♡ メリー クリスマス ！Part II ♡

みなさん、こんにちは!

I did promise that I would post my Christmas presents and well, here is the post finally! I'm pretty happy with this years gets because I wasn't expecting getting a couple of them but I am a happy bunny indeed! The top picture is my bits and pieces from my stocking, because even though I am 22 and my brother is 25 our mam loves to still do stockings for us! It's kind of cute because (and this is a recent thing like 4/5 years old) she does practical presents as well as things we like. So for example; I have a jar of lemon curd because lemon curd is my favourite spread to have on toast and my brother would have a jar of peanut butter because that is his. We both got a jar of posh instant coffee (is there such thing as posh instant coffee?) but I had already packed it away before I took photographs! Damn myself (*￣(ｴ)￣*)

So the rest of my stocking consisted off chocolate, body lotions/body wash, shaving cream, nail polish remover, deodrant, razors, face cream, some underwear and socks as well as a new bath sponge! I love my stocking presents because they are actually things I did need to buy for my house back in London but now I don't! Lovely! ヘ(￣ω￣ヘ)

The next picture is of my Clarin's stuff that actually wasn't a present from my parents but from a friend of the family who I've known since I was a baby and every year she buys me the most expensive beauty products ever! She's a beauty therapist and she only gets me this stuff because she can get discounts and I seriously love her for it as I in no way can afford to buy if for myself, especially on my budget! ヘ(゜Д、゜)ノ

This picture is of the clothes I got as Christmas presents! There is a pair of leggings, pair of tracksuit bottoms for lounging around in, three jumpers, a t-shirt and a scarf with gloves as well as some adorable red boot slipper things. I am actually in love with the slippers (づ￣ ³￣)づ

This picture is of my new hot chocolate decanter! Originally I had asked for a coffee one but apparently this chocolate one makes cold chocolate drinks as well as hot ones! Yay no more lumps in my Milo or hot chocolate! Also some lovely and different types of hot chocolate were included as well as a mandatory new mug! YYYEEESSS (づ￣ ³￣)づ

This is my Japan Fashion Now book that I had put on my wishlist but never actually asked for from my parents! I am super stoked to get it because now... well... I have something interesting to read about finally that isn't university related!

Ahhh my uncle is actually a legend! I asked for Gladiator on DVD and he buys me the three hour extended DVD! I also only asked for the first Wayne's World movie and he gets me number one AND number two! He is just a legend in my eyes

And finally... this is my new baby! Oh how I am excited to have a new camera finally and it is just beautiful! Also it takes the most amazing pictures ever! They're so clear even with my shaky hands!

I hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas! o(≧∇≦o)

Thanks for reading!

xoxo

♡ メリー クリスマス ！Part I ♡

みなさん、こんにちは!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and got everything they asked for ヽ(*≧ω≦)ﾉ I certainly enjoyed my Christmas day with my family. I didn't wake up until around 11am, which is nice because in the past I've woken up around 4am before (_ _") but as soon as I woke up, my parents and I opened one present each and the present I opened was a brand new camera! In a sense I was and I wasn't surprised that I got it, but I was still extremely happy to have it! *(*´∀｀*)☆ Mum and I then sorted out all the food for Christmas dinner and by the time we finished, it was time to go and visit my nan in the hospital. We met up with my uncle and his girlfriend there and we took some tea and cakes as well as nan's presents to cheer her up （＾ω＾）

After we came home; it was time to take the dogs for a walk and then to eat! I didn't eat as much as I would normally do at Christmas time so it was a nice feeling not to feel sick or bloated after dinner. I made coffee with my dad and then it was time to open presents! ＼（＠￣∇￣＠）／ If I'm honest; I hate opening presents in front of people... I guess it is because I hate being watched when I'm eating etc. I bought some nice reading material for Christmas evening as my parents tend to watch Christmas television but I have no interest whatsoever *sigh* So I entertained myself! Also I tried a limited edition of J20, a juice drink here in England, it was called "Glitter Berry" and it actually had gold specs in the drink! You had to shake it a lot to make the drink sparkly but it was so cute! ヾ(＾∇＾) Mam and I are going to try the drink warm tomorrow as the taste reminds me of mulled wine slightly!

On Boxing Day, my uncle and his family decided to /gatecrash/ our home and eat our food, use our electricity and basically be arses. Can you tell I really dislike my uncle? Then again, I don't get on with my uncles on my dad's side of the family... but I do speak to my cousins when I can which is lovely I'll admit. Anyway, they came on Boxing Day to visit Nan in the hospital and then come and see us and for once, I actually engaged with a proper conversation with my cousin as she was asking me questions about university and wondered what the fashion degree at Kingston was like. Honestly, I was surprised that we spoke for that long without feeling awkward and it made a nice change (★^O^★)

Christmas in my family tends to be a small affair, not a lot of fuss is made and honestly it feels like any normal day of the week to us because we have our animals to tend to - walking the dogs and checking on the horses etc - but the one difference is that we eat pancakes for breakfast! ヾ(*´ー`)ノ 

Thanks for reading!

xoxo

♡ Twelve by 2012 Project ♡

みなさん、こんにちは!

So browsing online I come across a post on this blog I follow (Chouzuru) and it's about doing twelve things before the year 2012 comes around. It was started by the popular blog Oh Hello, Friend and it's just a list of things to accomplish by December 31st 2011. I think it's a cute and neat idea and I did have a list of some form and so to do write it down here seems appropriate, especially as it's so close to the end of the year.

1. Go abroad to somewhere like China, Korea or Japan

2. Pass my second year of university so I can go into my third and final year

3. Decide to do an MA in Magazine Journalism or Journalism (there is actually a big difference between the two)

4. Apply to USA Summer Camp America for 2013

5. Start blogging about more things that surround my life for my university degree

6. Be more sociable

7. Learn my grandmother's Charlotte Rousseau recipe off by heart

8. Become closer with my older brother

9. Start applying for internship jobs at magazines/newspapers

10. Decide if I want to still stay in London or move down to Brighton to work

11. Find a decent/cheap flat to live in

12. Save money

Bold = completed

Italic = in progress

The fact I've complete 8 out of 12 things is a major achievement for myself; because honestly I tend to wander off the path of things and get distracted very easily. But anyway check out the original post here on Oh Hello, Friend, check out a list of a few other blogs who have done this and write your own. It'll be interesting to see others.

Thanks for reading!

xoxo

♡ Happy Belated Birthday To Me... ♡

みなさん、こんにちは! 

I could have written this blog yesterday but I was just so tired from my day in Central with Tia that I literally could not keep my eyes open goddammit =A= so I'm writing this blog today instead!

Anyway, like I said I met up with Tia for the day as it was my birthday on Wednesday and even though I'll be seeing friends on the 27th for celebrations, I've been feeling extremely down lately and so it was really a cheer up day instead of a birthday day. But yeah, Tia bought me some form of presents and did I laugh at each one; there was a banana box (with a fork!) a flashing beer mug (which is extremely handy for cups of tea) some Korean Ginseng pills (the irony being I went to Korea recently) and a ball of rubber bands... because you never know when you'll need an elastic band according to Tia!

It certainly cheered me up having my bag full of these... I want to call them goodies but basically my bag was full of weird pieces that even strangers would probably think "wha..." at! Don't get me wrong I love getting weird presents and I'll certainly be taking my ginseng pills everyday as it helps "maintain feelings of energy and vitality" and also I love the fact I have a flashing beer mug! It's like a party in my room everyday ;D

After the present opening ceremony, we headed over to a Japanese restuarant in Chinatown called Ikkyuman, it does massive sized portions for reasonable prices and the food is just delicious hands down. I ordered tonkatsu ramen and iced green tea for my meal, whilst Tia had miso ramen and water for hers. As Tia said, we could have easily just face-planted the bowls and drowned in the soup... well it would have been less embarrassing than trying to pick up loads of noodles with wooden chopsticks and shoving them all in your mouth before it fell back into the bowl!

See? Look at the comparison of the bowl next to Tia and we couldn't even finish it all... maybe that is why literally straight afterwards we headed over to Golden Gate Bakery and got a couple of cakes! I had trouble deciding honestly but when I saw a purple cake, I just had to have it as purple is indeed my favourite colour and the cake tasted like coconut and red bean! So delicious! Tia's was more like a fruit platter as there was fruit inside the cake underneath the cream as well as being on top of the cake! I love the cakes from Chinatown, they taste less sweeter than English cakes and also less stodgy as the sponge is so much softer and moist, even though the layer huge amounts of cream icing on the top... it doesn't overpower anything and you can easily eat a cake without feeling sick afterwards.

We ate more after our cakes just so you all know... ok actually we headed off and did Purikura first as we were, in fact, waiting for our mutal friends Kei and Iku. THEN we went and had a pork bun and strawberry fanta to wash it down! Gosh, I have never eaten so much around my friends before, I always pig out when I'm on my own but never really around my friends as I'm rather self-conscious about things like that!

Before we started the Purikura, Tia and I had some fun with the banana box and then decided to incorporate it into our session... which meant we had to involve Teru from Versailles ヾ(ﾟ∇ﾟ)ﾉ as we are both major Teru fangirls and well yes.... here is our final product from the session;

Isn't it bootiful?! And also here is the purikura from when Kei and Iku joined us, it was nice to spend time with them too ヾ(ﾟ∇ﾟ)ﾉ

Thanks for reading!

xoxo

♡ Seoul Trip 4 부 ♡

みなさん、こんにちは!

I have never written so many blogs in the space of a couple of days! I know I've done small blogs every day, but not ones of these lengths! Anyway, here's the final installment of what I did in Seoul.

For our last few days, We didn't go far, only to places we knew best as money was kind of running out (well for me it was) at this point, so we went to the Kyobo book store near Myeongdong and checked out their cd and dvd department they had and managed to nab some other cd's and even a Boy's Over Flower's DVD set for a good deal! And then walking past their electronic section, Rachael bought a Winnie the Pooh cheki camera! She's finally part of the cheki club! And it seriously was so adorable! And I almost bought some Miffy and Hello Kitty cheki films but I worked it out in my head that it was actually cheaper to buy them on ebay... go figures huh?

Sitting outside the store in the early evening is so relaxing because we don't have to worry about rushing anywhere before the stores close as many of them shut between 10 and 11pm, so it's just nice sit outside and soak up some of the atmosphere... until we saw a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop across the road and so we found a crossing (seriously you cannot just walk into the road here, it's much safer to walk the extra distance to a level crossing so you don't get killed!)

What I like about The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is that they have these buzzers you get given with a number on, so when your order is ready, the lights flash up and the disc starts vibrating. It saves so much hassle for the workers to try and find you in such a large space and you get to burn off like 3 calories walking back and forth to your table! I bought this time a white chocolate nut cookie and a peppermint iced tea and you would think that the iced teas are sweetened for you like they are over here, but it is actually cold peppermint tea. You have to add sugar syrup to your own liking to your drink and it's amazing because I don't like overly sweet foods (and I kind of found the cookie a bit too sweet...) and so doing my own measurements of sugar in my drink is pretty sound.

There was a really cute water pond piece as we walked to the subway but it was too dark for my flash on my camera to make it out properly... goddamit. I shall have to buy a dlsr and actually take it to Korea with me next time. Oh, I also managed to sneak Rachael in the picture below! So much laughter! This was taken just outside the subway station near the Kyobo book store, it's behind me in the picture. Can you still see what I mean when I say everything is so tall in Seoul?! Immense!

So, even though we had many cd's on us at that point, we decided to head back into Sinchon as it was nearby to return to the first music store we went into as we knew what to expect and because we couldn't find a couple of things in the Kyobo book store, we went back to see if that store would have the items. After we had our fill of cd's (we managed to get Super Junior's Mr Simple album at this point, I got Leeteuk as he's my joint favourite with Heechul, but I couldn't decide and in the end... Leader won!) we headed over to a traditional bbq place where a member of staff would stand outside clapping trying to get people in and well, I had to literally drag Rachael inside and we were placed at the front of the restaurant as if we were the main attraction or something! But everything was in hangul and we didn't know what was what so we pointed to the people next to us and asked to have what they were having. It was chicken, sausage, cabbage, beansprouts, noodles (honestly it was spaghetti but they call it noodle out there) with a red pepper paste sauce and it's cooked right there in front of you.

I'm not even going to lie, I loved the macaroni waldorf salad they gave us as a side dish! Seriously going to make that when I can ♪( ´▽｀)

Delicious food and the atmosphere was just buzzing... I kind of expected all the workers to just jump up and go OOPAH at everything! Afterwards as we felt extremely full at this point, we went and sat in a little park area just outside of the restaurant. It felt like a communal meet up point... like a concrete part that all the students sit to either eat, smoke and talk with their friends at. As it was a Friday night at this point, we watched couples and small groups of people going past to club nights in the area, would have been nice to have gone to one but alas we wouldn't have gotten in because of one of us being underage *shoosh*

At this point, it was pretty late as we had been out all day and we were too tired to tackle the 6 flights of stairs at Dapsimni station so we headed over to Wangsimni station and caught a taxi from there to our hotel instead. I didn't realise to get out of the station, you had to walk through a giant shopping centre to get to the street level... seriously it was massive! Even bigger than Westfields here in London!

Everything was either closed or starting to close at this point, but there were a few shops instead still open, mainly coffee shops. But yes, that was what we mainly did in Seoul. I wish we had gone to some places like Hongdae, Busan, Namsam and Lotte World but honestly, I'm now saving to go to them places next year when I go again. And there is now a few more spots I would love to go and see also! Even though I have only been back in England for a couple of weeks, I am itching to return to Seoul once again!

Ummm... also I didn't really want to write another blog post about purchases so I thought that I'd add them onto this one.

CD/DVD Purchases:

Picture One: Kim Hyun Joong Lucky mini album, Playful Kiss Photo Diary, You're Beautiful OST, Mary Stayed Out All Night OST, Kim Hyun Joong First Fanmeet DVD, SS501 Solo Projects album, SS501 Destination, Rebirth and ST01 Now albums, Jang Guen Suk Japanese album, Boys Over Flowers Limited Edition OST and Yamashita Tomohisa Supergood Superbad album.

Picture Two: Kim Kyu Jong Turn Me On mini album, Infinite's repackaged album, JYJ In Heaven album, SS501 Find and Deja Vu albums, Kara Step album, Park Jungmin mini album, Orange Caramel Bangkok City single and an indie singer cd which I got as a free gift.

My Leeteuk Mr Simple album! eeeeeeeee~

Boys Over Flowers DVD boxset and SS501's Persona Concert Photobook!

Beauty Product Purchases:

Because of the immense amount of things I had bought from Etude House, Nature Republic and Face Shop (oh and two things from Skin Food...) I managed to get a load of freebies!

Picture one: freebies from Etude House, Nature Republic and Face Shop... I managed to get some more which filled up the whole case in picture three!

Picture two: Red Bean BB Cream and pale pink lipstick from Skin Food

Picture three: Collagen Moistfull kit containing moisturiser and cream, Aura Primer, BB cream and lemon face masks.

Picture four: leopard print nail stickers and eyebrow shaper blades

Picture five: Etude House matte nail pastel collection, Peach (panda) and Apple (penguin) lip balms.

Fangirl Spazz Purchases:

Picture one: Jang Guen Suk and Kim Hyun Joong memobooks, stickers, socks and photocards.

Picture two: Jang Guen Suk and Kim Hyun Joong posters.

Picture three: Jang Guen Suk and Kim Hyun Joong 2012 calenders (not official but don't care ohohoho)

Picture four: Boys Over Flowers memobook and Jang Guen Suk phone charm - these were actually free from the nice lady on the stall I bought these from.

So that's it! That is what happened on my holiday in Seoul. I'm really looking forward to travelling back there again next year and seeing more sights and I just hope you enjoyed reading all my posts about everything.

Thanks for reading!

xoxo

♡ Seoul trip 3 부 ♡

みなさん、こんにちは! 

On the Wednesday, Rachael and I went back to Sinchon as we now knew about a music store that was near the subway (hence Anna's amazing map drawing skills) and as we were there, I fancied trying an ice-cream waffle that is pretty famous out in Korea and there was a tiny little cafe called Tomo's Cafe about a five minute walk from the subway that had the plastic models of their food outside and it looked pretty amazing so we went into there to eat, even though we'd just had some ox-bone stew literally 10 minutes before hand!

The waiter was so sweet, he asked us if we spoke Korean very well and we said so-so and he said it was ok he understood basic English, such a sweetheart! So I ordered a cookie creme frappuccino and an ice-cream waffle whilst Rachael ordered and lemonade and a honey maple toast for herself. From where we were sitting we could see the people behind the counter making our food and just soaking up the general atmosphere it was actually, in my personal opinion, the nicest place I had eaten in on the whole trip.

My cookie creme frappuccino reminded me of the Baramint Bailey's drink I had had at TGI Friday's a few weeks beforehand when everyone in our house went there for dinner one night, except obviously there was no alcohol involved and it actually tasted more delicious. Rachael let me have a taste of her lemonade (and obviously I let her taste my drink) and her drink was like a proper old fashioned lemonade drink! Wonderful! The only thing I got a tiny bit freaked out about was the fact there was a tomato on my food! I know tomatoes are classed as fruits but still.... it was weird!

Oh and another thing... Rachael's toast, I swear, was like 3 maybe 4 fingers thick! Biggest slice of toast I had ever seen in my life!

On the Thursday, we awoke at 4am (ok I slept for an extra 15 minutes as I didn't actually fall asleep until 2am because I was excited) but we awoke so we could catch the first train out at our station to Digital Media City, which is where all the major music shows are filmed, especially M!Countdown which was the show we were trying to get into that day!

We knew we had to queue up for 8am, sign our name down on a piece of paper and then come back between 4pm and 5pm so they could get us in for the show to start but unfortunately, we were about the 90th people in the queue (they only allow the first 80) and so we decided to go and get some breakfast and then head back to the hotel for a lazy day of sleeping and eating food from Paris Baguette and the Japanese restaurant near our hotel. We found a Starbucks across the road the the building we were standing outside of and so we both had hot chocolates to drink and a cheese sandwich (they put jalapeno peppers in everything!) and whilst I had a sausage roll (actually it was a sausage in a croissant, yum!) Rachael had a banana muffin as an extra because we were pretty starved as it was around 9am and we'd been awake for so long without eating, this was for once our first breakfast in Seoul!

I bought another sausage roll, and like a pizza bread thing and some muffins from Paris Baguette. I actually prefer their bread/muffins out there because it's not as stodgy as English bread!

Last post coming up!

Thanks for reading!

xoxo