magnificent bonnets... then we looked at all the amazing off brand things. There were so many things i wanted! (incredible how being with vania makes me wanna shop while when i was in japan i was so un-inspired). 

We both got grimoire socks before anything else.

Since we could not find anything we really wanted and we were on a budget with limite luggage space we then proceded towards the second hand sales room. We found one Juliette et Justine dress that looked terrible on the hanger (seriously, it does look aweful on a hanger!) but had the most delightful print. Vania said she liked it but wanted me to try it on and see if i could finally fit into a jj dress. I did so and it did fit. I do not LOVE it on me but it looks ok with a cardigan over it and i adore the print. I was happy i could finally own one of their dresses.

After shopping the staff announced that we should take our seating in the stage room. Since we had super vip tickets we were offered seats in the front which was a lot nicer than just sitting in the back since it was time for the fashion shows to start. 

But before that Kyra and Michaela greeted everyone and there was a segment where Hitomi from Grimoire answered a couple of questions. She seems really nice. I do not follow her work besides the verum tights that is but she really seemed like a down to earth woman. I did not talk to her or ask for a photo because of the obvious (I tend not to want to ask for those things unless its one of my idols and absolutely have to do it otherwise i'll regret) but it was interesting!

I do not remember if there was a break after this or not so i'll pretend everything went in one go.

It was fantastic to see all those inscredible new designs first hand and i fell in love with a coupld of Juliette et Justine's new pieces and some Haneuli things too. I always love all the mille fleurs and atelier pierrot too and for me the mille outfits were the most stunning on stage.

Fashion Show 1 

I'll leave you with some shots of some of the stalls in the event. The room was pretty cool too, it used to be a library so now because obviously the books needed to be preserved elsewhere, they have painted books to pretend that they never left.

Dreamy Bows

Grimoire

I do not remember the name of this girl's store but she was super nice and i forced Vania into buying the most ott head piece she has ever worn with lolita, which she'll be wearing the next day.

General view of the room, some Pinkhime on the first two tables. Really not my style at all but you couldn't ignore all that pink.

Cute Lou

Another lovely stall, this one was full of the cutest hair accessories. After a while you could see a couple of people wearing those gigantic keys on their hair.

We were waiting for the second fashion show to take place and while everyone else went out to have lunch me and Vania were starving but in good company. I took that time to hang out with my dearest Chrissi and catch up. She is one of the nicest people i met because of lolita, no matter how long we are without speaking to each other (because we do not see each other at all and because i'm terrible at keeping in touch with people, that's just how I am) when we do, its like time froze. And we were also kind of matchy.

Inside our Frock On! goodie bags we also had a couple of mini kit kats so we ate those to prevent from fainting from hunger haha. We sat with very nice girls with whom we chated but who i do not really know. If you are reading this thank you for being nice to us. <3

My dress's fabric (wrinkly because of the luggage and because i only found out that our hotel had an iron and board in the end of the trip -_-;) an our "pre-lunch" kit kats.

There were also some other things going on which i missed so i'll leave you with the videos anyway if you are interested:

- Michaela's Fashion Fix & Bow Tying lesson (+ a view of the event - can you spot me and vania?) 

- Chokelate posing 1 on 1 (I am trying to find a video of this but there is not any, do you know of a place to find it? Vania was kind of forced to go on stage so i guess she'll be happy if there isn't any)

We didn't manage to catch these because we went out to get some food and i took that chance to also change shoes. My camera was almost dead so i was not expecting to take any more photos and it it would not matter if i had the boots on or not.

What my outfit looked like with my dear friends, my etc flats, the most amazing lolita shoes in the world! (if you have a pair for sale in size L let me know, i want them in all colors!)

We also took this opportunity to use the Photo Booth they had at the event. We thought we could only use it once but later found out some people got like a ton of shots! We got 4 which is a sheet of photographs. I really like them but we seem to have misplaced them :| Thank gosh there's a copy online otherwise they'd be lost forever.

Aren't they both silly and lovely? I hope we can find the original but one day i'll still print a couple.

After the video messages (i really liked that people had made these on purpose for the event). The one from Mc Melody doll can be found on youtube.

After this it was the goobye speech and the prize raffles. There were a ton of prizes, i was amazed. o.o

This time we actually won something. I keep saying we never win anything but we did. And now comes the karma screwed me over part:

- There was a box of chocolates for everyone, we each took one. They then announced that three of them had an extra paper inside so we all checked. I got one of the only 3 pieces of paper in all those chocolate boxes and headed over to the stage all giggly even though i had only won a signed postcard (hey! It's something!). 

When i got to the stage... well they told us very quietly that they had misplaced the cards and that if they find them they'd send mine over. Still haven't heard from them so I assume they didn't find it.

So yes, first time winning something in these raffles except i didn't get to actually "win something". I guess its kind of funny.

Ok this might not seem like something special but I'm in the event's bathroom. You guys have no idea, i have never in my life seen such an amazing bathroom. I wanted to stay there all day. You can see it in the fashion fix video when they show the event.

And me and the incredible (she always looks perfect and she's stunning!) and super nice miss Aliki.

All of my photos with Aliki look terrible, blurry and terrible but i love her so much i need to include one in this post somewhere anyway. Also she has the sexiest accent i've ever encountered. She's part greek and i wasn't even aware of that. Anyway if you can meet her some day you'll see why i like her so much, she's a lot of fun, very mature and just overall a real and extremely nice person.

After this there was a dinner somewhere and Vania really wanted to go so we got ready and left but on the way there it was really cold and since i had a flu i asked for her forgiveness but told her i was going back. I wish we could have gone but i didn't take many warm clothes with me and i did not want to risk getting sicker.

We had dinner at macDonald's instead and before you consider that as a tragic end of day it wasn't. It tasted marvelously. I'm not sure if it was because i was so hungry but it was one of the most delicious fast food meals i have had in a while.

We then returned to the hotel, chatted, took shots of some of the things we got, and fell asleep really fast after that. It was a fantastic day, I was already happy I decided to attend.

That day I bought:

Grimoire Verum Un Ange tights - link

Juliette et Justine Swanhilde Echarpe Jsk - link

Lockshop Marie Catoinette tights - link

And that is all for day one. I hope you could get a bit of an idea of how the event was and what went on. I had fun. I wish i could get in touch with everyone there but truth is I am sort of shy even though I have been told by a lot of people they do not think i'm shy at all. Oh well hehe.

Love,
Jo

São João

Hello everyone,

After what i wrote about on the last post (on the next day) Porto (my city) had its most exciting festival of the year. It's also called the "longest night of the year", "São João" festival [read about it].

I woke up early so I could clean up a bit. I was not even sure if anyone would come this year as I have parties every year but did not schedule anything this time round. I called my mother and she did say she'd come by with both my brothers and a friend so I asked my husband to get more groceries.

After cleaning up I set up some typical decorations and also the table.

Mother arrived after that and we started making the traditional meal which consists of:
- "Caldo verde" [read about it]
- Grilled sardines
- Grilled green pepper
- Olives
- "Broa" [read about it]
- Lots of wine, beer and other alchoolic beverages.

Since some youngsters do not appreciate fish and soup a lot and because its a festive ocasion, most famillies also have barbecues. We got some barbecue chicken from a store for my brothers since they are such people.

After eating we went out but during the meal we could already see and hear all the noise coming from the party people outside. I live in the city center so whenever anything happens in my town i'm imidiatly a part of it.

We finally went out to see the fireworks. It isn't the most impressive firework show ever but we always have a blast, i think us portuguese just appreciate the festivities anyway, regardless of how small.

The tradition (not very old) is to carry a plastic hammer or some Alho porro [Leek - the flower head leaves a onion taste so people try to get you to smell like onions, I hate it really] and hit people in the head with it. It's a lot of fun, a really crazy festival. If you come over for it i recommend not wearing open shoes and picking confortable shoes as well. Other than that anything goes.

We walked around a lot chatted with a ton of unknown people and some friends and I ate a hot dog. Portuguese street stall hotdogs have a ton of stuff in them including lettuce, mushrooms, corn, onions, of cours sausages. cheese, ham, chips, ketchup, mustard, mayonaise... [read about it in french]
Those are basically calorie bombs but they taste so nice when you had a couple of drinks don't they?

I eventually returned home safe and sound (not sure how) and when i woke up the other day I found out that I cleaned the whole place when I returned and I do not even remember doing any of that.
My husband told me I'm the best - getting drunk and cleaning as a result pleased him. -_-;

The next day I had a massive hangover so i slept a bit more than usual. I invited my friend Vania to come by the river and watch the anual rabelo boat race.

It was ridiculously hot that day but we still took Mari with us. She had fun and drank a lot of water.

 We saw the pretty boats but also crazy folk jump off the bridge. Some kids who live there do this every summer but it was the first time i have seen tourists do the same.

 I said goodbye to my dear friend and we went back home. We were beat! (especially because of the heat).
I had also received a package I did not have time to open so I did just that. It was no other than my lovely meta dress the Egl Portugal (portuguese lolita community) members gave me for my birthday!

Swan Chandelier High Waist JSK (olive)

Hello Lace page

Isn't it amazing? I fell in love with this series when i went to japan the year it came out. I saw it in the meta store and drooled. I admit this is not the version I liked but i'll still make it work. I hope i can get it in the version I love some day!

And that was my Saint John weekend of 2013.
Hope you liked reading about it, I really want to share our culture with you guys hence the non-lolita posts.
Jo