Hello, how is everyone?

Today is saturday, my favorite day of the week. It's the only day I usually make plans for because there's still sunday before I have to go back to work. Is it like that for everyone else too?

This week I was missing the frills so I made an open invitation to the portuguese lolita community and surprise, two girls actually said they'd like to meet and hang out. That made me very happy!

Saturday is my house cleaning/chores day as well though and that means i spent the whole morning ironing and cleaning and took a bit too long doing that so when the girls arrived I was dressed but with no makeup on. I asked them to come up to my room and we chatted while i finished getting ready.

After that we finally left the house. We went to a nearby famous spot where they had a urban market going on, Plano B. One of the male Egl Portugal members was there selling some clothes he creates with a friend and had asked to come over. He seemed happy to see us and i was sure happy to see him again. He has been nothing but be very kind to me and my familly so he will always be loved by us. <3

After that we went to a new spot for pictures, its called Jardim das Oliveiras (Olive tree garden). Unfortunately then we realised that we forgot the memory card at home so we could not use my camera. We took outfit shots with a cellphone instead.

Mari had a lot of fun because there's a big area where she can just safely walk around which is what she likes doing the most. ^_^;
After a while we did have to go though, the girls had trains to catch and it was getting a bit chilly.
We stopped by the local Costa Café to get cappuccino and latte and then eventually said our goodbyes and went home.
On our way home we still walked a bit around town since there were a lot of events going on all through my area, apparently to celebrate the national historical center day. That was fun! I love seeing my city come to life like that.

On top of that my husband ordere pizza so this day was pretty good. Tomorrow I have plans too, i can't wait to see what will happen. <3

This week I also took photos of my little monica girl, she's wearing a dress and a hair accessory i made out of mari's old clothes. I really like her in pink. She still has no name, am I the worse doll owner or what?

This is the view from my bedroom, that tower in the background is the famous Porto Clérigos Tower. I really need to clean those windows but I love the effect the dust on the outside looks, its like snow. heh

And that's it, I hope you liked reading about my day. How was your day?
Lots of kisses with 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

Random post

Hello again,

I'm at work at the moment, it's the last work day before my vacation period and I'm so glad too because I am tired. There's so much work to be done though and when i come back my working life will have changed dramatically since I'm taking on new reponsibilities. Exciting, scary, overwhelming... i have very mixed feelings about this. I'm going into it with a 2 year experience promise because they are aware that me adapting will take time. Hopefully it won't and i'll be perfect in every way. One can dream right?

Anyway since life's so chaotic at the moment i can't seem to be able to place things in a timeline anymore so this post is going to be messy as well.

Sunday the 30th June
I visited my dad the other day, went to his place on a weekend to get those car race shots and videos to him. He lives by the sea and his living block has a swimming pool so its a fairly agreable place to be in.
He always cooks things he knows we like too and he is a fantastic cook so that's a plus.
We decided to go by train as opposed to using the car all the time which sounded like a good idea. We got our tickets and got in the train... and found out that the train didn't stop where dad lives so we had to get off somewhere else. The next train would only be there 45min later so I decided to call dad and ask him to come pick us up.

When we arrived my older brother was already there and soon lunch was served. Dad decided to make Rojões à moda do Minho which has tripes, meet, potatoes and lots of blood. It's the sort of typical dish some people might refuse to eat. My husband admited he wasn't a fan of the tripes because of the animal smell but he had to admit he liked it this time because of dad's cooking skills.

We went to a local café to eat some typical portuguese Bola de Berlim which is a version of the German Berlinger cake. They claim to have the best ones and they are good indeed. I hate half of it and drank an expresso.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and having some familly quality time.
Dad's passions include cooking, cars (alfa romeo as you know) and also other things like music and cameras. I took a shot of some of his cameras for you guys.

 Every time i visit dad i want to snatch this for my Ball Jointed Doll, Aléxia. ;_;

We checked the train schedule and went to the station, this was the train that took us home. It was a great day and extremely relaxing!

Saturday the 6th
Our national community got an invitation from an event organizer to attend a japanese music related event (Audiofilia) and they asked so nicely we couldn't say no.
It was ridiculously hot like its been the last month and some of the girls complained about having to wear lolita but i managed to get them all to wear it anyway he. After all when would we get together again, not soon for sure!
When we arrived at the place it was cooler inside and the architecture and decoration was perfect! I hope you can tell from the photos.

Apparently its a bar at night but sometimes host cultural events during the day. What a lovely bar, it made me wanna go at night too!

I had a hard time picking something to wear i must say, i never know what to wear in the summer, lolita or not, i just hate it THAT much. So I just went with the obvious op + ankle sock combo for confort and i am happy I did, it wasn't as painful as it could have been.

Everyone wearing summer outfits. We were all dying a bit. hehe. I wore a MmM op, MmM bag, etc shoes and offbrand everything else.

We sat in the bar for a bit too, everyone behaved and drank water but i wanted to try the new Sagres Radler.

The bartender said "if you want a beer, this is not what you were expecting for sure" and he was right, it tastes like... an odd cocktail. It's not bad though.

We then said goodbye to everyone that was still upstairs and left. Some of us had arrangements, some others had to catch a bus or train... Me, my brother, Duarte and his friend and Vânia went back through the same route so I took this change to take a photo at one of my favorite tourist spots in Porto, Igreja do Carmo.

In the end me and my older brother were left and decided to go to the downtown Costa café. He fell in love... its all very tasty but a tad expensive so that's why I do not go more often. It is usually very crowded but it was actually slow that day which was nice for a change. And of course extra points for the air conditioner.

I am going to Vigo tonight, i'm going to catch a plane there.

It'll be:

Vigo - Madrid - Amesterdam - Osaka

It will also be Mari's first plane experience. 

I hope she'll be a quiet behaved baby as usual but one never knows.

I apologise if any of you is on one of these flights and a baby is crying non-stop in advance.

I will be there until the 27th of August so if you have any photo requests, just let me know and I'll try my best to comply!

Thank you so much for the constant support guys. A big hug to all of you,

Jo