A Pause By The Riverside

I have been having a bit of a tough time lately, with a family illness causing me a lot of upset. A couple of months ago James and I booked an afternoon tea and after a discussion with my sister, we decided not to cancel it. It turned out to be exactly what I needed. After writing a blog post about afternoon tea back in January, I had really been craving a new food adventure! So I had a look at what we could try within a reasonable driving distance. We ended up in Henley at a hotel called Hotel du Vin.

I was having a bit of a dilemma about whether I wanted to wear lolita or not. On the one hand, I have gotten my groove back and am dressing in lolita regularly again (I do keep meaning to share my outfits. Maybe I will compile them for a blog post soon...) but on the other hand, I wasn't in the mood to attract a lot of attention. I guess I have been feeling a bit vulnerable with everything that has been going on. In the end, I compromised. I wore the Primark dress that years ago a lot of UK lolitas went out and brought. Obviously it is not a lolita dress, but I tried to style it in a laid-back lolita outfit. I added an under-skirt and matching red blouse. For some reason, I really love wearing the colour red with this dress. I tried to keep things looking a bit mature and I even ditched my petticoat later on in the day. It worked- nobody bothered me, but I still felt as though I had made a bit of an effort. After all, as I mentioned in my afternoon tea blog post, part of the fun of the experience is dressing up.

We went to Hotel du Vin. Pictured is the sweet half. The savoury half was really impressive. Rather than doing sandwiches there was a tart, a quiche, a croissant, brioche bun and bagel. There was quite a bit of food for our money! This afternoon tea is actually done in a few branches of the same hotel, but the chain is very small and there were some interesting inclusions which made it a bit more original. I especially loved the inclusion of a gin and tonic sundae and a rhubarb and custard doughnut. Candy floss seems to be increasingly popular as well! This candy floss was meant to be apple flavoured, but it tasted like standard candy floss to me. My favourite bit though, was actually the scones. They were still warm from the oven (a big bonus, in my opinion) and were really soft. The strawberry jam and clotted cream complimented them perfectly.

The raspberry and chocolate teacake looked like the Pokemon Pyukumuku! I was seriously tempted to draw a face on this picture! Pyukumuku is one of my favourites from the latest generation. After taking a bit of a break, I am getting back in to playing Pokemon Moon again. At the moment I am trying to breed a shiny Alolan Vulpix (another favourite of mine).

Afterwards we went around the town centre for a little while. Henley is quite a small town, so there isn't really many decent shops to browse in. There are a lot of "boutique" clothing stores which are typically aimed at woman of a certain age and wage bracket, if you get what I mean. There was however, a gift store selling a lot of Pusheen merchandise! We went inside to check them out and I was so tempted buy the fuzzy notebook. My favourite was the mermaid Pusheen, but James likes the one holding the slice of pizza. 

There was this random contraption being pushed around the town centre. I had earlier spotted signs saying "fun this way!" and naturally, I followed them. It led us to a bunch of kids playing with these small steampunk-like sculptures. I decided not to join in, but it was amusing watching this bicycle-thing getting pushed around.

I spotted these beautiful flowers in the town centre. At this early stage of Spring it is unusual to see such pretty flowers in bloom in town centres. The blossom is coming in nicely though and we spotted several beautiful trees with pink blossom. It is a bit of a double-edged sword for me though, as blossom gives me hay fever symptoms!

We finished our afternoon by going for a stroll along the riverside. Henley is famous for its annual regatta, so the river has a lot of beautiful bridges, tourist attractions and unusual boats. I even saw a boat with some solar panels on it, which I think is cool. Henley is definitely a good place to come for peaceful outings and quiet contemplation. I really enjoyed strolling hand-in-hand along the river.

After initially floating on the other side of the river, this pretty crested bird came a bit closer, so I got several photos of it. I have no idea what kind of bird this is, but I became very enamored with it. It is so pretty!

Believe it or not, these houses are not on the other side of the river, but floating on an island in the middle of the river! As I was saying to James, could you imagine needing to pop out for a pint of milk and having to take a boat? But most of the houses looked empty, so I assume they are Summer houses. I daydreamed a little, with this romantic idea of being well and truly cut off from the outside world by a wide span of river but realistically, I don't think I could live in a place like this!

We stopped in a cafe for a drink before heading home. I felt rejuvenated and a bit more at peace with my current situation. The coming weeks are going to be hard for me, but I will always be grateful that James and I experienced this quiet day together. This actually wasn't our first choice for afternoon tea, but I am so glad we came here. And we now have another afternoon tea experience to look forward to, hopefully in the near future.

Tokyo Treat Review- Positive

So today I am doing a post which is not really lolita related and I do apologise if this post is not something that my followers are particularly interested in seeing. I am still sat in that metaphorical fig tree, trying to figure out what to do. I promise I have some more Japanese fashion related content coming soon. I have a Taobao order and a Japan haul coming in the post, plus I have a few ideas for other posts as well. But if you are a fan of Japanese food and snacks, then today you are in luck!

I have been wanting to order one of these monthly snack subscription boxes for a while now. I have a bit of a passion for food, especially sweets and food that looks cute. There are so many options out there, especially for Japanese candy, but in the end I decided to go for Tokyo Treat. I based this decision on a few things. Firstly, in comparison to some other similar boxes, it feels as though you get more content in the Tokyo Treat box. Tokyo Treat also offer free shipping worldwide. If you go for the larger sized boxes you are also guaranteed to get a soda, a DIY candy kit and a gachapon. Also, if you go on their Facebook page you can see what the monthly theme is going to be and some of the contents. That helped me to make a more informed decision about whether I wanted to get that particular month's box. The good thing about Tokyo Treat is that you can unsubscribe at any time and it is really easy to do so. So if you wanted, you can just sign up for one box and then cancel right away if you only wanted to get that one box. Just be aware that you will need to cancel before the payments for next month's box comes out, which should be some time near the end of the month. If you search their Facebook page, you will find that Tokyo Treat also do a lot of discount vouchers, so it is worth having a look and figuring out which deal works out the best for you. Subscribers also get entered in to a competition to win a free 'Lucky Treat' each month and there are also competitions to win further prizes.

There are a couple of points I feel I should mention. Obviously with a lot of these boxes the contents are not worth the price you pay for them. You have to weigh up how much you are getting and how much of it is cheap stuff that doesn't cost many yen. The other thing to consider is how much it would cost you if you didn't live in Japan, but wanted to buy these sweets from a specialist sweet store. There are stores out there that offer snacks from various countries, but a lot of the time you get hit with high prices because the store has to pay to import them. I know that if I were to buy my box contents from one of these stores it would have cost me a lot more money. Yes, you don't get to choose what is in the box, but that is part of the risk. But out of everything I received in my box, I was very pleased to discover there was only one thing I didn't like. I also tried things that I would have otherwise avoided like the plague. I would have never thought about trying clam soup flavoured crisps, but it turns out I actually quite like them! So that was a bit of an eye-opening experience. I can't wait to see what surprises await me in the March box. At the moment Tokyo Treat do not guarantee that their boxes will be vegetarian friendly. I see a lot of people commenting about this. I would suggest keeping up the comments and then maybe they will consider doing one. Also, if you have a food allergy, that would be another reason to avoid getting these boxes.

So, on to my box! I got an email as soon as the box was dispatched. Tokyo Treat are very responsive on their Facebook page and I feel it would be really easy to get in contact with them if there was a problem. They do say that if your box does not arrive by the end of the month to contact them on Facebook. Thankfully, my box turned up okay, but I do have some faith that Tokyo Treat would be able to send out a replacement box if necessary. 

I was told to expect my box any time between the 20th and 28th of February. Obviously my box arrived well before those dates. It took just over a week from getting my dispatch email for my box to arrive. There were a few dents in the box, but it was generally well packaged.

The box was absolutely stuffed with products, so there wasn't much room for extra packaging. I was a bit worried that the soda bottle would crush stuff like the crisps but actually, the box was so full that there was no way that stuff was going to be rolling around inside the box. The more fragile items, such as the crisps, were sensibly packed right at the top.

You get given a handy magazine which goes in to depth about everything you get in the box. It is always nice to know what you are eating beforehand! The magazine also had information about Japanese culture surrounding the snacks. So because this was a Valentines themed box, there was a small piece written about 'obligation chocolate' and some of the traditional customs around this time of year. As this was a Valentines box, a lot of the items were pink! There were also some instructions in English on how to use the DIY candy kit. This time around, the DIY kit was a strawberry mousse with stencil, which you have to microwave. I haven't gotten around to making it yet, but I did notice I am going to need to do a bit of converting with the microwave cooking times. It only tells you how long to cook it for 500W microwaves. Apart from needing to alter the cooking time, the instructions are super easy to follow to the point where it is almost patronising. You would struggle to get it wrong because Tokyo Treat are super careful about making their points crystal clear.

This month's gachapon was an Amuse lucky charm. I was hoping to get one of the bird designs, but out of the cat designs I think I got the cutest one!

I wont go in to details about every single snack, because we will be here all day. If this is something that people are interested in, I may consider doing videos of James and I trying the snacks, but I have no plans to do this at the moment and it wont be on this blog if I do decide to give this a go. I decided to share my favourite snack from this box though. These are the Mini Peach Ramune candy, which taste of peach soda. They were so refreshing and left me wanting more. The can style packaging with the ring-pull was cute too. I would definitely buy these again! 

So after this first box, I have decided that I am going to remain subscribed for a while. March's box is going to be sakura and matcha themed, and I am really excited to see what they do with this theme. The good thing is, there is plenty of time to cancel my subscription if I didn't like a theme, because Tokyo Treat usually announce their theme long before the payment comes out. To tell the truth, I have always been a bit wary of these monthly surprise boxes, but this has turned out to be a very positive experience. I also really love surprises, so this is definitely my sort of thing! 

Cutify Your Picnic!

At the time of writing this, the UK was finally starting to see some decent weather! It is weird to think of all the flooding that affected the UK not that long ago. So, with the better weather, maybe it is time to consider doing a lolita meet outside again. Picnic season is upon us, so I thought today I would look at some ideas on how to make your picnic a bit cuter.

Seek out unusual containers

I think that picnics can look a lot cuter if you put an effort in to choosing pretty containers, instead of just serving food and drinks out of their usual packaging. Take this cocktail jug-

Last year during the Summer, a local pub near me started serving Teapot Cocktails. The cocktails were served in these plastic tea pots. I immediately wanted a plastic tea pot! It makes a change from a standard cocktail jug. Did you see the recent Secret Life of the Lolita videos? There was an adorable duck shaped water dispenser in the 2nd video. An unusual container can make an interesting centre piece.

Also think of containers and crockery in different ways

Who says that a tea cup should only ever serve tea? You could easily fill a tea cup with a cupcake or sweets, or other treats. This is just one example I thought of off the top of my head. I am sure with a bit more time you could come up with loads of ideas.

Use cooking tools in different ways

For example, you could use a cookie cutter to shape your sandwiches. You can get lots of different food molds that you can use for a wide range of food, not just its intended purpose.

Take inspiration from bento boxes

There are some good bento box books on Amazon. Some of the creations are very inspiring. I like to flick through and look at the pictures, but some books also include interesting recipes, which show you how to make some of the bento parts. One of my favourites is making hot dog sausages in to squids or an octopus!

Not everything has to match

Having a matching set can be pretty, but sometimes having mis-matched items can give a picnic a quirky feel. I know of cafes where they deliberately mis-match their crockery. As long as everything compliments each other, you can create an interesting look. Also, not having a matching set means that is is easier to keep track on who has used each cup or plate!

Fill all the spaces on your picnic area

A scattering of confetti is a cheap way to decorate a picnic blanket. Just remember that you will have to clear it up afterwards! But sometimes doing a extra bit of tidying can be worth it.

Play around with sweet and savoury

For example, some savoury foods could be disguised as cupcakes. Maybe you can get creative and make some kind of savoury cupcake icing! I have also heard that in Japan you can get sweet sandwiches. It can be fun to trick the eye and mess with your senses.

And finally, here are just a few links to help inspire-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yum-Yum-Bento-Box-Recipes-Adorable/dp/1594744475/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1394472137&sr=8-11&keywords=bento+ideas

http://www.jbox.com/category/819

http://alexxstuart.com/bumper-picnic-inspiration-post-100-ideas-and-recipes

http://bentolunch.livejournal.com/

http://www.japancentre.com/

I feel like I have only really started to scratch the surface with this post. If you have any ideas of your own then do feel free to comment and share!