My Christmas Adventures!

Hello everybody! I hope you had a great Christmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year! I am feeling completely exhausted after all of the festivities but at least I had a good time. It was really good to catch up with a load of my friends. I decided to share some tales of my Christmas adventures (well, the ones with any remote connection to Japanese fashion anyway. I doubt anybody really wants to hear the story of me visiting my mum and other daughterly duties...)

My Christmas break started with me wearing my last lolita outfit for 2015. Shalisa, James and I went over to Sammi's place for a Christmas gathering. Yes, I know I am wearing a strawberry print and it is not very festive. I wasn't really in the mood to wear a more festive themed outfit, so in the end I just wore what I wanted. I think a big part of lolita fashion is to enjoy dressing up and appreciate the clothes, so there is no point wearing something I don't feel like wearing. I didn't do anything too radical with this outfit as I haven't really had the time to think up some new outfits lately.

I got to meet a very energetic puppy! This is Sammi's corgi puppy, who is called Biscuit (such a typical Sammi name!). He is such a little cutie and his fur is so soft and lovely. I really hope I get another opportunity to meet him some day, provided Sammi doesn't mind me invading her flat! We also had a quick peek in to Sammi's wardrobe, as it was the first time we had really seen it all together in one place. Sadly, some of my photos of her wardrobe came out a bit too blurry, so I decided not to share them.

We got to open some of our presents. Here is a shot of Shalisa examining one of her gifts. I think Sammi and Shalisa liked the gifts I gave them. That is what they told me anyway! I completely forgot to take a picture of the presents I got. Sammi got me some stationary, socks and a beret. The beret has a moon on it! Shalisa's presents unfortunately got stuck in the mail but she did give us these reusable carrier bags. Mine has a duck design and I love it! It is already proving super useful and I have been using it loads.

We had a good catch up and laughed at some dodgy Youtube videos. Of course, we had to get out usual Domino's pizza order! It has become a bit of a Christmas tradition. We had a bunch of friends over a few days later and I ended up eating Domino's again, which turned out to be a bit less fun because I went in to what I call "Post Pizza Regret Mode". I felt so sick! Anyway, after our pizza binge we ended up watching this absolutely dreadful movie and then we dropped off Shalisa at the train station. I was feeling very tired at this point, but it was really good to spend some time with my best friends over the Christmas period.

Shalisa was not the only one having Christmas post dramas... I managed to win an auction for Chess Emblem a couple of days after the release, but it got well and truly stuck in UK customs. It was in the UK from early December, but it was not going anywhere. I was getting really concerned that I wouldn't get my package before Christmas but on December the 23rd it finally arrived! This was after a 2 hour phone call to customs, a very nasty customs fee and several panic attacks... I believe Chess Emblem is the only print from 2015 that made it on to my wishlist and I loved it the second I set eyes on it. I can confirm it is just as beautiful in real life as it is online. There are so many little details to it. I keep finding new details to fall in love with! I am hoping to get the matching beret at some point, but it is not an urgent priority of mine. For the moment I am really glad I was able to find an auction only a few thousand yen above retail price, as the prices for this series have since gone up a fair bit since. I did toy with the idea of wearing it on Christmas Day, but I decided to save it until I get some more bits to go with it.

This year I decided to join the Tea Party Club's Secret Santa event. I saw the event from the previous year and decided it looked like fun. I really love the secrecy of it all and knowing you could get almost anything. It is a bit of a gamble, but I think it paid off. The photo shows what I got from my Secret Santa. The fur shawl (fake fur thankfully!) is so soft and I keep stroking it as if it is a kitten or something! I love getting cute storage containers too. My Secret Santa also made me this beautiful headdress and I love it. I am definitely going to have to make a special outfit to go with it. Thankfully the person I gave a gift to apparently liked their present too. I was really worried they were going to hate it! It felt really exciting to attempt to put a thoughtful gift together for a stranger and it was surprisingly stress-free. I will definitely be doing this again next year.

And now I am going to do a mini review of the Japanese Fashion related Christmas presents I got from James. He isn't quite confident enough to dare ordering from Taobao yet, so I ended up with a lot of stuff from My Lolita Dress! I got given these navy blue and gold tights from Petite Luna (I think that is the Taobao store name?). The tights have a reasonable amount of stretch, although I wish the material was a little bit thicker. The pattern is lovely though, and when the tights are worn the pattern stretches okay. I was worried that the glitter would start to crack when they were worn and stretched out, but they seem fine for now. We will have to wait and see how well they last after a couple of wears and washes. The gold was a bit darker than I would have expected, but it is still very pretty. I would definitely consider ordering tights from Petite Luna in the future.

He also gave me a brooch from Vanillas Traumfabrik, which is a store I have always been curious about ordering from. The brooch is absolutely beautiful with a fantastic design to it. The ribbon rosette part is well formed and the chain and charm is a suitable length as well. 

I am pleased that the back has a 2-way back, so I can wear it more ways. You can perhaps see just a tiny bit of glue on the back. But this glue is in no way visible from the front and I am very satisfied with the overall quality of the brooch. I really want to go and order this in more colours now! Royal/Regency themes are a favourite of mine at the moment.

Finally, James got me this Mu Fish beret in black with silver embroidery. If you look very closely at the embroidery you can tell there is a slight hint of silver to the thread but actually, it looks more white than anything else. But this is actually how I was hoping it would turn out, as I really wanted this style of beret with white embroidery! If you do want a more silver colour though, then you may be disappointed.

The embroidery has been nicely done and the design is clear. I couldn't find any obvious mistakes anywhere on the beret.

The only thing I am slightly unsure about is this embroidery on the rim, which will appear on the forehead when worn. The embroidery itself it well executed with crisp letters, I'm just not sure I like this part of the design!

So I think that essentially covers everything fashion related that has gone on for the few weeks I have been away. Hopefully I will soon slot back in to my usual everyday routine and I will write plenty of blog posts for the upcoming year. Thank you to everybody who continues to stick with me and my little adventures. I hope you all had a great Christmas. Here is hoping 2016 is a fantastic year, in and out of lolita!