♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Days 10-15! ♥

Hello all! Sorry for the brief absence in those posts, we're currently dealing with some sad family news, so here's a quick catch-up post on the days we've missed! I think most of these are quite short, so hopefully this won't be too long of a post!

Recently Haz and I have been talking about taking our first trip abroad together, and we're thinking it might be a package holiday to Disneyland Paris! Obviously, with a package holiday we won't be able to fit in any time for sight-seeing or shopping in Paris, but one day I'd very much like to visit the BTSSB store there! Living in the UK, it's not too difficult to get across the Channel to visit France, and it's definitely something we both want to do!

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Themed shops and beautiful shop decors are one of our favourite things to think about! We're guilty of going into shops we don't plan on buying anything from or couldn't afford anything from just to have a quick look at all of the decor and decorations; we often talk about retiring when we're older and running a cute quirky little boutique style shop. 

We did a very quick cursory google search and watched this quick episode of How It's Made (it's very informative and relaxing to watch the machines work!), but we also went to the V&A quite recently, where they have a lot of beautiful examples of vintage and antique lace. 

My favourite example at the V&A of lace was this beautiful veil. 

As you probably know, we're not at home right now; we're staying with Haz's family in Bristol. We've done a few touristy things and a lot of visiting around places, but I'm fairly sure we ate out this day! I'm sure we had very nice plates wherever it was, though. 

I think that the essay/poem a lot of lolitas have already read is this one, It's entitled "Rules of the Lolita" and it's worth a look, if you haven't already read it. The one I read for this challenge is 'Let's Talk About Hello Kitty'. 

I asked Haz to do hers first, and she struggled a bit! The words she came up with were:

Pastel, Cutesy, Sweets, Fairytale, Storybook

In comparison, I struggled . . . a lot! Here are mine:

Cats, Pink, Bears, Pastel, Accessorized

I think that a lot of my outfits definitely fall into looking like one another; I find something that works and stick with it. I like ankle socks, I like vintage brooches, I like small understated bows. I'm working on trying to vary my style a bit more! 

I have to admit that neither Haz nor I are big scent people/perfume people. We have a 'toasted marshmallow' cheapy roomspray from Poundland that we spray sometimes, and at university we both had little diffusers in our room (Haz's was Salted Caramel, mine was Cherry!). We didn't bring any perfumes or anything with us, but I thought I would share with you our absolute favourite spray to have in our bags/around us. 

It's this.

It costs £1 from Asda and it lasts ages and smells like candy floss, and honestly, what's there not to love about it.

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Day 9 ♥ ~ Fairytale Inspired Coordinates! ~

When I was little, I had a magazine subscription to "Angelina's Fairytales", an Angelina Ballerina magazine that came with two stuffed toy mice (Angelina and her best friend Alice), an outfit you could dress them up in, and a magazine with activities themed around different fairytales. A lot of them were predictable; Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, etc. - but lots of them I'd never heard of and was very excited to read about! The fairytale I based my coord around I'm sure was listed in the magazine under "The Glass Heart", but the best version of it I could find online was entitled "The Three Sisters". It's about three sisters who are each born with a glass heart, and the love life of the youngest one who falls in love with a page. You can read a version of it here. 

The thing I actually found most difficult about putting this coordinate together was the shoes! I'm not totally happy with them, but they'll do. The dress is Mary Magdalene's Perfume Bottle JSK, which I thought was appropriate due to both the pale blue colour of the dress (which reminds me of glass!) and the fact that the print is adorned with glass objects! I went away a little from my comfort zone and put together a slightly classier coord here; obviously I had to have some representation of the princess' glass hearts, and I chose this cute pearl and crystal heart necklace! I took the brown from the ribbon and straps of the JSK for my accent colour, as I think it stands out a lot! 

The little bumblebee pin is a reference to the oldest sister, whose heart shatters on a windowsill she's leaning out of to look at a little bee buzzing around the flowers! 

What's your favourite fairytale? 

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Day 8 ♥ ~ Favourite Local Haunts! ~

I thought here we would share both some of our favourite local lolita haunts as well as some other local places that we haven't been to yet but really do intend to try out at some stage! A quick special mention to an adorable tea-room called 'My Cup of Tea' that unfortunately closed down recently; its decor was beautiful, its prices were reasonable, and everyone was always very friendly!

Although they aren't really decorated in the kind of decor you'd expect lolitas to adore or seem to have many lolita elements at all, there's a street full of mainly independent shops in Hull in which we tend to gravitate towards for local meets, and on that street are both Caffe Gelato and Planet Coffee, which are places we often find ourselves holed up and chatting! 

I couldn't find a picture of anything we've gotten from Planet Coffee (although some things we've had that we've really enjoyed include bubblegum soda floats and honeycomb milkshakes!) so here's a picture of the kind of huge portions you get from Caffe Gelato! I can't remember exactly what's on it - certainly the blue gelato is bubblegum - but doesn't it look adorable? 

A little more out of the way but still technically local is Jubilee's Vintage Tearoom, a place we haven't visited but really want to! All of the pictures we've seen look very cute and it seems very appropriate for a royal themed or regal themed meet!

Finally, another cafe we would really like to visit at some point with the comm is the 'Boardroom Game Cafe', a board game cafe opening soon in Hull! Haz and I both adore board games and we've been bemoaning the lack of a boardgame cafe in Hull for a while; hopefully we can organize a meet for us all to go to and enjoy some snacks over a game!

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Day 7 ♥ ~ Favourite Little Details! ~

This one was actually pretty difficult, seeing as we're in Bristol right now away from most of our lolita wardrobe! We did bring a few pieces with us, so I'll share some details from those; Haz's favourite JSK (Toy Parade!) is still at home in Hull, and I absolutely cannot choose from all of our beauties! 

I love this adorable custom fork and spoon lace on AP's Tea Time a la Carte! 

Haz's favourite part of the dress are the little bunny shaped biscuits!

AP's Dolly Cat Special Set might be one of my favourite dresses we own; the cats have such beautiful faces! I tried to take a picture of the sweet little name plates the cats have beneath them and the cat wearing wristcuffs, but unfortunately they didn't come out too well! Still, this cat wearing a bonnet is very beautiful and elegant!

Innocent World's Night Bear is one of my favourite prints; look at the little mouse helping the bear read! It's so adorable, it kills me.

As you all know, we love cats. We also love Metamorphose and its bizarre and strange ideas for prints; this is from the Brass Band Cat skirt! I love how Meta always manage to put their name into the print without it being overly obvious that they've done it!

This has definitely been one of my favourite posts to write so far! I love staring at a new dress the first time I get it and finding all the tiny details that I never noticed when I was looking at it online. What are all of your favourite little details about your dresses?

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Day 6 ♥ ~ Music! ~

I was a bit worried that we wouldn't be able to make a whole blog post about this one, especially seeing as we've done a post about loli-able music before! But music is such a wide topic, I thought it wouldn't be too arduous to talk about it some more!

As far as alarms go, I have to admit that I don't have an alarm clock and I don't really charge my phone enough to use it as a reliable alarm; on rare times when I am alone, I use an online alarm clock to wake me up! When I was younger I did use my phone enough to use it as an alarm, and I often switched out the tones to different songs I liked (as if I left them too long, I would get used to their sounds and sleep straight through them! I am cursed with being a very heavy sleeper). 

Haz just recently got a new phone, so we haven't quite worked out all of the bells and whistles of it yet, but with a little messing around I managed to set an alarm tone! She doesn't have much music on it yet, but eventually I decided on setting it to 'Already Home' from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Wizard of Oz musical; it's a duet between Glinda and Dorothy and ends the show, and it's actually really very beautiful!

As musical theatre nerds, we don't really listen to very many artists - both of us love Melanie Martinez and Taylor Swift and Marina and the Diamonds, and I really like Emilie Autumn and the Dresden Dolls and a collection of "emo" bands from a phase I went through in high school (a taste that Haz shares with me!). If you're interested in musical theatre and in lolita-able music from musicals, I would definitely suggest shows/movies/soundtracks like: 

• The Slipper and The Rose
• Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella
• The Secret Garden
• A Little Princess
• Into The Woods
• The Light Princess

And it doesn't quite fit the 'lolita-able' aspect of my list, but Haz and I have been listening to 'Hamilton' an awful lot recently and both of us adore it, as do all of our musical theatre inclined friends! If you don't know anything about it, it's a hip hop musical based on Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the USA - and believe me, we were as skeptical as you when we first heard about it!

What about you? Did you all change your alarms to something pleasant? Or are you not alarm-tone type people? We'd love to hear! 

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 5! ♥ ~ Lolita Books! ~

Today's Lolita Lifestyle Challenge was an easy one for me, at least! I am a terrible book hoarder - I buy them, I think I'm going to read them, and then I don't get around to doing it. Haz is much the same; we have a whole boatload of books we've bought because they were cheap or looked cute and we just haven't got around to them yet. I bought Haz two cute children's books for Christmas and my Mother bought us both books, but we just haven't really read them yet!

I use goodreads as a way to track what I'm reading - or, at least I do when I remember to. If you follow that link you'll mainly find the trashy Young Adult books that I read as my guilty pleasure; or not really that guilty, because I'm not too ashamed to admit to them. I often just scroll through goodreads mindlessly adding titles to my 'to read shelf' - I find it very easy to get stuck in a rut of adding similar books! On there you'll probably see a lot of performing arts-related books, a lot of fairytale retellings, and an awful lot of vampire books! 

Haz likes old-fashioned children's books; her favourite book is A Little Princess but she'll basically devour any vintage children's book. I love them too; we often find we have very similar tastes and ask the other to hurry up and finish it! She's currently on the hunt for the "A Little Princess" sequel by Hilary Mackay. 

I'm currently re-reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell; I've been finding anxiety quite difficult to deal with recently and having comfort and familiarity in all of my material helps me quite a lot with that. I bought The Night Circus from a charity shop and finished it and Haz brought it down for the journey, so she's currently in the middle of that!

I had a hunt through goodreads for books that I was interested in that I thought fitted my idea of the lolita aesthetic; a little old-fashioned and peculiar but still very charming, and here's a couple of books that I found that I shall be hunting out as soon as I can! 

01. Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White

"Ten-year-old Maria, orphaned mistress of Malplaquet, discovers the secret of her deteriorating estate: on a deserted island at its far corner, in the temple long ago nicknamed Mistress Masham's Repose, live an entire community of people—"The People," as they call themselves—all only inches tall. "

02. Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

"When Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she's baffled: everyone thinks she's a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918. In the months to follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare's."

03. The Children of Green Knowe by C.M. Boston

"Tolly's great grandmother isn't a witch, but both she and her old house, Green Knowe, are full of ghosts, children from centuries before."

04. All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

"It's the turn of the century in New York's Lower East Side and a sense of adventure and excitement abounds for five young sisters - Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie.  The five girls enjoy doing everything together, especially when it involves holidays and surprises."

Are you currently taking part in the Lolita Lifestyle Challenge? What book are you hoping to read for this task? We'd love to hear all about it!

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 4! ♥ ~ Cute Lolita Hairstyles~

I think that there are a lot of lolitas out there who fall into a rut where their hair is concerned; I know that both of us tend to! I personally am not very good with my hair - and am definitely guilty of going days without brushing it because I'm so lazy - even though I have so much of it! I know how to plait, and I know how to put my hair into a pony tail, and that's about as far as I'm prepared to go - and I'm always too afraid of messing up wigs to go too far with them!

I'm going to drop a few inspirational lolita pictures with cute hair/wigs and then drop a few YouTube channels with tutorials on them here!

I really like how the first girl doesn't have a fringe but her hair is still classy and pretty; Haz's hair is a little too fine to hold a fringe in properly and to be honest I am much too scatter-brained to keep a fringe in good order; it's something I've attempted a few times but have never been successful with! Her hair seems to be in tiny little buns beneath the two hairclips; it's cute and faintly anime-ish without being weeby! The second hairstyle is one I've always wanted to try but been afraid it would look a little silly; this absolutely inspires me to try it out!

Some of my favourite hairstyles are vintage inspired; I love rockabilly and 50s pin-up fashion and I love their hair; a YouTube channel we follow that posts a lot of those is Cherry Dollface. Here's a tutorial of hers for a vintage style bouffant with a bow that I think would be adorable with the right retro-inspired coordinate!

One of Haz's favourite YouTube channels to look at for make-up and life inspiration is Kawaii Pateen, a Japan-based YouTube channel that often has special videos by Japanese fashion celebrities! You might have seen some of their videos with Misako Aoki. Here's a video that they made called "2 Kawaii CHILDISH FAIRY Hairstyles!" I think the first hairstyle with the powder puffs is really cute (and would be cute even replaced with bows or something else of the kind!

I hope this post gave you a few cute ideas about hairstyling yourself! I plan on trying these out as soon as I can; we're away right now so it's a bit difficult to take photos, but I'm excited especially to try out the vintage style bouffant!

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 3! ♥ ~ A Friend's Wishlist ~

 

One of the things that we often get sidetracked by is the fact that we are a "lolita couple"; we wear lolita together, we go to meets together, we get asked to hang out together. We share a wardrobe! We buy things that we think will fit both of us and both of us borrow each other's . . . well, everything, to be honest. 

So it makes sense that we know exactly what each other wants, that we link each other to items we've been looking for when we're in separate places looking up, when we search things out specifically . . . we have pretty similar taste, but we don't have exactly the same taste. 

Probably most of you recognize this dress; it's AP's Toy Parade JSK in mint! Here's the thing; Haz loves elephants. She collects them, she loves them, she squeals over them daily. So it makes sense that she would have a desperate need to own an AP dress with toy elephants all over it! She's also been adding a lot more mint to her wardrobe, so having it in mint would be perfect for her . . . and also, it fitting well would be a bonus! So during my *cough cough* weekly* wunderwelt searchings, when i came across this dress for under £100, it was as if all of the lolita Gods had conspired to make Haz's day a good one. 

We umm-ed and ahh-ed about buying it for a while (as someone does when they're going to drop a lot of money at once!) but eventually bit the bullet - and it was so exciting when it got here! Plus, she looks adorable in it, and that's what's important, right?

In the same order, I also found Classic Melody, which is one of my dream dresses - violins and music notes? Yes please! It doesn't quite fit the theme because Haz didn't find it for me, but she did pay for it, and that is just as important in the grand scheme of keeping your wardrobe full of desired dresses!

As well as each other, we keep an eye out for things for our friends too (at least, when we remember!). A couple of things we're always on the look out for are music themed prints - especially chocolate and music themed prints together! - and a couple of other specific dresses that we've heard people mention!

Another thing we do is remember who sometimes comments on a post after it's already been sold, and if we see it being sold again try and let them know! It's so nice to help someone get their dream items and then see them enjoying it!

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 2! ♥ ~ Loli-able Museums in the Local Area! ~

This is one we've actually done a lot! Both of us love museums and as we were originally in a long-distance relationship/friendship, the first time Haz came down to Hull we made an attempt to squeeze in as many of the museums and sights as possible in a two week period! It's honestly not that many though, Hull isn't actually very big!

The first picture is from East Park, which whilst not actually entirely a museum, has a few historic places to visit as well as being really pretty and a good location just to hang around for a few hours! There's an animal sanctuary area, various historical things to read about, and a lot of green space to wander around and explore! We've always meant to hold a lolita meet there but never quite gotten around to it - maybe this year? Who knows!

The second picture (featuring an outfit not at all lolita but with a cute Bodyline sailor dress we used to own!) is from the Hull Transport Museum/Streetlife Museum. This one is in the "Museums Quarter" which also has a Museum of Life and Wilberforce House (the house that William Wilberforce lived in); all of them have varying degrees of interest - my personal favourite thing in museums is interactivity, which none of them have too much of - but they all do offer lots of cute places to take photos in! We've actually been to a lolita meet aimed at doing the museums!

Also in Hull is The Deep, which markets itself as the "World's Only Submarium"! They have a lot of sea creatures - including penguins, which we haven't had a chance to visit yet. It's definitely one of the places that tourists visit when they come to Hull, but it's still very pretty and there's quite a lot to do when you're wandering around.

The second picture is from my favourite museum in Hull, the Hands On History museum! Unfortunately, it's now closed most of the time and only open on some Saturdays out of a month, but it was very interactive and a lot of fun to explore. There were various old-fashioned toys, an old-fashioned schoolroom, and lots of things hidden around to find out about. 

There are a few places in Hull I didn't mention above; there's the Holy Trinity Church, which you can go around to look at the beautiful architecture. There's also a whaling museum and an Art Gallery, both of which we've been to but I don't have any pictures to share, unfortunately! There's also a dinosaur themed museum here, but we've both heard it's not worth the money it costs to get in and probably won't be going to it!

A brief mention to the fact that, seeing as Hazel lived in and her family still live in Bristol, we have been there a few times (and are planning on going there again in a few days!) so we looked up a few places to go and things to do in Bristol; we're hoping to go to the zoo and also to go to Noah's Ark Zoo Farm! Last time we were in Bristol we took a day trip to Bath and went to the Roman Baths and the Fashion Museum (which I loved!). 

Also, allow me to leave you with a photo we took during a London day trip in which we visited the V&A Museum of Childhood, which whilst not very interactive has so much to look at and think about! We personally spent a lot of time looking into the dollhouses and marvelling at all the beautiful and intricate miniatures. 

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 1! ♥ ~ Wardrobe Resolutions ~

Hi! Long time, no see, right? We started university (and had to quit due to various medical and health reasons!) in the time we were gone, and altogether haven't had the best 2015 we could have - but let's take a moment and hope that 2016 will be a better year for both of us! To get us back on track with blogging, we've decided to take on the 365 day Lifestyle Lolita Challenge from Lace a la Mode! We've both definitely been feeling a little discouraged from both blogging and lolita recently (even our instagram feed, which was probably our most active social media, hasn't been updated since August!) so we're hoping that taking on such a challenge might push us out of our slump!

So, before we get on to the challenge, let's just take a minute to review our lolita goals from last year's new year's resolution post! 

• Stop buying things just because they are cheap and might not be available again. I'm not really sure how well we managed this, although we definitely in general did buy more expensive items! We didn't buy as many bodyline pieces, which was the main reason we set up this resolution in the first place!
• Buy a lot more basics; blouses, tights, and boleros spring to mind before all others! We definitely bought a lot more blouses! We also bought a lot of ankle socks, though not so many tights. We're having a bit of trouble finding cute loli-able boleros in plus size, though, so if anyone has any recommendations we'd be glad to hear them!
• Get a big, good, bag that will work with most of our co-ords and will fit all of our stuff in! This one we did pretty well! We bought a lot of bags, most of which fit quite a good amount of stuff in!
• Look at how pieces coordinate with our outfits and wardrobes before we buy them. Okay, this one wasn't such a success; we spent the vast majority of 2015 talking about how badly we needed to buy a pair of brown shoes. Really badly.
• Attend more meetups and try and wear lolita at least once a month, as well as becoming more active in the online loli community. We did really well with this up until September, basically! The last few months we definitely did not have the motivation to wear lolita, but up until then we were getting there! We posted a lot of coords on tumblr and Haz posted her first Closet of Frills post! 

• More shoes! Always, always more shoes. We bought a lot of shoes! We both got gold shoes, eventually brown shoes, but we could both still really do with some pale pink shoes.
• Try and get at least one wish list item each, whether it be something as small as an accessory or as big as an OP! We both did this! I got one of my Ultimate Dream Dresses (AP's Classic Melody!) and so did Haz (AP's Toy Parade!). As well as that we picked up some other wishlist dresses; Sweet Cream House, Dolly Cat, and more than a few others!
• Try out an indie or a taobao brand. We didn't go out and buy any indie/taobao brand specially, but we did end up getting a really cute elephant dress from one of our friend's brands, Camellia's Closet! It's really cute and Haz collects elephants so it was perfect for her! 

Okay! So, this challenge originates from Lace a la Mode, a cute lolita and lifestyle blog! I think the idea is that there'll be a different challenge/prompt etc. posted every day to do with lolita/lolita lifestyle, and we're going to do our best to follow along with this blog. Without further ado, goals for our wardrobe for 2016: 

• Buy more blouses! Because really, can you ever have too many blouses? 
• Buy more dream items and less stuff just because it's cheap and easy to get to - a resolution we made last year, but still a resolution to go with!
• Make more things to go with our dresses and outfits; we both obviously make a lot of jewelry for the shop but we don't often just make something just because we want to. 
• Attend more meets and events and conventions! That way we have somewhere to wear all of the cute things we're making! I'm not really sure what's going on with our local community, but there are a few comms close to us that it would be easy to go to meets at! 

Well, I think that's it! I hope you all had a wonderful new year and I hope that 2016 is going to be your best year yet! We have tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in June and we're trading at our first two-day convention in the summer too, so we already have something to look forward to! 

I hope we'll be posting a lot more next year!

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥