Collective Japan Haul

I have been so excited to write this haul post for you guys this week, you can’t believe! I don’t know what it was, but at the end of June I decided to place a massive order from Meccha Japan, as well as a smaller one from Amazon Japan as I was after some goodies in particular. I can’t wait to share them with you all today! My Meccha Japan haul only arrived a few days ago, so I’ve been eagerly waiting to finish off this post, take photos of all the kawaii goods and show them off to you all.

For those of you who aren’t regular readers of my blog, I have written about Meccha Japan before, which was after my first order with them back at the end of 2021, which you can read all about here. As this was my second order with Meccha Japan, I want to share some newer experiences with them, including shipping, combining orders, as well as a slight issue I had with one of my plushies.

I placed both Amazon Japan  and Meccha Japan orders on 24th June, with Amazon arriving less than a week later on 29th June, however my Meccha Japan order didn’t arrive until 14th July, which was due to one of my items being a pre-order, as well as me having to change my shipping type.

This was my second order from Amazon Japan and it went as smoothly as always. I’m actually tempted to play another order soon for some cute bits and pieces for my desk at home, but I may need to wait until payday in a few weeks to do this. I’ve eyed up a Cinnamoroll takeaway mug, Cinnamoroll phone stand, Sirotan hand fan and more.

I always highly recommend people to use Amazon Japan if they’re after some goods in particular, as they’re decently priced and whilst the shipping is on the higher level, you can always ship yourself a massive box of goodies to make the shipping worth it later. Also, for the shipping costs your goods do arrive fairly quickly, which is something we all want when buying stuff from Japan.

From Amazon Japan I ordered two of the six Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary plushies I wanted, including Cinnamoroll himself and Mocha.

Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary Cinnamoroll Plush – (link)

I mean, who can refuse picking up Cinnamoroll considering the whole collection is based off of him and his 20th Anniversary! I already have a Cinnamoroll plushie, bit I couldn’t resist picking up another one. It’s soft and fluffy and perfect size for adding to plushie cabinets. Of course Cinnamoroll’s little cinnamon roll tail. I’ve always loved Cinnamoroll as alongside Pompompurin, Cinnamoroll was one of the first Sanrio characters I got into, as he released around the time when I got my home computer as a kid. To add here for all of the Cinnamoroll plushies, they all have the tag around their neck that states they’re part of the 20th Anniversary line, which is a nice touch! I debated whether or not to take these off and I’m still unsure. If anything I might take them off, keep them in a zip-lock bag and keep them somewhere safe! Another thing to add here is the tags that are on all the 20th Anniversary plushies. They’re all pretty much the same but inside each plush has their design within, which I think is a really nice touch! I’ll be showing them all on each character when talking about them.

Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary Mocha Plush – (link)

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Mocha growing up as she’s a gorgeous coffee brown colour and mochas were actually my first introduction to coffee, which I now adore, love and start my days drinking! I especially love the little pink flowers that Mocha wears in her fur, and by her ears. Mocha is the leader of the Cinnamoangels and I feel for Mocha too as she really likes Cinnamoroll but I don’t think his feelings are the same for her. This is actually the hardest to find out of the all the 20th Anniversary plushies, so I’m glad I was able to find her for a great price.

Next we have a LOT of goodies to talk about and share from Meccha Japan, which I’ve been so excited to have arrive. They arrived a day earlier than planned, which I was so grateful for as I’d not been having the best day and my mental health was in a really bad place. As soon as I had a moment to calm myself down, I opened my plushies and was met with fluffy, kawaii goodness that gave me the serotonin boost I needed!

To add here, I’d seen the Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary plushies and was toying with whether to buy them all or not, and at the time I’d gone with the latter. However, when Pokemon Center Japan announced they were adding a Phanpy to the Saiko Soda line, I KNEW I had to order that, as well as the Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary plushies. So, I ordered the rest of the Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary plushies I needed, which was four in total. Thanks to Phanpy I now have them all. 😛

I’d like to semi address something here to make anyone else aware of when ordering from Meccha Japan. Phanpy was a pre-order so my items didn’t ship until that has been purchased and added to the order, which is fair enough and Meccha Japan always state when the item is due to be in stock on the item listing, which is always handy to know.

I’m going to sound like I’m having a dig now with my next couple of sentences, so I apologise, but I don’t because yah’ll know I like to be honest here! I had a few gripes with my second order with Meccha Japan, one of them being that airmail is currently available to select as a shipping option, when in actual fact airmail is still unavailable due to what is happening between Russia and Ukraine. So, when I placed my second order I selected airmail as I thought it had now become available again and I’d been hidden under a rock! Shortly after placing the order I realised it wasn’t available and went to the “contact us” section of the website to see if I could change my shipping to DHL. It took me three attempts to get the contact us form to work, which was a massive ball ache! I eventually was able to change to DHL but not until my Phanpy plush had been purchased and my order was ready to be sent.

I do not understand why Meccha Japan have left airmail on and haven’t warned people at the time about how long they may have to wait for their goods to ship. Plus, if they have a lot of customers selecting airmail, surely they’re going to run out of room in their warehouse eventually? Or even face a LOT of backlog when airmail is back? Maybe even some price changes to airmail shipping? It doesn’t make sense to me to leave this option on.

The second thing that bugged me is I wanted to add an item to my pre-existing order, which I had paid for and I was just waiting to pay the extra invoice for the DHL shipping upgrade. They don’t combine orders, so I was told no. I understand this, but if you’re happy to quote and invoice your customers via PayPal so they can change their airmail shipping to DHL shipping, why can’t you do this for another item? I don’t own a business so I’m sure there will be other factors behind it, but I don’t get it… Either way it doesn’t matter too much now as I have that item I wanted ordered and on route, along with an item for Sarah (Raiin Monkey), which I won’t mention here as I’m sure she’ll want to talk about it on her blog! 😀

I wanted to raise these two points on my post so anyone who is new to Meccha Japan knows of these things now and not later like I found out.

Anyhoo, enough of me moaning, on with the kawaii goods!

Pokemon Saiko Soda Phanpy Plush – (link)

As mentioned previously, this is the reason why I made the Meccha Japan order in the first place! This has quickly turned into one of my favourite plushies in my collection. Phanpy is one of my favourite Pokemon from gen two (Gold and Silver) and I’ve always wanted a plush of it to add to my collection! I was close to buying the Pokemon Fit plush of it recently, but glad I held off as the Saiko Soda plush is much cuter. The one thing I love especially about this plush is the little shocked sort of expression of it’s mouth. It’s a gorgeous plush and I’m so happy to have it as part of my collection now.

Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary Espresso Plush – (link)

Espresso is a gorgeous cream plush with curly ears and a cute little face! This plush was a little worse for wear when he arrived as one of his ears thread has come a little undone. I think I’ve fixed it now by tightening the string but I’m toying with emailing Meccha Japan about it. It’s a bit of a let down in all honesty but it’s fine. I’ve just got to be extra careful with Espresso! I have to find, I find it so bizarre that he’s called Espresso and is a cream colour, when we all know espresso is dark brown. Unless the colour is from the crema you get when you brew coffee… Who knows! 😛

Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary Cappuccino Plush – (link)

In Cinnamoroll: The Movie Cappuccino is one of my favourites as he’s a sleepy boy with a massive appetite and some days I can definitely relate to that! Cappuccino is a caramel brown colour with a white mouth, so he clearly resembles a Cappuccino coffee! As he’s represented as being a sleepy he is often drawn and shown with sleepy eyes, so I’m a little torn with how his eyes are on this plush? I like that they’re open as he looks adorable, but at the same time if they’d been closed I may have preferred it a little more? Just to give a bit of diversity amongst the plushies.

Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary Chiffon Plush – (link)

Chiffon is such a cute plushie and is one my favourite characters too as she’s a tomboy, something I definitely was growing up! Chiffon is also part of the Cinnamoangels with Mocha. Not going to lie, Chiffon threw me a little when I took her out of her packaging! Her brown ears and and brown tail are a completely different material to her cream body and feel rough and old/worn, if that makes sense? Thankfully they aren’t the latter and were designed that way to give a curly sort of look. It does work, but they don’t feel very nice so I feel like they may have flawed this plushie in that regard? This being said, I do love her, she’s gorgeous!

Cinnamoroll 20th Anniversary Milk Plush – (link)

Finally we have Milk, the baby of the gang and an absolute cutie! I don’t know why but I always thought Milk was a baby of Cinnamoroll’s and one of the Cinnamoangels, but alas this isn’t the case. Milk is labelled as a life size version, so when put next to the other plushies, Milk is actually a little smaller, which is a nice touch. He’s absolutely adorable with his blue dummy, brown curl on his head and again, the size difference isn’t out there but it is a cute touch. With the brown curl on his head, it does make me wonder if he will have a brown mohawk or something when he’s older?

To add here, for those wondering what the item was that I wanted to add to my order, it’s the alolan Vulpix AirPods Pro case that I mentioned on my previous blog post about my July wish list (which you can read here).

So there we have it guys, my collection Japan haul! I know it was pretty much Sanrio/Cinnamoroll goods with one Pokemon item thrown in for good measure. 😛 Although I did have a moan about Meccha Japan, don’t let this put you off. They’re an amazing company and I do really love shopping with them. I placed my third order with them on Monday and it shipped on Thursday! It’s due to arrive in the next couple of days so I’m excited to change up my AirPod Pro case, as well as sent Sarah her goodies!

What did you guys like the look of the most and who is your favourite Pokemon, Sanrio character and Cinnamoroll friend? Any items from Amazon Japan/Meccha Japan you’d like to get? Make sure to let me know in the comments down below!

Until next time, take care and stay safe next week with the warmer days hitting the UK!

Manchester Adventure and Haul

We have officially been back from Manchester for a couple of days now and it was a very much needed break away and enjoyed. The weather was really good for us too, which was greatly appreciated. I can’t believe our week off is finally coming to an end and I’m really sad it couldn’t have lasted a little longer, especially as I’m not feeling 100%. I can’t tell if I have a cold that’s going around or hay fever, or maybe a bit of both! Last night I went to bed at 7pm and was on and off asleep. I’m hopeful I’m back to myself come Monday when I’m back at work. 🙂

Aside from that, I wanted to do a blog post today not only sharing what we got up to during out time in Manchester, but also share with you my haul of the items I picked up during our time there too! I spent a lot of money, more than I’ve spent since probably Christmas and I feel semi guilty for it. That being said, it was also nice to have a treat and buy some things for myself! Alongside sharing what items I picked up, I also want to talk about Tokyo Ramen, Point Blank Shooting, Ohayo Tea, and The Arcade Club in Bury. Both of these places were so much fun and I can’t NOT mention them to you!

This will be a long post, so make sure to grab a drink, hot or cold and I hope you enjoy todays post! I’ll be talking in the order of places we ventured to, with my haul towards the end. 🙂

The first place we really ventured to in Manchester upon arrival was Tokyo Ramen. We were starving and as I’d found this place online weeks prior to heading to Manchester, we decided to go for lunch. It was SO GOOD and I cannot recommend it enough if you have a craving for ramen, or want to try it for the first time. We went for the standard type of ramen with pork cutlet and it was so good, as you can see! We only ate ramen once in Japan, but this is the best ramen I’ve had to date. Tokyo Ramen is in the Northern Quarter, opposite Afflecks.

After this we did some shopping in the Arndale, as well as around the Northern Quarter and headed back to our hotel to check in and have a rest before heading to Point Blank Shooting! For my 30th one of my friends has gifted me a Red Letter Days voucher for a comedy night, but as the past two years have flown, I wasn’t 100% feeling that so decided to pay a little extra to go to Point Blank Shooting instead! It was so much fun and I’m so excited to share it here with you all. You book a booth to go and plays some simulation shooting ranges, with replica guns. Alongside that you will also get a pizza and two cocktails as well! The food was really good and we went for the pepperoni pizza, which was amazing! The flavouring on it was great and I really enjoyed. We also have a few cocktails between us both too including Rock Out With Your Glock Out which Dane chose (sweet, dark fruits with vodka, blackberry, vanilla, apple, lime and cream soda) and Naked Gun which I chose (rhubarb and custard with vanilla vodka, strawberry, apple lemon, rhubarb and egg white). Alongside that we also grabbed a non alcoholic cocktail Zero Your Gun (bubblegum, cranberry, lemon and lemonade), which was so good! The prices of everything was really fair for everything we got and most of all, we got there forty minutes early with the intension of having some slow drinks before our session was booked. However, as our booth was free the staff let us start earlier without charging us extra, which was really lovely of them! We’d definitely go back again in the future, but we’re hopeful a Birmingham Point Blank Shooting will open in the future, as I would love to go with more friends for an evening out!

After this we headed back to the hotel as we were shattered and needed lots of rest. We had a busy day planned the next day! The next day we were up bright and early for breakfast at the hotel and checked out ready for a busy day ahead. We’d planned to have a look around the Arndale, potentially the Northern Quarter again and especially China Town for food!

The Arndale is such a big shopping centre and we got a little lost at times, but by the morning of our second day we had pretty much got our bearings. Some of the shops we ventured to were Damaged Society – has some cool alternative styles, Homesense – we sniffed all the candles, Kenji – amazing for Japan inspired goodies and especially Japanese sweet treats, Levi’s – spent WAY too much money on jeans, Urban Outfitters – I bought a cute planter which I’ll show later, Vans, Victoria’s Secret PINK, and Waterstones.

As it was approaching lunchtime we decided to go for a walk down to Manchester’s Chinatown for some lunch from Wong Wong Bakery and bubble tea and ice cream from Ohayo Tea.

I’ve been so excited to try Ohayo Tea since I discovered it at the end of 2020 through Instagram, so when the time finally came I was beyond excited for it and I don’t think we were the only ones either as there were people queuing outside of the store for at least half an hour! We had a nose at the menu before going in and when the time came, we made out way inside. We’d planned to sit in for some ice cream and bubble tea.

The store itself isn’t huge which I really liked! The only bad thing about Ohayo Tea is the lack of toilets, so if you wanted to stay here to do any work, or meet a friend for a long period of time you’d need to move on if you wanted the toilet. This didn’t affect us really as we must have spent a good hour there!

I’ve looked at the menu LOADS since discovering Ohayo Tea late 2020 so knew vaguely what I wanted drink wise, but ended up changing my mind last minute!

Dane went for their dirty Biscoff drink from the brown sugar series, which contains brown sugar tapioca milk with Biscoff and I went for the matcha tapioca milk from the fresh milk series. I’m a sucker for matcha bubble tea, so knew I had to go with that. I originally was going to have the same as Dane otherwise.

The only thing that the Ohayo Tea menu is missing is more fruit based drinks. I love green apple and cherry bubble teas so it was a shame they had neither of those on offer. They do have fresh fruit teas, just not ones I wanted/fancied.

We both went for one of the sundaes, with us going for the earl grey milk tea Shiba sundae, which was SO GOOD! As you can see from the picture you get the earl grey milk tea ice cream, brown sugar tapioca, wafer sticks and especially a Shiba waffle! You get to pick which flavouring of Shiba waffle you want, we both went for Nutella but you can also pick brown sugar tapioca, red bean or Hong Kong style peanut butter. This was so yummy and it took me an age to finish it, for various reasons. I was too busy enjoying it to scoff it really quickly. I hope next time I get the chance to visit that they have a matcha sundae on offer!

Overall, Ohayo Tea was amazing and it was well the almost two year wait to go! I wish we had one in Birmingham, I think I’d venture there often to enjoy their amazing drinks! We have do have Mee Cha though, that I have loved for ten years now! I did buy myself a couple of goodies in Ohayo Tea, which I’ll show at the end of the post!

Finally after we were done in Manchester we decided to drive over to Bury to finish out little trip. We’d booked to go to The Arcade Club to go an play some arcade games! My amazing Instagram friend Daysei has been telling me all about The Arcade Club for the longest time and I finally twisted Dane’s arm for us to go! He was against it for a while due to the location, but once we looked at the games on offer he got into the idea and we booked it.

You pay a fee per person and with that you can play as many games as you want, for as long as you want. We got there for 4pm and didn’t leave until 9.30pm, almost an hour before it was due to close! You definitely get your monies worth at The Arcade Club!

The Bury store has three floors FILLED with all sorts of games, from all over the world, including Japan, which is what appealed to us the most. The games I’ll be mentioning here are the ones we loved and enjoyed the most, there are all sorts of games to chose from and play, with a full list being on The Arcade Club’s website.

Tank! Tank! Tank! – A Japanese game we’d never heard of where you’re driving a tank and need to kill aliens, or each other if you do battle. The chair actually moves back whenever you shoot to be like an actual tank, which was so much fun! I think this was the first game we played and it was one of the last games we played too. It was so good and we spent a good half an hour playing all the types of games on offer.

Monster Hunter Pungee Race – This was a bizarre game to say the least and one I’m glad we tried for shits and giggles. You have a pig that you need to move around to the sides and up and down to race. It looks like you’re humping the pig, not going to lie! It was a fun game but only needed one play for sure. It reminded me of an arcade game I used to love playing as a kid at the local bowling alley, Final Furlong by Namco. I’d love to see those games at The Arcade Club in the future!

Dark Escape 4D – This was one of our favourite games and we actually played it twice because of that fact! This is a 4D horror shooting game where you not only play the game, but feel it too! You get air blown at you, can chose to play in 3D if you’d like to (otherwise it’s 2D), and the seats rumble and vibrate as well. On top of all that, the guns you hold have heart sensors on as well, which tracks your heart rate and determines your death and more. This game overall was just so much fun purely for the jump scares, whether it be in game or the air and vibrating around the game. We LOVED this and it’s such a shame there isn’t a version of this that could have been brought out on consoles or PC.

South Park pinball game and more – When I was younger I LOVED pinball games and would spend hours on them at a time if there was one available, especially in Fuerteventura. There were loads of pinball games at The Arcade Club and this South Park one really caught my eye. It was fun to play but the Flintstones one was my favourite, as I seemed to do the best on that one! Dane really enjoyed the Mario one.

Dancing Stage EuroMix – An old classic from back in the day! I rarely played the arcade game growing up, but more so my cousins dance mat at home that we connected to her PlayStation! This game throws back so many memories and it was fun to have a go on a couple of songs. I wish I’d played more to be honest but they seemed to constantly have someone playing them already.

Taiko No Tatsujin – This is a game me and Dane love and played a little of whilst we were in Japan! I do have the actual drum for the Switch but we hardly play it… Maybe that should change haha! This is the game we played the most at The Arcade Club, and at one point we waited almost half an hour to jump back onto it as it was pretty busy. It reminded me of our Japan trip all over again and was so much fun. If you’ve never played this before, you really must, it’s such a fun game, whether you play alone or with a friend.

Bishi Bashi Channel – A game Dane had heard of before and was eager to play and as it was pretty much behind Taiko No Tatsujin we jumped onto it not long after our first go on the popular drumming game! This is a fun game where you’re playing lots of little puzzle games, it reminded me of the WarioWare games to be honest with you! Some of the games were challenging, with some being a little more simple. Such a good game, was a shame we didn’t spend more time on it in all honesty!

Time Crisis 2 – An old classic for me and Dane and one I’d always play whenever I spotted it at an arcade! I always used to die before I’d get to the second stage, or just after so never finished it. Thankfully due to all the games being free to play (aka if you die in the game you can always come back!) we both FINALLY got to finish the game and as you can see, we came sixth place! It was so much fun to play and really did give me some nostalgic reels. Apparently The Arcade Club has Time Crisis 3 there too, but we didn’t spot it.

Monkey Mole Panic – I stumbled upon this game as we looked through the old school arcade games. I decided to give it a go as I’m a sucker for a whack a mole game and it was SO GOOD! I played it a couple of times and got to the top of the leader board! I’m gutted I didn’t take a picture.

Puzzle Bobble – An old classic for me as I had it on my Game Boy/Game Boy Color and would spend HOURS playing it, clearly all those hours came to something when I got to play for ages on this arcade machine! It’s made me want to play it all over again on either my GBC or on a Switch version if it exists!

Name unknown – This was a random choice is game to play but I actually really loved it and regretted not playing more! It’s a rhythm based game where you need to time your button pressing right in order to win the level/game. I played a couple of levels and it was just so much fun to do and once you got into the swing of things, you really did start to get a kick from playing it!

Luigi’s Mansion Arcade – We own the third instalment of this game on the Switch and really enjoyed playing it together, so we kind of had to give the arcade version a go! I always wanted to as a kid, but never had anyone to play with, which sounds incredibly sad… This was a lot of fun to play, but the controllers really ached our hands. It was good though and we really enjoyed giving it a go!

The House of the Dead: Scarlett Dawn – This was the last game we played before we headed home and it was so cheesy, but we enjoyed it! As you can see it’s a House of the Dead game, but this one you play as a woman and a man who appear to have been at a party? The game play was like the other House of the Dead games, so pretty straight forward, shoot and kill the undead who are headed your way! We played it for a while before we had enough and decided to call it a day!

Cho Chabudai Gaeshi 2 – Sadly this is a game we weren’t able to play as it seemed to be broken, but what made me sad about it is this was the game that twisted Dane’s arm in us going to The Arcade Club in the first place! He’d always heard about the famous Japanese arcade game about flipping a table, but we weren’t able to go on it. Maybe next time we go to The Arcade Club… Or Japan. 😛

We were so tired when we got home from our Japan adventures, we couldn’t wait to sleep! For the rest of the week so far we’ve not done a lot… Well technically we did all the washing from our trip, and some general chores/errands we’ve had to to do out and about.

So, I know some of you were excited for the haul, so I’ll get to that now before I end this weeks post! Disclaimer, I apologise for how crap the pictures are, I was shattered/sick yesterday so I quickly took photos on my office chair.

Frank Iero T-Shirt.

First of all this t-shirt wasn’t purchased in Manchester, but I did pick it up before going and it arrived the day we came home from Manchester, so I felt like it was worthy showing off! I’ve wanted this t-shirt for years now but just never picked it up, until May pay day! I snagged it off of Amazon as it was a good price and it felt the right time. I cannot wait to wear this now with anything and everything!

Shippon self-watering dog planter.

I can’t remember what store I picked this up from but I remember back in 2019 when we visited Manchester last/for the first time I picked this same dog planter up in that same shop to buy and left it… I decided I needed it this time and cannot wait to get it started! I’m not 100% sure where I want to keep it at the moment as I’m worried I’ll knock it over. I think the kitchen or living room might be a nice place for it for sure. This cost less than £12.

Smoko Tayto potato planter.

As many regular readers will know, I LOVE Smoko and their products and I honestly cannot get enough of them. It feels like every Christmas Dane will buy me something from them, and even last Christmas he bought me a back pillow and some of the Tayto lights as well! I saw that Urban Outfitters were having a sale and had this cutie on offer, so I decided to order to collect from Urban Outfitters in Manchester. I’ll be blunt, it was a fucking nightmare. The staff were either too busy talking to do any work, or it was arse about face getting the click and collect orders in the first place. It’s put me off doing a click and collect again, I’d rather pay the £3.99 shipping. That being said this planter is very well made and adorable as fuck! I can’t wait to put something in him now, as he’s living on my window shelf. I’m probably going to opt for a fake plant. 😛

Kenji Japanese snacks.

We don’t have a Kenji in Birmingham so when I saw/heard there was one in Manchester I KNEW we had to go! We went in both days we were in Manchester, but on day two we decided to pick up some snacks, including grape and ramune gummy sweets, chocolate wafer taiyaki fish, pocky, collon, ramune drinks and some ice cream wafers. I have to be honest when I say that whilst Kenji is a nice store, I found it a little tacky… It shouted fake Japan to me and whilst I get it, it is technically fake it just felt wrong. There were some cute items in there, but not enough to prompt me to buy.

Levi’s 551z authentic straight jeans.

This was a HUGE purchase for me and I feel so guilty for it. I knew I wanted to pop into Levi’s to try some of the 90’s inspired jeans, but whilst trying them on I discovered they didn’t have the size I wanted, nor did the leg length go as long as I wanted either, which was such a shame. The staff were really helpful though and recommended me the pair I ended up buying. These are men’s jeans, but there’s nothing wrong with that, my first pair of Levi’s were men’s and they did me just fine. These are pretty much what I was looking for. A baggy boyfriend fit with a long leg. These were cheap as I said so I won’t be buying anymore anytime soon, but I’m a sucker for Levi’s. I used to own a pair as a teenager and lived in them, and then my mom bought me a pair in my early twenties and I lived in those too. I plan to do the same with these, especially for how much they cost. Next time I’m after a new pair of jeans I’ll definitely look at Levi’s again, but maybe next time I’ll look at the sale first. 😛

Umbrella image taken from Ohayo Tea Facebook

Ohayo Tea – t-shirt and umbrella.

Finally after we finished out ice creams in Ohayo Tea, I decided to buy some of the merchandise on offer. I decided to go for the t-shirt with their Ohayo tea Manchester design, as well as an umbrella… Because you can never go wrong with the latter. They only had a men’s medium in the t-shirt, and I usually go for large. It fits me fine, but it’s kind of see through, so I think I’ll just opt to wear this one around the house and whilst I’m working from home. The design on the back is gorgeous but the pocket at the front reminds me of a work t-shirt. 😛

The umbrella is strange and I’ve never owned one quite like it before. The handle is a loop shape so not only can you hang it off of tables, but you can loop your shopping onto it as you walk around. I know I’m not wording it very well by the way! I could have taken a picture of it but it’s in the car and I’m in the house. 😛 As well as that the umbrella opens up in a strange way, which again I can’t describe! I used it a little as we walked from Chinatown to the Arndale and it was really good! I’ll be using it more I reckon with some of the crappy weather we’ve had lately.

So, there we have it, my Manchester trip and haul! I told you it was going to be a long post. 😛

Have you ever been to Manchester? If so where did you go, what did you do, eat, see, etc. Tell me all about it! I know for a fact there’s loads of places we have yet to go and explore and I’m looking forward to the next time we venture up there!

Until next time guys, have an amazing rest of your weekend and see you next week!

Tomodachi Store – Review and Haul

Wow, two review and haul posts in a row? I’m spoiling you guys this month, aren’t I? 😛

At the end of 2021 I was inspired to write so many review and haul posts, it’s crazy! If there’s anything I discovered in 2020 through Covid and lockdowns, it’s how much I really fell in love with supporting independent stores and artists and sharing them on here for others to discover and fall in love with too.

If there’s one store I’ve been meaning to talk about for well over a year now, it’s Tomodachi Store. I’ve mentioned them briefly on my blog in the past but since making my first purchase late 2020, I’ve always meant to write about them.

Fast forward another year and another purchase and it’s FINALLY time to talk about Tomodachi and why you should check them out, especially if you’re a Pokemon and/or Animal Crossing fan.

Tomodachi is an enamel pin and mascot designer from Mexico, who loves the colour pink, yummy food and everything cute, which you can tell through their work. Their designs are so cute and adorable, I honestly can’t get enough of them, which is why I now own all of their cereal enamel pin designs. Now, I know you’re saying, “Cereal designs? Why would you want cereal themed enamel pins?” Well, that’s why I’m sharing all of them with you today!

Image taken from Reddit.

The cereal designs in question are Pokemon inspired. Back in 2000 Pokemon had truly taken over, not just over the pond but in the UK too. I fondly remember my hype of it as a kid, especially one day whilst walking through Sainsbury’s. Pokemon cereal had started to be stocked on the shelves of various supermarkets and I remember begging my mom to let me have a box. It never happened and from my mom’s point of view, for a good reason. “You won’t eat them!” and looking back, she was probably right. I’m a fussy eater in general, but cereal is one where one minute I love it and the next I hate it. So yeah, ten year old Nat never go to have Pokemon cereal.

The cereal was basically oat hoops with marshmallow pieces in the shape of Pokemon Pikachu, Poliwhirl, Oddish, and Ditto. They definitely remind me of Lucky Charms but better… Obviously because it’s Pokemon. 😛

Years later Tomodachi would feel inspired by the marshmallow pieces in the Pokemon cereal to recreate them as enamel pins!

At the time of writing this post there are three volumes for Pokemon cereal enamel pins, as well as one volume for Animal Crossing. I own all of them… Because. 😛

I’ll be going through the Animal Crossing volume one collection and then each of the Pokemon volumes too, as well as some of the shiny pins I own too.

Please also bear in mind at the time of writing this post, some of the enamel pins are sold out.

I will also be mentioning the grade of each pin as they vary between A and B. I go a little more into how Tomodachi grades their enamel pins shortly.

The first enamel pins I ordered from Tomodachi were the Animal Crossing volume one cereal collection, as well as Ditto and Gengar, but I’ll talk about them a little later.

Full Set Animal Crossing Cereal Volume 1 – (link) A Grade – $35.00 / B Grade – $30.00.

Individual Animal Crossing Cereal Volume 1 – (link) A Grade $6.00 each.

The Animal Crossing cereal pins are adorable and although not how I discovered Tomodachi originally, but the Animal Crossing collection definitely caught my eye. In volume one there are seven pins in total; Tom Nook, Isabelle, K.K. Slider, Celeste, Marshal, Fossil and Leaf. Originally I was only going to order Isabelle, but decided to just go for the whole set! I ordered the B grade. It’s obvious on some more than others, but this being said as I display these in my home anyway, it doesn’t bother me much. 🙂

One thing I love about all of Tomodachi’s pins is that the backs match the coloured enamel of the design, which you can see with the Animal Crossing pins too. I always love when enamel pin artists do this, it just adds a little more to the designs, and it’s aesthetically pleasing. 😛

My favourite out of the pins is definitely Isabelle and the fossil. I just love them both so much! Whenever I’ve shown this enamel pin set to people they always love Celeste too.

For anyone new to enamel pins, some sellers grade them. In Tomodachi’s store they have a pin grading policy, which I’ll pop a link to here. Always bear pin grading when buying from enamel pin artists, not all will grade the same either. In Tomodachi’s case, I think their grading system is fair and really good.

For my second and more recent order with Tomodachi, I made a HUGE order and went full out Pokemon Cereal mode! Bar one (Ditto) I ordered all the missing pins I needed to complete volume one, as well as volumes two and three. I was so hyped when all my goodies arrived.

Full Set Pokemon Cereal Volume 1 – (link) A Grade – $40.00.

Individual Pokemon Cereal Volume 1 – (link) A Grade – $6.00 each / B Grade – $5.00 each.

As previously mentioned, I already owned Ditto (B grade) and as the full set of volume one was sold out, I opted to just snag all the pins I needed instead. It worked out well either way!

Volume one contains eight pins in total; Pikachu, Poliwhirl, Oddish, Ditto, Pichu, Wobbuffet, Celebi and Cleffa. However, there are also some shiny variants for sale too, including Ditto, Wobbuffet and Celebi, which I’m planning to buy in the future!

The original volume one enamel pins are so adorable and are heavily influenced by the Pokemon cereal from 2000 that I mentioned earlier, as four of the Pokemon from the cereal are in this collection.

The one thing I want to comment on first of all is the packaging that Tomodachi uses for their enamel pins. Not only is the backing card adorable with the oat cereal in the background, but you’ll either receive a backing card that states, “Thanks!” or, “Arigato!” which is Japanese for thank you. It’s such a lovely touch and one I really like. It’s also one that has been commented on by friends over on my Instagram!

The pins I ordered are mostly A grade with Pikachu being B grade. It’s not too obvious (in my opinion) which is awesome. I have to say my favourite design in volume one has to be Pikachu and I think this is mostly down to reminding me of how much I love Pikachu back in the day when Pokemon first came out.

Alongside the eight original pin designs for volume one, as mentioned before, there is also shiny variants too with a blue Ditto, purple Wobbuffet and pink Celebi, which I’m hoping to pick up in the future!

Full Set Pokemon Cereal Volume 2 – (link) A Grade – $40.00.

Individual Pokemon Cereal Volume 2 – (link) A Grade $6.00 each.

In my second order from Tomodachi I not only bought most of the volume one pins I was missing, but also all of the volume two and three pins as well! For volume two I picked up the A grade enamel pins.

Volume two contains eight pins in total; Slowpoke, Gengar, Psyduck, Magikarp, Skitty, Shuppet, Makuhita and Plusle/Minun. However, there are also some shiny variants for sale too, including Margikarp, Psyduck, as well as Rainbow Gengar, with the latter two being ones I’d love to buy in the future.

The first thing I want to say here is how gutted I am that I couldn’t get Minun as you either get Plusle or Minun, so I’ll make sure to get the blue electric mouse next time I place an order!

That aside, this enamel pin set is so adorable and has some of my fondest Pokemon in from the anime, especially Gengar which is one of my favourite enamel pin designs from Tomodachi! I bought a Gengar on my first order with Tomodachi, but with getting one in the volume two set, I decided to sell my first one to my friend Sarah (Raiin Monkey) who loves Pokemon too!

As I bought the whole volume two set, Tomodachi also sent me a shiny Magikarp, which looks amazing! 😀 I’m definitely planning to snag the rest of the shiny Pokemon in this volume, as well as the rainbow Gengar too, which looks so amazing!

Full Set Pokemon Cereal Volume 3 – (link) A Grade – $40.00.

Individual Pokemon Cereal Volume 3 – (link) A Grade – $6.00 each / B Grade – $5.00 each.

As I mentioned about in my second order from Tomodachi I bought both volume two and volume three! I picked up B grade enamel pins for volume three too. I have to be honest, out of all the volumes I actually think volume three is my favourite so far!

Volume three contains eight pins in total; Jigglypuff, Shellder, Wooper, Applin, Mew, Litwick, Mantyke and Duosion. However, there are also some shiny variants for sale too, including Wooper, Shellder and Mew, with the latter two being planned to be purchased in the future, especially Mew!

One of the reasons this is my favourite volume is due to Mew being part of it, which is one of my favourite Pokemon. The Mew design is one I fell in love with back in early 2021 and I knew I needed it. It took a little longer than I hoped to finally add to my collection, but better late than never!

One of the other things I love in volume three is the colour palette, which is mostly pastel themed with pinks, purples, blues, as well as green and red which I also love. It’s not that the other volumes colour palettes don’t work, but this one is just aesthetically pleasing to my mind, as well as fashion styles at the moment. 😛

As mentioned before, I did pick up the B grade for the volume whilst most of the pins look great, there are a couple (Jigglypuff and Applin) where there are a few specks on them, but this being said I don’t mind. I’m always happy to have B grade pins. 😀

Like with volume two, Tomodachi also sent me a free shiny pin with my volume three set, which is a shiny Wooper! It’s so cute with the pink colour, I love it.

Alongside the normal and shiny Pokemon cereal enamel pins, Tomodachi does also sell Pokemon Golden Kanto Pins, as well as Pokemon Cereal Sticker Sheets.

In the near future I’m planning to make a pin hoop dedicated to Tomodachi’s cereal pins. There’s so many of them, they deserve their own hoop now. As there are a variety of colours too, I’m planning to pop the pins on my future pin hoop in rainbow colours… Because why not! 😀 Plus, with a Pokemon volume four on the way (tomorrow from what Tomodachi revealed on this weekend!), I’m going to need to make room for some more amazing Pokemon cereal designs… 😛

From previews I’ve seen of volume four on Tomodachi’s social media we appear to have Caterpie and Haunter… I’m excited already to see who else we may get! I’d love to see Eevee and Dragonite next. 😛

Overall you can really see a lot of love and passion has gone into these enamel pin designs from Tomodachi Store. The cereal enamel pins are so cute and reminiscent to when we were all kids. The colours and designs of each cereal piece is perfect too. I honestly love them!

What do you guys think of Tomodachi Store and their amazing and adorable Pokemon and Animal Crossing cereal enamel pins? Do you own any, or have any on your wish list? Make sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Until next time guys, have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you next week!

Enamel Pin Collective Haul

Can you believe January 2021 is over in just over a weeks time? January has FLEW by hasn’t it?

This month I have had so many creative ideas floating my head, both blog related and other creative outlets. There’s been so many blog posts I’ve wanted to write but a lot of them will be coming to my blog in February now, due to timing and such.

Today’s blog post has been one that has been a long time coming, an enamel pin collective haul. I’ll be talking about all the independent artists I’ve bought enamel pins from, whether it be through their store/Etsy/Patreon (in one case) or even through backing a Kickstarter campaign.

As many regular readers will know, I started collecting enamel pins back in 2018 when I bought my first enamel pins from Ayloulou Apparel/Petty Bones Club (store has since closed down) which you can read here. This isn’t the first time I’d started collecting enamel pins however, I’d actually collected them at a point when I was around six or seven. My brother and dad had designed some enamel pins to sell and they gave me some of course. It sparked off my addition back in the day and I grew out of it. 20 years plus later and I started collecting again and I won’t ever look back!

I have decided however in 2021 that I will calm down on my enamel pin buying as I have so many at the moment. I need to buy myself a new pin flag (or at least a big cork board at this point!) so I can start putting them on show. I also have some enamel pins I’m thinking of selling. If anyone would be interested in seeing what I’m thinking of selling, please let me know and I can have a think about listing some items. Friends are welcome to reach out too in the meantime. 😉

Anyhoo, I have a lot of enamel pins to show off, so I’m going to jump straight in! I’m not going to post about these in any order and I will of course link back to where I bought them from and mention if you are able to buy from the artists anymore due to the VAT UK stuff that came in at the start of January 2021.

Sugarnova

Trick or Treat Yo’ Self Ghost Enamel Pin and Lollipop Ghost Enamel Pin.

I bought these enamel pins around Halloween and they’re some of the cutest ghosties I own! Both ghosts are holding sweets/candy and both designs are completely different. Both of these enamel pins are on gold enamel and have double backs with purple rubber backings. They both retail for £7.30 each. Sadly I don’t know much about whether or not Sugarnova is shipping to the UK or not… As far as I’m aware nothing has been said in regards so I assume people of the UK can still shop with them!

For all those who are just there for the treats! Celebrate your Halloween candy horde with this sweets loving ghostie.

The trick or treat ghost is holding various sweets/candies including a lollipop, a chocolate bar, candy corns and some general sweets/candies. He looks really happy with his treats and is smiling with some blushing cheeks.

This mischievous ghost loves tricks AND treats! They will gladly give you a yummy lollipop, but only after they’ve spooked you!

The lollipop ghost is completely different to the trick or treat ghost. This ghostie has a bit of a naughty/mischievous look about him as he holds a MASSIVE lollipop! I think he may have scared someone for his sweet treat and is celebrating his accomplishment.

Lemoncreamsicle

Fishing Fox Enamel Pin.

First thing I want to mention here is at the time of writing this post (22/01/2021) the store is closed and plans to open again this year. Lemoncreamsicle keeps their Instagram up to date so make sure to go and follow! They’re currently talking about new products which is awesome.

The patient fox gets the fish — and you can take that spirit with you wherever you go with this adorable pin!

I’d been after the fishing fox enamel pin for what felt like forever! As soon as the store opened on Etsy I made sure to get my order in. This is actually one of my favourite enamel pins that I own due to how adorable the fox design is. As you can see the design is a little fox whose just caught a fish and judging by the bucket behind him it isn’t his first catch of the day! I especially love that this is an enamel pin with a chain on it, it really adds to the design and the little fish dangling at the end of the line! The dangling fish/line is free dangling and doesn’t have a pin on it. This is a gold enamel pin and has two double backs with pink rubber backs.

Adorablush

Shaymin Watermelon Enamel Pin and Eevee Strawberry Enamel Pin.

First thing I want to mention here is at the time of writing this post (22/01/2021) the store is closed for the weekend to fulfil orders but Adorablush does open often. Make sure to go and follow her on Instagram for updates. She pops timers on too for when the shop will open, which is always good.

I picked up these two pins through the Kickstarter in 2020 alongside Sarah (Raiin Monkey) and I’m so glad I did before the VAT issues. I love Pokemon and fruit isn’t exactly a bad thing is it? 😛 I decided to go for the Shaymin watermelon design as well as the Eevee strawberry design. Fun fact, I’m actually allergic to watermelon and strawberries are one of my favourite fruits to eat.

These enamel pin designs are adorable and have the signature/unique look of Adorablush. They’re both cuddling their desired fruits and looking adorable. The look chubby in their designs and the colours compliment and work well in each design. Both pins are gold enamel and have two double backs with lime green rubber backs. The other enamel pin designs from this collection are gorgeous and I especially love the Dwebble design where he’s with his coconut!

Dinojar

Haku Enamel Pin.

At the time of writing this post (22/01/2021) Dinojar doesn’t have these in stock, but make sure to keep your eyes peeled on their Etsy store to see when it comes back in stock! I picked up this pin through the Kickstarter in 2020 and I love it so much, I don’t own many Haku enamel pins but I do really love this design. It’s chubby, chibi and perfect all around. It’s not an overcomplicated design which is something I really like. You get that it’s Haku! It’s a gold enamel pin and has two double backs with black rubber backs.

Sukarimoon

I Don’t Give a Fluff Enamel Pin.

At the time of writing this post (22/01/2021) this enamel pin is in the sale from $10.00 to $5.00! I wanted to get that out of the way, as if you like this post it’ll be worth going to get it asap if you can! This being said, I don’t know if you’ll be able to buy this enamel pin if you’re in the UK. This enamel pin is SO ADORABLE and is one I’ve had my eye on for a while. I think it’s actually based off of the owners Pomeranian. It’s a little brown Pomeranian, with white feet and across the body in gold it states, “i don’t give a fluff”. Which in all honesty… I don’t. 😛 I don’t know why but I expected this enamel pin to be bigger, but that being said I don’t mind the size as it is. This pin is on gold enamel and has two backs with black rubber backs. There was a limited edition of this pin that was white glitter, that’s how I discovered this enamel pin in the first place but of course I missed out on this one.

Nyanzilla

Warriors of Cute Bard Enamel Pin and Warriors of Cute Mameshiba Mini Enamel Pin.

I picked up this pin through the Kickstarter in 2020 and it recently arrived. It was worth the wait and is such a cute enamel pin! I started playing D&D in 2019 and whilst I’m not a massive D&D nerd, I do enjoy playing the two campaigns I’m a part of. The first character I created for D&D is a dragonborn bard, so of course I had to back the deer bard character from the Warriors of Cute collection! The bard is dressed in green clothing and is holding a harp style instrument. It’s really cute and worked really well! I could have backed loads more but I wanted to be good. I’m also a fox ranger in Dane’s campaign, a design I would have loved to see part of Nyanzilla’s collection. The bard pin is on gold enamel and has two backs with yellow rubber backs. As a thank you for backing the Kickstarter I received the Warriors of Cute Mameshiba mini enamel pin. It’s a cute little shiba head, with a blep (tongue sticking out) and a green tie around it’s neck. It’s absolutely adorable and will make for a great filler in one of my itabags. Like the bard, this is on a gold enamel BUT this only has one back with a black rubber back.

Just to add, Nyanzilla does also have an Etsy store for her international buyers, so if you’re in the UK like me you can still get your goodies. However, I don’t know if the main website and the Etsy store are updated the same. I know at the moment the Warriors of Cute designs aren’t on the Etsy store at the time of writing this post… So it might be worth reaching out to Nyanzilla in regards if you wanted to buy one of these enamel pins from the UK on Etsy.

I ALSO want to add here how Nyanzilla is currently revealing her new Kickstarter for Elementalists that are inspired by Eeveelutions. Go and check out their Instagram for more information and images that have been revealed so far… I already want to back for ALL of the designs and I’ve only seen a handful. 😛

So there we have it guys, just a handful of enamel pins I have bought lately! Some of these dated back from the end of summer last year that I’ve been meaning to show off for quite some time now. I was planning to talk about more independent artists here, but one I’m actually going to give them their own post to talk all about their enamel pins and why you should check them out. Another I personally just don’t wish to talk about them on here… I’ve spoken about them on my Instagram before so. 🙂

Which enamel pins caught your eye? Do you own any of the same designs as I do? Make sure to let me know in the comments down below, as well as any enamel pin artists you can recommend for me to check out!

Until next time guys, take care and stay safe! 🙂

Jenni Illustrations – Haul

August is the month of a very much needed spending ban… Which may go into September as well to be honest with you so I can try and save up some more monies ready for when Christmas is upon us.

I’ve mentioned before on my blog how during lock down I have saved and spent a lot of money on things I’d had my eye on for ages but never had the spare monies or urge to buy. I decided to on some things and have had zero regrets, even if my bank account doesn’t agree. One of the independent artists I finally took the plunge and bought from is Jenni Illustrations.

Jenni Illustrations is a Australian kawaii illustrator/designer who draws all sorts of designs from cute animals, some Ghibli inspired characters and even some of her own original characters, which I adore.

Jenni had recently closed her store and reopened it, just in time for me to make some purchases. I bought three things in total and I am here to show them off to you today in a little haul post. I really hope you enjoy it, as I’m so excited to share the goodies with you! 😀

As I mentioned before I picked up three items, a print, a sticker and of course an enamel pin.

• Soda Dog Sticker (link)

One of Jenni’s original characters that I have fallen in love with is her Soda Dog design. Not only do I love dogs but the colour of the soda being blue reminds me of Japanese ramune, which is what I think it’s actually meant to be. The sticker is a decent size and bigger than I thought it was going to be, as well as amazing quality. On the store it does tell you the size and about the quality, but I didn’t check to see how big or small it would be as I didn’t mind either way. 🙂

As you can see the design is of a soda bottle with some blue soda inside, a red lid and Soda Dog as the mascot on the label. There is some Japanese on either sides of the bottle too, which in all honesty I cannot read. I tried to see if the Google Translate app on my phone could help, but the only bit it could translate was the part on the left hand side which read “Soda Dog”. It struggled with the part on the right, but kept trying to say inu which I knew was wrong. After a lot of playing around with Google Translate I worked out that it says, “ramune”. Which makes sense! The Soda Dog design is so adorable, but I want to go into more detail about him when I talk about the enamel pin I picked up next.

So far I’ve not stuck my sticker to anything, as you can see. Instead I’ve stuck him on the side of my plushie bookcase.

This sticker cost $5.00 AUS, or £2.69 which I think is really decent for a sticker of this size and quality.

• Soda Dog Enamel Pin (link)

This is where I’m going to talk more about the Soda Dog design itself as I can’t not talk about it! I mean, look at it. 😀 Soda Dog is a little white puppy, but the bottom half of his body is blue ramune soda! He has a little red bottle top on his head, a floppy ear in the shape of a heart and massive pink cheeks. Oh and a red collar to match his hat red bottle top! This Soda Dog is of course supposed to be a bottle of ramune which has almost been finished and I think it’s such an amazing idea. When I saw that Jenni had an enamel pin design of this cute boy, I KNEW I had to buy it!

The enamel pin itself is really good quality! It’s on a gold enamel and has one back. The enamel pin itself cost $14.00 AUS, which is £7.54. I think this is an incredibly reasonable price for an enamel pin and I plan to buy more in the future from Jenni, which I’ll be showing at the end of this post.

• Kiki A6 Print (link)

First things first, at the time of me writing this post this print is currently sold out… I hope it comes back into stock because the Ghibli designs Jenni does are gorgeous! I’ve always liked Kiki’s Delivery Service, but I especially feel since my Japan trip in January that I really do love it. Japan especially love it, so whenever you go into a Ghibli store (or at least one that sells Ghibli goods) there will always be plenty of Kiki’s Delivery Service items to choose from. I actually regret not buying more. Before my trip to Japan I had my eye on this print, I love so much about it. The one thing I always love about Jenni’s designs is the eyes. They’re so three dimensional and gorgeous, I could stare at them for ages.

As you can see from the photo, it’s a design of Kiki holding Jiji, the overall design is adorable and it really brings joy to my day whenever I walk past it in the bedroom. Like the sticker, I have stuck it onto the side of my plushie bookcase. I would love to see more character from Ghibli movies drawn similar. I feel like Jenni did one of Chihiro from Spirited Away ages ago, but I can’t remember…

This print cost $8.00 AUS, which works out to £4.31, which is reasonable! If anything, I would have loved the option of having a bigger print. I would have definitely gone for an A5, maybe at a push an A4 as I honestly love this design.

So, those are all the goodies I picked up on my first order from Jenni Illustrations.

Due to COVID the items took just under a month to arrive to me. I have to be honest here and say I didn’t think shipping was cheap at £9.69, almost £10 for shipping from AUS to the UK. I didn’t care about paying the costs at the time as I really wanted the items but next time I make an order I’ll feel like I need to order plenty to make the shipping worth it.

This was a MASSIVE treat for me as I’d wanted these items for a while, but if you think the shipping is a little on the high side for you, it might be worth making an order with a friend whose also after these items and you can split the shipping fee.

Overall I am in love with my Jenni Illustration goodies and I’ll definitely buy from her store again and plan to in the future! I already have loads of items on my wish list that I plan to buy in the future and wanted to share them with you below.

Blue Clues Sticker Sheet – I loved Blue’s Clues growing up so these would be a nostalgic trip for me!

Animal Crossing Sticker Sheets – I don’t need to explain why I want these, but I do want them all!

Froggy Chair Sticker – I explained on my July Wish List ’20 post why I want this sticker.

JiJi and Lily 6×6″ Print – I would love this print to go with my Kiki print.

Dragon 6×6′ Print – This print shouts Haku from Spirited Away, who in turn is my favourite Ghibli character. I need this print in my life!

Lucky Kat Washi Tape – Whilst in Japan I discovered a love for washi tape. I would love to add this lucky cat washi tape my collection.

Chester Pin and Fern the Fox Pin – These are two more of the original characters that Jenni has drawn. Chester is a cute little red panda and Fern is an adorable fox. These are two of my favourite animals… What’s not to love, eh?

Soda Dog Keychain – I actually regret not ordering this at the time of my order, as I would have loved to add this onto one of my bags, or a set of keys. I definitely plan on adding him to my basket next time I make an order with Jenni Illustrations.

So there you have it guys! What do you think of Jenni Illustrations? Which item(s) are your favourite that I picked up. Plus, have you bought anything from Jenni Illustrations yourself? If you haven’t yet and plan to, let me know what you’re going to buy!

OH and don’t forget to check out Jenni Illustration over on Instagram too, where she shares new designs all the time. 🙂

Until next time all, take care stay safe and see you next time! 😀

Redbubble Sweatshirts and Stickers Haul

If there is one thing I have been doing during lock down, it’s shopping… Shop, shop, shop! I honestly don’t know how I have been able to save money up! In all fairness, I don’t like to think I’ve spent a stupid amount of money, but I have been buying things I want and to be honest I have zero regrets.

As I’m not going out due to lock down and only spending a few nights a week talking to friends online, I’ve been on my laptop most of the time. During these times I’m either doing blog work, watching things on YouTube, browsing social media or buying things.

Not only have I browsed wish lists I have saved on my browser, but also wish lists I have on Etsy, eBay, EMP and finally Redbubble, the store I will be talking about today!

I wanted to share with you the goodies I recently bought from Redbubble as I’m so damn happy with everything I bought for various reasons, as well as sharing with you all the amazing customer service I experienced too.

I hope you enjoy this weeks blog post, it’s been a while since I shared a haul with you all (I’m a poet)! 😀

I made three orders with Redbubble, which sounds like a lot but this isn’t the case… I didn’t go shopping mad, I promise! Something happened to the original order I made and I complained to customer service about it.

I ordered the first sweatshirt I am going to talk about, alongside with some stickers. I ordered a men’s size L for the sweatshirt as I planned to wear it really baggy. I own a sweatshirt by One In Hundred that’s a men’s size L and it fits really comfortably. I wanted that feeling again.

The sweatshirt arrived and it looked amazing! The design was just as cute in reality as it was on the images on the website, however the size didn’t look right. I checked the tag which read M. In my head I began to worry it might not fit me, which wasn’t the case at all. If anything the M was a nice size, with the amount of baggy I had expected from the L. Even though I was happy with the M, I wasn’t happy with the fact I was sent the incorrect size.

What if this had been a gift for someone? What if it didn’t fit me? There are more what ifs here too, but those were the two that went through my mind.

I reached out to Redbubble through Twitter and an emailing service on their website to make a complaint/raise my concerns. I have to say, it is not easy to get in touch with Redbubble via email. You have to search for a certain topic and in the end I went for the “Have a query before you order?” option so I could free type an email instead of picking from options.

I always usually go to Twitter first as it’s easy to access and companies often reply quicker via social media. I didn’t expect to hear back from someone via Twitter and email. They offered me not one but two full store vouchers (which I chose as I was offered a full refund too) as an apology for what happened with the sizing. I was pleasantly surprised at this, as I didn’t expect anything considering the size I was sent fit me. Redbubble dealt with my complaint quickly and were really lovely about it.

I’ve been shopping with Redbubble for almost 10 years now and never had a problem until now, so I wasn’t really mad about it. Their customer service is amazing and I honestly cannot recommend Redbubble enough. I love them for the fact you are supporting artists who want to get their designs out there on/as clothing, stickers, phone cases, wall art, home & living pieces, accessories, stationary, gifts and more. It’s one of my favourite places to shop for certain pieces of my favourite things and I cannot recommend them enough.

With the refunds I received I bought myself two more sweatshirts, as well as sticker for me and some stickers for Dane (belated birthday present). I’m not showing the stickers I bought Dane though.

Now, onto the goodies I bought! I’ll show the sweatshirts first and then the stickers.

The first thing I want to say about the sweatshirts is the ones I bought are men’s/unisex sizing and are really comfortable to wear. They’re a little oversized for me and inside they’re all really soft, which is something I always check for when I buy sweatshirts. If they aren’t soft inside, it will take something special for me to buy. I’m thankful these are soft and fluffy inside. They’re perfect for all year around when the weather isn’t very warm and during the wet weather in the UK at the moment they have been perfect!

• AC:NL- Goldie and Cherry Pullover Sweatshirt – Designed by EpikBecky (link)

This is the first sweatshirt I bought and the one I had “issues” with. The Animal Crossing design on this is gorgeous and I have no regrets ordering it. My favourite type of villages are dogs and I currently have a grand total of four on my island, including Cookie, Bones, Lucky and Goldie. My boyfriend Dane has Cherry on his island. I love that two of our dog villagers are in this design and it makes me feel like they both went to one of our islands to visit one another and have fun together! I love Animal Crossing so much and I need more merchandise from the game in my life. I especially love the oatmeal colour of the sweatshirt as I find the neutral colour works well with the bright colours of both Goldie and Cherry. EpikBecky who designed this has so many more lovely Animal Crossing designs on her Redbubble store, including Molly the duck, Isabelle, K.K. Slider, Tom Nook, Flurry the hamster, Mable and Sable and Rosie the cat. They also have an Ice Bear design from We Bear Bears that I love.

• Bee and Puppycat Pullover Sweatshirt – Designed by Kaitlynn Peavler (link)

This is actually one of the last designs I found, but one both Dane and my friends really loved when I showed them. I decided to pick it up with the first refund I received from Redbubble and I have no regrets. I went for the cobalt blue sweatshirt with this gorgeous Bee and Puppycat print. The design is inspired by one of the first scenes of episode one (not the pilot) where Bee reaches for Puppycat. It’s a gorgeous design and it’s the first out of the three sweatshirts I bought I wore. I wore it for mine and Dane’s anniversary with some black mom jeans. The cobalt blue compliments the colour scheme of the design. I love this so much and I already know I’ll be asked who the characters are when lock down is over.

• Questions worth asking Pullover Sweatshirt – Designed by Destiny Gaubert (link)

This is one of the first Bee and Puppycat designs I found and I fell in love with the design straight away. Without revealing too many spoilers, this is from the end of season 1 of the show where Puppycat is asking Bee questions to get to know her better. The questions including, “What’s your favourite colour?”, “What’s your favourite food?” and “What’s your favourite animal?”. It’s a really lovely end to the show considering what happens in the last episode. The design again shows the start of the first episode (not the pilot) where Bee is reaching out for Puppycat. I love how it combines the start and end of season 1. I got this on a dark blue/navy sweatshirt and again, it works really well with the colours of the design. I can’t wait to wear this one, as I know it will get a lot of questions. This was the sweatshirt I picked up with the second refund I was given by Redbubble.

• Dom Animal Crossing Shy Sticker – Designed by rottnmaggtz (link)

I have fallen in love with Dom in Animal Crossing. He’s a new sheep to join the game and he’s absolutely adorable. One of my friends has him on her island and I’m semi jealous… But at least I get to see him when I visit! So I decided to have a look for a Dom sticker whilst browsing through Redbubble when I made my original order. This was my favourite out of all the ones I found so I decided to order it. It’s a decent sized sticker to be honest and has a matte finish to it. I love the design as Dom is always seem as the bashful, adorable sheep with the rainbow tie dye t-shirt (it’s a scarf on the sticker). It’s just so precious and perfect.

• Morgana Chilling Sticker – Designed by tetrablock (link)

This was another sticker I ordered with the first order I made with Redbubble. Do I really need to explain why I bought a Persona 5 sticker? 😛 As a regular reader you will know how much of a fan I am of the game, as well as my love for Joker, Skull/Ryuji and Morgana, who are my favourites. I bought this sticker to pop onto my iPad case but I actually don’t have room for it, which is a shame. It’s tempted me to stick it on my laptop to jazz it up a bit, but I won’t be doing that as I like my laptop to look “professional”, if that makes sense? This stickers design is so cute though!

• ACNL K.K. Slider Sticker – Designed by ncdoggGraphics (link)

I have had my eye on this sticker for almost a year now, (mentioned here and here) so I’m glad to finally have it! I ordered it when I made my first refunded order, alongside with some stickers I ordered for Dane as a belated birthday gift. This sticker is so adorable of K.K. Slider, especially with him saying, “Yo.”! This was another sticker I thought about sticking onto my laptop, but again, I want to keep it plain and “boring.” I would like this design on a t-shirt eventually, maybe even a notebook.

So, that is everything I bought from Redbubble recently! I bought so much stuff from there and don’t intend to buy anything else for a while now… Maybe later on in the year for clothing. It’s definitely an amazing place to go to buy things from games, anime, TV series, films and more that you love and are interested in, but that doesn’t have much merchandise around. A great example there is Bee and Puppycat.

Not only did I want to share you all the amazing pieces I picked up, but also what an amazing store Redbubble are, as well as how great their customer service is too. 🙂

Have you ever shopped with Redbubble before? If so how was your experience? What do you think of the sweatshirts and stickers I picked up? Finally, were you aware of Bee and Puppycat before this post?

Make sure to let me know answers to my questions and more in the comments!

Until next time, take care and stay safe all!

FoxLeap – More Lady and Tramp Enamel Pins!

It feels like it has been far too long since I wrote a blog post about enamel pins (Quirkory in February) and we are well overdue for another now!

I pre-ordered these two enamel pins from FoxLeap whilst I was in Japan and due to Coronavirus, they arrive a little later than planned. This didn’t bother me and in all fairness it was to be expected.

I still love my Lady and the Tramp pin I backed through Kickstarter (you can read about it here) last year from FoxLeap, so when I saw that she had brought out two more designs to do with the movie, I knew I had to buy.

Sophie, the person behind Foxleap designed a Scamp and Angel pin, as well as the three female pups, Annette, Collette, and Danielle pin. I knew I needed both, no matter what.

They arrived at the start of May and I haven’t been able to stop looking at them since. I know how much I love writing about my enamel pin purchases, as well as sharing amazing artists with you guys too. PLUS I know how many of you loved the first time I spoke about Foxleap on my blog, so I knew I had to share these enamel pins with you all.

Sophie also sent me some goodies for free as an apology for how long I waited for my pins to arrive, as well as some pins as a pick me up during everything that is going on with coronavirus, which was so lovely of her! I’m actually going to gift some of these pins to friends. 🙂 FYI when I say sent goods for free they were not sent for review purposes.

Right, let me share the pins with you all!

These both came in two separate packages, but I wanted to show them off all together.

The first package I received was a thank you package and a “coronavirus” package if you will. The one that Sophie sent me (which she sent to everyone who had/made an order) contained some duplicates of the Lady and the Tramp II pins I ordered, as well as a print, some stickers and a Simba and Nala pin.

Then I received another package from Sophie which was my actual order. Due to how long I was waited for my pins to arrive, Sophie was kind enough to offer me a free pin, as well as some free stickers. I opted for some of the fox stickers, as well as one of her Pokemon pins that I’d actually been toying with ordering around Christmas.

The two prints I was sent in both packages are gorgeous, but I seriously cannot get over the Scamp and Angel one that was included. I adore it so much and have placed it up in our bedroom so I can look at it. It reminds me of when I was in my final year of primary school and how hard it was. My mom bought me Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure on video and even got me a cute plush of Scamp (which is still at my mom’s somewhere!) and it cheered me up so much. I watched the film loads and adored it. So, this print reminds me of that period in my life. Plus, the detailing on it is adorable!

I was also sent the Okami print! I have always wanted to play this game and now it’s out on the Switch too, I may finally take the plunge and buy it. This print is also available on a t-shirt, which I’ll link here.

As always, Sophie pops a lovely message on the back of the prints with “Thank you” as well as “stay safe”. This is such a lovely touch and it always makes me smile.

I was also sent some stickers (as I mentioned previously), which I adore! The sticker sheets from Foxleap are adorable and they make me happy to look at.

I was kindly sent the fox and one of the two dog sticker sheets. I’ve already stuck some of these on my new iPad case and they really do add something adorable to it… Not that it doesn’t already have it. 😛

Finally, let’s talk about the enamel pins!

Scamp and Angel (link)

This pin is adorable and considering how the Lady and the Tramp pin looks, this has really worked well alongside the original! The original design also had a heart, so it’s nice to see that there is a heart between Scamp and Angel too. This scene is meant to be from when they’ve both been for food and are walking through the park. The design is just perfect and I especially love the light blue colour for Angel’s eyes.

The enamel pin is gold plated, and although I’m not the biggest fan of gold, it isn’t obvious with this pin and if anything, it works really well with both of the pups colour schemes.

Lady Pups (link)

The lady pups pin is very much different from both Lady and Tramp and Scamp and Angel, but I put this down to the fact there are three pups to incorporate AND we don’t know a whole lot about them from the film. However, I feel like we do also get the personalities of the three puppies and it works so well due to that. I really love the design, it’s so cute.

The enamel pin is rose gold plated, which I feel compliments the puppies colours so much.

Nickit (link)

I love Pokemon and whilst I’m not the biggest fan of the new Pokemon series Sword and Shield games, I did really fall in love with this new fox type Pokemon. I kept Nickit for as long as I could before evolving and it really is one of my favourite things about the new games. I’m so glad to finally have this pin, the Nickit looks a little grumpy, even though I know it doesn’t mean to. It’s perfect!

Simba and Nala

Finally we have a Lion King pin and it’s Simba and Nala. This was part of the Kickstarter design I backed last year for my Lady and the Tramp design. It’s so cute, with Simba and Nala looking at each other in a loving way and with their tails making a heart shape together. I don’t know if I’ll keep this design or if I’ll gift it to one of my friends… I’ll see how I feel as I am growing rather fond of the design myself.

Since my review back in late 2019, I have purchased from FoxLeap a few more times and each and every time she has been lovely and delivered, especially recently considering the circumstances. Sophie is an amazing designer and seller and it’s why I wanted to show off the latest enamel pins I picked up from her.

I’m going to pop any social media and store links down below for FoxLeap. Although I’ve linked it throughout the post, it’s always good to have stuff together too.

Store

Etsy Store

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

What do you guys think of FoxLeap? They sell some really cute enamel pins, as well as t-shirts, stickers, notebooks and keyrings. They don’t just design Disney either! They also design Pokemon too, so make sure to go and check out their store!

As I said on my previous post, I’ll definitely purchase from Fox Leap again, as well as for friends, which I did around Christmas. Sophie’s designs are amazing! BUT I am still after a Meeko and Flit design from Pocahontas as well as Dumbo. 😛

What pin(s) would you pick up from Fox Leap if you could? 🙂 Make sure to let me know in the comments down below!

Until next time all, take care and stay safe!

OH and have an amazing bank holiday. 🙂

Japan Haul #2 – Stationary

When you think of Japan, I’m sure the last thing you think of is stationary, right? I know some of you might, whilst others think of sushi, Geisha’s and sumo wrestlers.

Japan is CRAZY about stationary and for all the kawaii characters that you can find there, I’m not surprised why they are so mad about it. I know I had to take advantage of picking up some cute stationary whilst I was in Japan and I left with more than I intended to, to be honest with you! I’ve already spoken about the Pokemon related items on my Pokemon Haul (which you can read all about here), but I will be mentioning them here again, because why not. 🙂

A part of me wishes I’d picked up more stationary items, especially from the Sanrio store, but hey ho. 😛 I thought it would be nice to show you all my stationary items anyhoo, as I know a lot of my followers love stationary!

Washi Tape

I picked up quite a lot of wash tape on my trip, which took me by surprise considering I’d never bought washi tape until I ventured to Japan. I ended up picking up four different ones, which I will talking about below.

Tanuku & Kitsune Mounttain Theater Washi Tape – The washi tape that kick started off my mini addiction is this one from Tanuki & Kitsune and this tape is from the Mountain Theater collection. This was from a pop up shop in Character Street (Tokyo Station) which I regret not buying more items from to be honest before it left. The design on the tape matches what the image on the front shows, which is so adorable. You have Tanuki wearing a green cap, a dark brown cape and falling to sleep whilst it reads a script, whilst Kitsune is also reading a script as it wears a red cape. They’re adorable and clearly getting ready to act in their roles!

Studio Ghibli Kiki’s Delivery Duo Pack Washi Tape – After I went and picked up the Tanuki & Kitsune washi tape I decided to pick up this adorable washi tape double pack from the Studio Ghibli shop in Character Street (Tokyo Station). This is my favourite washi tape out of the four I’ve picked up as Jiji is absolutely adorable on both of the designs I got. There’s a pale blue design with daisies and blue flowers on, alongside Jiji sitting down and standing up. There’s also a dark blue design with Jiji’s face over daisy flowers. Honestly cannot wait to use these washi tape designs in my scrapbook!

Mofu Mofu Eevee Washi Tape – As I had already bought two washi tape designs anyway, I decided as I’m working on a scrapbook soon about our trip to Japan and wanted to pick up more kawaii patterned washi tape to make the scrapbook look pretty inside. Of course I couldn’t not pick up this cute mofu mofu Eevee design, which is just loads of cute Eevee’s running along the tape. I haven’t opened this yet and don’t plan to until it comes to me using it.

Nintendo Tokyo Animal Crossing Washi Tape – This is the final roll of washi tape I picked up on my trip to Japan. From memory there was this design and another one with the fruits on (Apples, Oranges, Peaches, Cherries and Pears). This washi tape design isn’t anything special and is pretty basic with the Animal Crossing design we all know and love! As well as the symbols we all know from Animal Crossing, there is also images of Isabelle and Digby too, which is what sold me to pick up the washi tape in the first place.

Mechanical Pencils, Pencil Lead and Pens

Ghibli Museum Mechanical Pencil – As I had bought my Eevee mechanical pencil by this point I didn’t actually need to buy another mechanical pencil… But considering it was from the Ghibli Museum, it was a souvenir I really wanted to pick up on my trip. This pencil is gorgeous and very minimal in comparison to some stationary you can buy in Japan. The pencil is a white design with silver metal, blue accent colours and of course an image of Totoro with his umbrella, raindrops and “Ghibi Museum Mitaka” underneath him. I really love this pencil and I currently use it for my D&D sessions.

Mofu Mofu Eevee Mechanical Pencil and Pen – The blue design is the pen, the red is the pencil. There were four designs/colours in total including the blue and red ones I own, as well as a brown (pencil) and green (pen I think). I didn’t really want anymore mechanical pencils as I have a pink one I really love (well… loved until I bought my new ones in Japan :P) to use so I didn’t need another mechanical pencil. I picked up the pen, which is black ink and was happy. When I went back to the Pokemon Center, I ended up picking the pencil up too and I don’t regret it! The pencil writes really well and I much prefer it to my pink mechanical pencil to be honest with you! The designs on them both are gorgeous with the fluffy, happy Eevee designs all over.

Studio Ghibli Kiki’s Delivery Service Frixion Pen – This was actually the first bit of stationary I picked up and I have ZERO REGRETS! This is a red pen, with gold images of Jiji and his girlfiend Lily. The way you get the pen nib to retract is by the clear part on the pen. I love a nice pen to write with, especially when I want to jot down blog notes and sometimes for D&D too (although I used to use a pencil previous to buying all my Japan stationary). I used to use Frixion pens when I was an undergrad at university 10 years ago (God I feel old saying that) as well as in my old job so these rub out pens aren’t anything new for me to use. However, the pen itself is amazing and this is by far one of my favourite items on this list that I picked up. This pen actually comes with red ink, but I bought some black Frixion refills whilst I was in Japan for this so I can use black instead of just red. I don’t know about you guys but I was brought up to not write in red ink (unless for myself) as it’s seen as rude.

Nintendo Tokyo Animal Crossing Isabelle Pen – I’d had my eye on this pen since before I went to Japan for my trip, as I’d seen most of the Animal Crossing merchandise that was for sale in the Nintendo Tokyo store. I didn’t know if I was going to pick it up or not but to be honest, some of the Animal Crossing merchandise I wanted was sold out, which sucks (although I have it now, yay!) so I made up for it with stationary… 😛 I picked up the Isabelle pen, as I love Isabelle and you can’t have enough pens, right?! This is a white pen with cream yellow accents, as well as some images of tulips along the grip area of the pen. At the top of the pen on one side is an image of Isabelle with some yellow tulips and on the other side it reads “Dōbutsu No mori” which is Animal Crossing in Japanese, as well as an image of Isabelle’s face and some yellow ears, which you also use to retract the black and red pens.

Sanrio Pompompurin Pen – This is the last piece of stationary I picked up on our trip. I bought it a few days before we left Japan and I actually regret not getting the Cinnamoroll version as well. This pen writes so smoothly, I love it! It’s definitely up there with my Kiki’s Delivery Service pen. This is a simple pen really, with mustard yellow colours and a Pompompurin mascot at the top of the pen (which is removable), as well as his cute little hamster friends all around the pen. I find myself using this pen a lot lately when I’m in my D&D sessions, as it’s such a smooth pen to write with.

Pikachu Mechanical Pencil Lead – Due to now owning a total of four mechanical pencils (aside from the two I bought in Japan I already have two back home that I use on and off), it’s always good to make sure to have plenty of pencil lead for these! I couldn’t get a mofu mofu Eevee design (they didn’t make one…) so instead I picked up a cute Pikachu design instead, which is kind of similar to the mofu mofu design. This came with quite a lot of 0.5 size led inside already, but as I owned some already from my first mechanical pencil, I decided to add them into this holder. I’ll never run out of led now!

Notebook and Pencil Case

Mofu Mofu Eevee Notebook – I have too many notebooks… I needed this one though. It’s adorable! I don’t quite know what I’m going to use it for as of yet… Maybe blog related stuff whilst I’m out and about? Dungeons & Dragons in the future? I don’t know… 😛 I just needed it! The designs on the front are adorable, with all the Eevee’s doing different things such as sleeping on books, holding quills in their mouths and sitting in teacups. Cute! There’s designs in the book too, with the Eevee holding the quill in it’s mouth again.

Mofu Mofu Eevee Pen Case – I didn’t need a pen case… But due to how much stationary I bought whilst I was on my holiday, I kind of had to! That and the pencil case I use currently for all my stationary items is from when I was studying my GCSE’s at school… Which was 15 years ago now! That pencil case is great, but I wanted something smaller and more refreshing! This one is a perfect signs for everything I bought on the trip, and I really enjoy taking it out with me. It’s so cute to bring out of my bag when I want something to write with. The image of the Eevee’s cuddling together on he one side is so kawaii!

Clear Files

Mofu Mofu Clear File – I bought quite a few clear files whilst I was in Japan, but this is my favourite one by far! I actually bought this to keep my files in for Dungeons & Dragons, but as of yet I haven’t had the chance to use it. The image on the front of the two Eevee’s is so adorable, I’d still like to frame it to be honest! 😛

Nintendo Tokyo Animal Crossing Clear Files – I can’t remember if I knew about these or not before I went to Japan, but I am so glad I picked them up, especially now Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out! You get two clear files in this set, one of which is a scene on both sides of the file of your town/island with various of the villagers homes and buildings such as Nook Cranny, the museum, town hall, Able Sisters, plenty of trees (including apple) and of course various villagers! The other file is simpler with it’s beige colour and on one side the same various villagers that are on the other file and on the other side the “Dōbutsu No mori” and Animal Crossing names.

Pokemon Cafe Clear Files – Me and my boyfriend knew we wanted to get some files for our trip in Japan, as a lot of places we ventured to (aka cafes) have the place mats that you fold/roll up and take home, so we wanted some files that we could do that with. We ordered these when we booked out seats at the Pokemon Cafe and we never actually got around to using them, or any of the other files that we bought for this purpose. Even so these files will be handy for D&D BUT, I have started to wonder if you could frame these and hang them up like prints! These would especially look great around the house and in the kitchen. I have to add, the first file is by far my favourite with the kawaii Pokemon Cafe mascots, although I am baffled about why Eevee isn’t there?! The other clear file in this double pack is meant to be a party style scene but with lots of different Pokemon eating and drinking items from the Pokemon Cafe menu, as well as the cute Pokemon Cafe staff. By the way, you can read all about the Pokemon Cafe here.

Fullmetal Alchemist Clear Files – These are actually some clear files that my boyfriend Dane picked up from the Fullmetal Alchemist Cafe that we visited during our trip (I plan to talk about it in the future!) and I’m really glad he picked them up as they’re so pretty. One of the files has an image of Edward and Alphonse Elric fighting together, this is definitely my favourite file of the two he bought. The metal arm and leg of Edward’s really do shine in the light, which was what appealed to me the most. The second clear file has the “good guys” on of Fullmetal Alchemist, which Dane had to have! I will honestly be surprised if we don’t end up framing these in the future and sticking them up in our office. 🙂

So, that is all of the stationary that I picked up from Japan! I thought this would be a nice little haul to share with you this week, especially as we went into lock down here in the UK this week too (well, Monday). I’ve been working from home and on my breaks and after work I have still been doing my writing.

Although we are in lock down here, my blog stuff will not change, I will continue to get my blog posts up every week. 🙂

So, which piece(s) of stationary that I picked up in Japan did you like? Also, what are you doing for the next couple of weeks during the lock down? Make sure to let me know in the comments!

Until next time all, take care, stay safe and I hope you’re having a lovely weekend. 🙂

Pokemon Center London – My Experience & Haul

This is a post I am writing literally 3 hours after I have arrived back home from our short trip to London… I am tired, unsure of what to do with myself right now and kinda poor. 😛 If you haven’t gathered from the title, I went to the Pokemon Center in London with Dane and we bought some stuff… A lot of stuff as a matter of fact.

I wanted to talk about my experience of the Pokemon Center in London here on my blog, because not only have I been excited for this pop up store to come to the UK (as mentioned in my October wish list here as well as on my October Newsletter) but I am also a MASSIVE Pokemon fan and have been since 1999 when the first generation games  came out in the UK.

So when I heard that we would be getting a Pokemon Center here in the UK, I knew I had to go… However there has been some ups and downs with this since it opened on the 18th October, which is over a week ago now. It shuts on the 15th November, when the new Sword and Shield games come out.

I went yesterday on the 28th October and I’m going to tell you all about it, including the good, the bad and the annoying. I’ll also be showing you what both me and my boyfriend Dane bought too… Because I just HAVE to show you all the awesome goodies we bought!

As you know as my reader(s) I’m from Birmingham and the Pokemon Center is in London. That’s either a 2 hour train or car journey to London for me. We did at first book a hotel and plan to leave early on the Monday to go and start queuing for the Pokemon Center at 5am… This plan didn’t wash with both me and my boyfriend though. We felt it was a waste of a hotel payment when we weren’t even sleeping in the room we’d paid for for long. So we cancelled our hotel, got our money back and decided to drive down early on the Monday morning.

We toyed with the idea of going stupidly early and semi stupidly early in the morning. Eventually we opted to arrive in London for 5am to begin queuing. We both woke up at 2am to get ready and at 3am we left to make our way down to London. It was a lovely quiet drive and we spoke about all sorts on the way down, including what we planned to buy, whether or not we would go upstairs to play the demo of Pokemon Sword and Shield as well as other things.

Before we knew it we arrived! We parked in the Westfield shopping centre and made our way through the quiet and empty shopping centre to join the queue. As we got closer to the queue people were bring brought inside by the security, which was good! It wasn’t exactly warm outside! Not long after we joined the end of the queue we were also led indoors into the warm, which I was grateful for! We joined the queue and sat down to make ourselves comfortable, we were due a lonnnnng wait!

Food and drink wise we made sure to take plenty with us to keep us going for the wait. We took Red Bull and Lucozade, some sweets and we even cooked some pizzas for us to have for lunch… Which we ate half of for breakfast and the rest for dinner in the evening! It was so odd, but that pizza was so yummy yesterday morning. 😛 Some of the restaurants and cafes open at 8am, but I did see some people leave the queue and later came back with McDonald’s breakfast.

We were waiting by Love Coffee, which I toyed with going to for coffee when it opened at 8am. We didn’t bother in the end however, as I was feeling really dehydrated and caffeine wasn’t something I was all that arsed about… Which is a shock for me!

Toilets were close by to where we were queuing all of the day and there was also some drinks vending machines too and were contactless payments, which was handy! I never carry cash. 😦 Security were amazing and if you don’t happen to be queuing as close to a toilet as we were, they’ll allow you to go and do your business and rejoin the queue when you return. Just make sure there is someone around to hold your space, or at least someone nearby who will remember you!

Entertainment… This is something you will definitely need to think about, especially depending if you’re on your own. No matter what time you join the queue, you will need to take some form of entertainment with you so that you don’t die of boredom! We didn’t take our Nintendo Switch in the end as I know Dane was worried about us being outside with it… What a shame we didn’t take it though as we were inside straight after we started queuing. I saw a lot of people playing their Switches together, as well as alone. We only took our phones for entertainment, which didn’t bother me too much, but I could tell that Dane was really bored!

If you don’t take a handheld games console with you, at least take a book and a battery pack for your phone! My phone didn’t go down to 10% until after we had left the Pokemon Center, which was good! But I know Dane’s ran low not long before we headed into the Pokemon Center.

Whether you’re going alone or not, both me and Dane regretted not taking earphones/headphones with us to tone out people talking and to kill some time as well… I made sure to connect to the free WiFi in Westfield as I didn’t want to eat into my data. I just regret it so much… It would have killed a lot of time as I could have binged YouTube videos and listening to podcasts.

I can’t think of anything else here in regards to what to plan for with waiting times… If you have any questions, just ask!

Something that annoyed me at this point of queuing was the amount of people who were taking up LOADS of space, when others (including us) were confined to hardly any space. If me and Dane both sat down next to each other we were practically on top of one another! A couple next to us had more than enough room to move over and give us more space, but the guy next to them wouldn’t move over. Behind that guy there were two guys and a girl who took up so much space. So much so, the guys were both lying down with their heads next to each other. It really pissed me off and they weren’t the only people don’t this. Security should have really nipped this in the bud, but didn’t, which pissed me off. I’ve posted the photo to show you guys what it was like. I’ve blanked out their faces but if you’re reading this who did this, shame on you.

Another thing that annoyed me was hearing people gossiping about stuff to do with the Pokemon Center that just wasn’t accurate or true. I could hear them telling people who hadn’t yet been (I have a feeling the person in question had been maybe once or twice) and what they were saying felt very scaremongering to me. I won’t mention what was being said as I don’t want to openly out someone, but it was frustrating me. I didn’t want to hear it, but I couldn’t help it. It was at this point I regretted not having some earphones/headphones on me… I don’t mean to sound nasty but I just want to be honest. I understand people sharing experiences or things they have read from the official Pokemon Center Twitter page, but to gossip about facts that are not true, is downright annoying…

A lot of people have mentioned online of how they have made friends with people in the queue, but sadly we just didn’t do this… We were tired, bored and hardly spoke to one another. Plus the people around us just didn’t seem that sociable.

Eventually around 8.15am we were moved forward and stood up for the remainder of out wait before entering the Pokemon Center. Security will keep you as bunched up as possible and don’t like you sitting at this point as it can take up more room! This was fine, but I was shattered. We were standing for 3 hours before we entered the Pokemon Center. I appreciated the sit down in the coffee shop we ventured to after.

Obviously we weren’t here at 8.15am! This was us at 11.15am.

Security were amazing! They were friendly to talk to, any questions you wanted to ask they were happy with answering and they made sure that people weren’t pushing in!

There were a couple of incidents where people either thought the queue started where we were and needed to be redirected and a few times people blatantly tried to push in. One guy was “on his phone” and stood at the end of the queue. Security asked him to move and leave and he was pretending to be on his phone, he blatantly wasn’t! He eventually got moved, but he clearly knew what he was doing was wrong.

Another great example of the security was how someone wasn’t feeling very well in the queue and they seemed to be having a panic attack. I think they were dehydrated and hungry, plus anxious so they were taken out of the queue to be sat and calmed down by security. Not long after we entered the store, I saw them in there. It was good to see they had perked up and been able to enter the store after queuing!

Please excuse my fat, tired, anxious face! 😛

Eventually after six and a half hours later we entered the store! We were greeted by happy staff at the front of the store, which was lovely! The store is tiny… Smaller than I thought it was going to be! It was really busy too, which was a shame because it meant I couldn’t “enjoy” the aesthetic of it as much as I had planned to.

For all the time we waited outside of the Pokemon Center, we realistically only spent 30-45 minutes in there. Crazy, right?

Wait… What is that pink thing on the back?

Mmm let’s look closer at that pink thing…

Would you look at that! It’s a lonely Ditto. 😛 Honestly if it wasn’t for the fact both me and Dane had picked up our 5 items each, I would have grabbed this forever alone Ditto. 😛

Look… He’s still there. 😦 😛

You go into the store and on the right you have the tills and on the left you have a section the Detective Pikachu merchandise and the new Galar starters. Still on the left you also have a mixture of the Galar starters again and some London exclusive merchandise.

We made sure to grab a London Pikachu plushie each! We kept one and we also bought one for a YouTube friend Found on Film, which I sent off today for her. FYI she paid for the Pikachu as well as the postage costs and I didn’t charge any extra for doing this for her. Yes, I am annoyed at people buying and selling stuff on eBay, but I don’t mind when people help out others.

Then you can go through a tunnel style part of the store to go to the back of the shop. On the left there was loads of Nintendo Switch stock for sale, including the Nintendo Switch and Switch Lite consoles, games and accessories for the Switch and Switch Lite. Next to that was a section FULL of various plushies, especially the cute Eeeveelution plushies! I toyed with the idea of picking up a Vulpix plush, but left it. I can always pick one up when I go to Japan if I really want one.

All along the right hand side were Pokemon Trading Card related merchandise and London exclusive clothing merchandise. I knew I wanted both of the London exclusive hoodies (one has a zip and one has a pullover) and when I went over to both of the hoodies in their sections there weren’t many sizes left! I made sure to grab XL’s in both and shoved them in my basket! I’m definitely not an XL in unisex, but I wanted to make sure that both of these fit me as I’d heard things about the sizes come up small. Plus, if Dane wants to wear the zip hoodie, he can, as it fits him too! 😀

Dane also picked himself up one of the white Pikachu pocket t-shirts too, which he quickly grabbed a bigger size in due to the sizing issues. I’m glad he picked that t-shirt up for himself!

Sadly I did not get ANY photos of this part of the shop, apart from me standing in front of the photo at the back. This was just due to how manic this part of the shop was… The only images I got were of the Eeveelution plushies. 😦

Then for the rest of our time in the shop we made sure to relax a little (we grabbed the bits we really wanted first) and have a nose around the shop. We ventured back over to the London exclusive items and picked up a poster, some stickers and I found some of the London socks thrown on top of the Galar starter merchandise, which I gave to Dane. The socks had actually sold out so we were VERY lucky to have found these!

We finally went over to the Detective Pikachu merchandise to have a nose at what they had. As regular and older readers will know, back in May this year I bought the lifesize Detective Pikachu plushie from Pokemon Center Japan (which you can see and read about here) through YY Kawaii and I still to this day love it! They were selling this plushie at the Pokemon Center in London, but it had sold out by the time I got into the store. However, they did have the smaller versions. I picked one of them up and instantly fell in love with it. It looked so happy with it’s face and it really did make me smile. I put it into my basket and Dane even picked himself up a little key chain version too! Now we have a big happy Detective Pikachu plush family! 😛

That was it! We were happy with all our purchases and headed to the till.

In regards to stock levels, when the queue closes for the day and any other updates in regards to the Pokemon Center, their Twitter page PokemonPopUp is the best place to go for updates! I constantly watched it whilst I was in the queue after the store opened at 10am for updates of what had sold out as we queued. For example I did toy with the idea of picking up the fleece blanket they were selling, but this sold out before we went in… Which I was gutted about! This being said, I’ll live. 😛

We decided to go upstairs to have a go at the Pokemon Sword and Shield demo, as whilst we’ve pre-ordered both the games I fancied having a look upstairs, take some photos and of course give them demo a go on a Nintendo Switch Lite. I’ve actually ordered myself the limited edition one for Pokemon Sword and Shield which I’m excited about! So, I wanted to have a go on a Switch Lite to see what it was like.

One of my favourite parts of the Pokemon Center was actually the photo wall they had upstairs! You could pick up and hold one of the Pokemon that is going to be a part of the new generation and I decided to grab Grookey for my photo. This is the Pokemon I’m planning to choose right now for my starter! I have to be honest (and vain) and say how much I love the photos that Dane took of me here! I’m not as keen on the photo from downstairs in the Pokemon Center and same can be said for the one outside too. I don’t know why… I guess I look a mixture of tired, anxious and stressed due to the waiting and then how busy it was inside the Pokemon Center. Upstairs where the demos were taking place was lovely and chilled, which I enjoyed. 🙂

The demo was fun, for the 10 minutes it lasted for. You were playing through one of the gym puzzles before you go and play the gym leader. I never got to finish battling the gym leader, but Dane did. We both loved it and enjoyed playing it on the Switch Lite! I plan to talk about the Switch Lite on my blog when it arrives next week (maybe the week after) by the way. 🙂

Once you’ve started to go upstairs by the way, you will not be allowed to go back into the Pokemon Center… You’ll be told this as you’re about to go upstairs so make sure you’re happy with everything you’ve done before going to play the demo.

Then when we had finished the demo we headed downstairs for one more photo of the Pikachu in the window and headed to a coffee shop for a sit down, something to eat and drink and chilled with my favourite independent artists Chibi Shibby (check out her store here!).

Shibby kindly picked up the umbrella for me from the Pokemon Center when she visited the weekend it opened! Due to how busy it was I started to get anxious that I wouldn’t end up going. Not only that, but I also worried that when we did go, the umbrella (which at the time was the thing I wanted the most!) would be sold out too. It wasn’t when we went, but we couldn’t see it anywhere!

We sat and chilled with Shibby for a bit and before we know it, we were all ready to head off home. Two hours later we got home at 3.30pm. We were shattered for the rest of the evening, ate our leftover pizza from the morning and I even filmed a video of a live haul and feelings about the Pokemon Center on my Instagram page.

FINALLY I am going to show you the goodies I picked up, the prices and why I picked things up. You know, the usual stuff I say when I write a haul post. 😛

• London City Pikachu Umbrella – £29.00

This umbrella is really hefty and it feels like a “professional” one, if that makes sense? It’s an automatic spring umbrella too, so when you push the button on the handle the umbrella opens up. It’s a navy umbrella with a Pokemon Center London logo and Pikachu on, but it’s inside the umbrella where the magic happens! Inside it’s grey with all the different London Pikachu poses, as well as some UK related things a Pokemon inspired red postbox, a lamp post, green bushes, clouds and even an Eevee. I am beyond excited to use this umbrella, but also anxious as hell because if this breaks, I will cry! xD As I mentioned in the post, Chibi Shibby was kind enough to pick this up for me (of course I paid her for it).

• London City Pikachu Scene Poster – £10.00

This wasn’t something neither me nor Dane contemplated picking up but when I saw it on show in the store, I just knew I had to get it. It was shown to the public a week or so before the store opened, which I fell in love with! I know a lot of people thought it wasn’t anything special, but honestly I did really like it. Granted, they could have done more but in my mind if they had of done more it would have looked too much and then people would have complained about that. You know? So yeah, the print made me happy! This will eventually be put into a frame and put on the wall somewhere in our house! I would have taken this out of the tube to show you all, but I want to keep it in there until we decide to take it out and frame. Dane picked this up in the store.

• London City Pikachu Socks – £12.00

As I mentioned this was something I saw on the starter plushies and I grabbed them quickly for Dane! I would have loved to pick these up myself, but I feel like I had picked up enough stuff and I knew Dane would really like and get some use out of these. More so than I would have, for sure. I’m glad we managed to grab these considering they had been sold out. 😛 These socks feel really quite thick and they’re also really long, which is awesome! I know for a fact Dane will wear these in the summer with shorts. 😛 Dane picked these up in the store.

• London Pikachu Hiding T-Shirt – £24.00

This was originally a t-shirt I wanted to pick up, but left it as I wasn’t all that arsed considering I wanted the hoodies more. I was really happy when I turned around and saw that Dane had picked this up! I had read loads of people saying to pick up a size larger in the clothing as it seemed to come up smaller, which Dane did for this t-shirt. It fits him perfectly, but one issue we both have with it, is that it’s rather see through… This isn’t a problem, Dane can always wear something underneath it. 🙂 This t-shirt is really cool and I’m glad he picked it up for that alone! The London Pikachu is hiding in a little pocket on the front. I love t-shirts with these pocket designs. 🙂 Dane picked this up in the store.

• Detective Pikachu Plush Key Chain – £12.00

This little key chain version of the Detective Pikachu plush is adorable! Dane plans to keep it in his card, which I think is such a cute idea! A part of me was tempted to do this myself, but I don’t think I will do currently with my car. This is so soft and very small! They had loads of these left for sale, which isn’t a surprise. This would be cute to keep on an ita bag or a backpack, as it has this little clip so you wouldn’t need to worry about it falling off. 🙂 Dane picked this up in the store.

• Detective Pikachu Plush – £20.00

I cannot tell you how bloody happy this plush has made me. As I am writing this post I am currently every now and then looking over at it, as it is peering out of the top of the bag with all the goodies in from the Pokemon Center. I cuddled with this a little last night as me and Dane chilled out in bed and I really enjoyed it. I sound like such a kid, but sometimes things like that really do make you feel like a kid again. I just love it’s little face. It just looks so perfect and happy! I definitely have the perfect plushie here out of the bunch… 😛 I have to add here, I loved Sooty as a kid and not going to lie, I still love watching it now for the nostalgia and this plush sort of reminds me of Sooty due to the yellow colour and it’s cute little face. I think that’s one of the reasons it has made me so happy haha! I picked this up in the store.

• London City Pikachu Poke Plush – £20.00

Of course I had to pick this plush up… I’d have been crazy if I hadn’t. These sold out not long after we left the Pokemon Center (including the demo section upstairs) and I’m glad we were able to grab one. These were in pretty good stock when we grabbed ours, but this was something I wanted to make sure we grabbed first! I do not have a clue where I’m going to keep this little guy, but at the moment I am contemplating my manga cupboard, if not my cabinet that is full of Pokemon Center plushies from Japan. I love this plush, he’s got so much detailing to him and he’s just perfect! He has a bowler hat on, a Psyduck style umbrella, a tie that is covered in Poke balls and all around is pudgy and cute! He was well worth the £20 I paid. 😛 I picked this up in the store.

• London City Pikachu Stickers (4 Stickers) – £6.50

This was a random purchase and was a toss up between these and the greetings cards. I feel like if I’d have bought the greetings cards, I would have never used them… However with the stickers I’m planning on making a little scrapbook for our Japan trip, so I would like to stick loads of cute stickers I am accumulating together right now onto a scrapbook cover… OR do the same with a notebook for myself! I’m also planning on sending one of these stickers to someone in a Christmas card. 🙂 I picked this up in the store.

• London City Pikachu Crest Hooded Sweatshirt – £65.00

This was something I REALLY wanted as I’d seen photos of it and it just looked really comfortable, different and it’s limited edition… Why wouldn’t I want it! I’m not a small girl and usually when I buy hoodies I pick them up in a L… A man’s L more often than not. I can rarely pick up clothing from the Pokemon Center’s in Japan due to the sizing, as Asian sizes are usually a lot smaller than ours are here in the UK. So getting genuine Pokemon Center clothes is rare for me (I say this but I do own one Flareon tee…) so I knew I wanted this. I grabbed an XL to make sure it was lovely and baggy and damn it is!

It’s a dark grey zip up hoodie, so this will be perfect if I’m popping out for a while and just want to throw something on quick. It’ll be perfect for work too whenever I have dress down days and in the summer when I want something light to wear on the way to and from work. On the back there is a gold photo of the London Pikachu, with the year 2019 and London. There is even Mew and Mewtwo on the back too, which I didn’t notice until just now! The hood also has all the London Pikachu designs in, which is amazing! Finally on the left side of the chest is a Pokeball logo. I cannot wait to rock this this week. It wasn’t cheap by the way, I know but this is limited and worth every fucking penny to me! As this is an XL Dane can wear it too. 🙂 I picked this up in the store.

• London Sweatshirt Black – £55.00

This is the final item on this list and it wasn’t a sweatshirt I wanted originally, but the more people I saw sharing it and talking about it, the more I wanted it. I’m so pleased I picked this up and especially glad that I grabbed an XL in this too, although I feel like an XXL would have been better. This fits perfectly with a long sleeved t-shirt underneath, but I would have wanted it a teeny bit baggier… There is so much detail on this sweatshirt and for that I love it!

This is a black pull over hoodie, but it’s being called a sweatshirt with some yellow detailing in places. On the front on the left hand side there is a London Pikachu in a sitting position, which is adorable! This design hasn’t been on much merchandise alone, so I’m glad they did it on this sweatshirt. Below the pocket on the right hand side there is the coordinates of the Pokemon Center in London! Which is amazing! This store will never be there again (unless the petition actually works and Nintendo keep it permanently!) and it makes me feel cool to wear something like this. It’s just an awesome idea and I love it. It’s the main thing I loved about the sweatshirt. Then on the back there is a yellow Poke ball stitched on the left shoulder, which I didn’t notice until I tried the sweatshirt on and Dane pointed it out to me. I honestly love this and can’t wait to rock it during the colder seasons and especially in Japan! I picked this up in the store.

I want to make a disclaimer here, I am in no way showing off how much I bought and how much I spent… I mean let’s face it, why would I show off how fucking skint I am now?! I saved up for the Pokemon Center as I planned to spend a lot of money and I have zero regrets. I am a massive Pokemon fan… No matter what and it’s not like it’s everyday that we get a Pokemon Center here in the UK!

I wanted to show prices so that if people were/are planning to go to the Pokemon Center themselves, at least they/you could see the prices for items. 🙂

That was everything I bought anyhoo and now it’s time to wrap up this VERY long post…

So, what did I think of the Pokemon Center London? I have so many feelings about it that I will list below:

• I loved the Pokemon Center London, even with all the queuing. I waited 6 and a half hours, people have waited a lot longer than I have so I cannot complain. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t love queuing but before I knew it, we were going in!
• I hated how busy it was inside. Some people were rushing around and grabbing what they wanted, whilst others were relaxed and taking their time. I was actually one of the people rushing to grab what they wanted, as I was worried I had travelled all that way to find all the stuff I wanted was out of stock. I didn’t want that worry!
• I HATED how much anxiety I had in the run up to going, as well as moments before entered the store and even when I was in there.
• BUT I loved the relief of when I got the goodies I wanted the most (two hoodies and London Pikachu).
• If anything the thing I have hated the most from the Pokemon Center London is how selfish people have been. I’m not going to go into detail on my post but this store opening has really brought out how people can be.

This being said, I loved it. The child deep down inside of me was really excited for the pop-up store and I’m so pleased that both me and Dane went and we had a lovely time. 🙂

Would I go again? No. Not at all. Honestly I don’t need to. I don’t even think I would go with a friend because I honestly can’t be arsed to queue again. 😛

If you are looking to head to the pop-up store yourself then I will pop all the information down below for you, as there is plenty to take in! 😛

The store is open from Friday 18th October until Friday 15th November 2019.

Opening times are – Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm and Sunday 12pm – 6pm.

You’ll find Pokemon Center London at Westfield London, located at Ariel Way, Shepherd’s Bush, London, W12 7GF in the United Kingdom. The store will be fully accessible for guests of all abilities, and an elevator will be available for travel between floors. Taken from Pokemon website

Pokemon Center London Twitter – Make sure to read this for all the updates! They update it daily including when the store opens, when queuing ends, which products have sold out for the day and even have FAQ’s on there too.

So, are any of my readers planning to make a trip to the Pokemon Center London before it closes, or have you been already? Make sure to let me know in the comments below, including how crazy I am! 😛

Until next time, take care all and I hope you’re having a lovely week so far.

UK Games Expo 2019 – Haul

I am very much skint after the UK Games Expo that was on a couple of weekends ago and I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry… So instead I thought I would write a blog post about it! 😛

This was the first time me and Dane went to the UK Games Expo and we loved it so much! Not going to lie, it’s definitely the busiest con we’ve attended to date and definitely one we’ll talk about for a while for various different reasons. I’ll be mentioning them here too of course.

So come and have a nose at what we bought, as well as read about what we thought of the convention. 🙂

Our initial thoughts on the convention was that it wouldn’t be as big as it actually was for a start and as we walked through the entrance and looked around, we were shocked and a think a tad nervous that we wouldn’t get around everywhere. Spoiler, we did! 😛

Something we noticed quite heavily as we walked around was just how fucking rude people attending were. If they weren’t shoving past to get to stands and stalls, they were not even using, “please” or “thank you” as and when necessary. It pissed me off something rotten and depending how rude people were, depended how rude I was back. This put me off immensely but this isn’t due to the people hosting the convention.

This being said we will definitely be attending again next year, maybe on the Friday as we heard from quite a few people how this day is the best out of the three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) as well as maybe Saturday so we can get two days in.

We wanted to play some games whilst we were there but due to how much is going on at the convention – we were far too tired for it, which was such a shame as there were loads of games we wanted to have a go at.

As this post shows from the photo, we bought a LOT of stuff, so I thought I would write a haul today so I could show you everything we picked up. I hope you enjoy this haul from us. Prepare for lots of geeky items! 😛

Also, as some of these (well maybe half actually!) items are Dane’s too, I’ll get him to write here when it comes to anything of his and why he decided to buy it! I’ll pop a “D:” when it comes to his sections so you know he’s talking instead of me. 🙂

The first thing we bought were D&D dice. Hey, you don’t go to a board game convention without buying some dice, am I right?! This was the first stand we really looked at properly as it wasn’t stupidly busy. They had the Chessex dice there and I had a specific pair and style in mind. These weren’t there, but the Borealis style I was after were! They had a couple of pairs (a pink and lighter blue pair) but I fell in love with these light green set and decided to pick them up!

Dane also bought himself a pair of dice too and opted for these blue and red ones. They’re so damn pretty and he doesn’t have anything like this so it’ll be cool for both him and me to try our new dice out at our D&D session on Sunday.

D: When we were walking around the convention the one stand that really caught my attention was the one for Barpig, a card game about pig adventurers in a bar. Even before I spoke to the people running the stand I was pretty much sold on buying the game anyway. They had a pretty good offer that both myself and my friend couldn’t resist after talking to the people running the stand, as well as being given a quick demo. I was sold and couldn’t walk away without buying the game. The day after the convention me and Nat played this game together only to discover it’s between 3-7 players, which is a shame as we were looking forward to an evening of playing it. This being said, we’re now especially excited to play it with friends!

For the convention they had a special price and goody bag for this game. For £19 you got everything in the photo including the game itself! This is what I was sold on the most and didn’t hesitate to pick it up.

They currently have the expansion pack BARPIG: After Hours up on Kickstarter until Monday 1st July. I’ll link it here so you can go and check it if you like the sound of the game.

These were some of my favourite items I picked up from the convention, just because they’re Japanese goodies and from some of my favourite things. I stumbled upon this stand about halfway through the day and spotted some Nendoroid figures, so knew I had to go for a nose. When I spotted two official Studio Ghibli puzzles on the table I KNEW Dane had to come and have a look around the stall too! I quickly snapped up the puzzle from the table and shouted for Dane to come over. As soon as he saw the puzzle he told me to get it, but not before I had a nose around the rest of the stall. It was amazing to be honest with you and was by far my favourite at the convention as they just sold so much stuff I love. I saw they had the Pokemon Centre Eeveelutions bell charms for sale too as a decent price so I decided to pick one up. I ideally want this for an ita bag I plan to put together sooner rather than later. It’s so cute, the perfect bag companion.

I honestly cannot wait for me and Dane to work on the My Neighbour Totoro puzzle together and hang up! I’m feeling like it can go up in our bedroom by my side of the bed. 🙂

Just when we thought we weren’t going to actually pick up more than one game, we found a stall where we fell in love with all the games on sale! We decided to pick up half of them and since then have played the one. The games are both by Jason Anarchy, who was a lovely guy to talk to as we looked through the games, asked questions in regards to them and even had a joke as we were paying and such.

I spotted Pretending To Grownup, a card game about doing adult things and scoring points through it. I spotted it through the artwork, which is by Megan McKay (Doodle For Food). She’s currently one of my favourite doodlers on the internet right now and I especially love her Dogs with Jobs sketches that she draws! Me and Dane have since played this game and it’s so much fun! It would definitely be more fun with friends to be honest with you, but considering just me and Dane played it, it was fab and I honestly can’t wait to play it more!

D: I was after a good party game, so as Nat had a look through the game she wanted I asked Jason what Drinking Quest was all about. He told me it was pretty much Dungeons & Dragons but with lots of drinking involved. This sounded like my sort of game so I knew I had to pick it up. I think I would have regretted it if I didn’t. Whilst I was paying for the games (it was £20 each or two for £35!) Jason wrote a little message and signed the lid of the game. As you can see he wrote, “It’s dangerous to go alone… Drink this” and drew a little drink as well as signed his name. Very cool! 😀

D: If there is one board game I really love it is definitely Zombies!!! I can’t remember where I bought this from but Nat has a feeling it was a spontaneous buy from Waterstones years ago. Since then I’ve wanted to buy the expansion packs and have added them to birthday, Christmas and anniversary gift ideas for years. It’s taken me going to the UK Games Expo to finally get at least 2 of them and from the actual creator of the game. He was lovely to chat to and even did us a cheap deal for these. Instead of £12 each he did them both for £20, bargain eh?! I regret not buying more in all fairness. Me and Nat played this game on our first evening together during our week off and we both forgot how hard this game can be, especially now we have more pieces and zombies to play with! We love this game however and cannot wait to play it with more people.

If there was a stand I really did enjoy shopping at during the convention it was at Oathsworn. I feel like this was the stand I spent the most time at as I was overwhelmed by how many miniatures there were, as well as how cute the little animals were. Everyone was looking at miniatures throughout the day, even though me and Dane struggled to find out D&D characters from one of our campaigns (I’m a Dragonborn bard and he’s a half goliath, half half-elf ranger) and had zero luck.

Instead I decided to pick up an animal miniature for any future campaigns me and Dane might go into or do in the future. NOW we’re working on some new characters for another campaign we’re doing with friends and my character for this will be a fennec fox rogue. I’m so excited to create my character for it already!

One of the stands I was rather excited to by from was TeeTurtle, a brand I’ve wanted t-shirts from for years! I actually have one t-shirt from them which is a Pokemon themed one with a Charmander sat in the a pocket on the chest. I picked this up on eBay years ago and still love it to this day.

We decided to take TeeTurtle up on their buy three t-shirts for £75 and get the fourth free. If you work this out you technically get all four t-shirts for less than £20 each. This may seem really expensive but TeeTurtle are an American brand and to ship to the UK costs a bomb! So we made sure to stock up at the convention whilst we had the chance. TeeTurtle were at the EGX convention in Birmingham September 2018 and I regret not grabbing any t-shirts there.

We decided to get two each and I regret not picking any t-shirts up earlier in the day. We picked these up a couple of hours before the convention was due to shut and the quantity of all sizes was very much small. Most of the sizes that me and Dane wanted had gone, which was such a shame. But this being said, we managed to grab some sizes in designs we wanted. The two on the left are Dane’s t-shirts and the two on the right are mine… Obviously the foxes are mine! 😛

Dane was actually going to buy me the Foxy Nerd design last year for Christmas but due to the prices for shipping etc he left it in the end.

The two designs on the bottom are both t-shirts we intend to wear during D&D session and we can’t wait to rock them this weekend! Honestly we could have bought so many t-shirts but due to most sizes being out of stock we didn’t get much choice of what we could buy. I hope to see them at another convention in the future so I can get the chance to pick up more designs.

This is a geeky beauty company that I am so happy to have discovered at the convention. Geeky Clean is a beauty company that sell bath bombs, soaps, bubble bars and more! I walked past the stand during the convention but didn’t think much at first. Dane went for a nose at a stand opposite so I decided to go and have a sniff of the goods at Geeky Clean. I fell in love with the bard scent, which is EXACTLY the same scent as Lush Snow Fairy. It’s a gorgeous bubblegum vanilla scent and I knew I had to pick some goods up with the scent. When I showed the soap to Dane he also really liked, so I made sure to pick it up. These weren’t expensive in my opinion (£4.00 or the soap and £4.50 for the bath bomb) and I’ll definitely be buying from the store again the future! When I’ve given these a go I will DEFINITELY be reviewing them on my blog.

D: We’ve been eyeing up plenty of miniatures and need a way of painting them. These brushes are pretty fancy and excellent quality feeling. I was going to go for the more expensive ones but as it’s going to be our first time painting miniatures I thought best not to just yet. Just need some paint now! I’m actually rather excited to help Nat bring her fennec fox miniature to life with some colour.

D: I want to start being the Dungeon Master with a couple of our friends that are new to Dungeons and Dragons and been looking to try and find a nice easy way to lay out the map for everyone. I have seen plenty of grid paper, laminated maps, DIY solutions and expensive pre-made maps but these seem like a good option. Hopefully, our group will be able to try them out soon! They cost me £30 and are by a company called Role 4 Initiative. I didn’t think £30 was a bad price considering the brand is American and it would have cost me a hell of a lot more to import from there.

This is the final item I picked up on the Saturday and it was actually from Collectormania which we were allowed free access to after 1pm due to attended UK Games Expo. I thought this was pretty awesome! Looking back I don’t fully know why I bought these lanyards… I used to use one on my house keys last year so it was easier to get them out of my handbag but after I was made a key holder in my old job I used said lanyard on my work key, only to have someone break it a few days later. I was gutted as it was a Deadpool lanyard. Now I’ve kind of replaced it with either a My Neighbour Totoro or Eeveelutions! I’m sure I’ll find a use for these sooner rather than later. 🙂

We actually went back for an hour on the Sunday just to buy a gaming table from Moby Geek! We actually saw this table on the Saturday and enquired about it and was offered it for £230 if we took it away that weekend. We decided against it and said we would order it at home. We fast changed our minds Saturday night/Sunday morning and ended up contacting the company to see if we could attend the event late Sunday to just come in to pay for the table and then take it away. They were more than happy with this and come 4pm I went into the event to pay, get Dane in and take away.

Since then we have not only used the table to play games, but to also eat on! The lid comes off of the table so that you can play games inside of the table – which is amazing. We are yet to give it a go without the lid but we are excited to start being able to have proper game nights with people.

So that was our (very expensive!) haul from the UK Games Expo! We really did enjoy ourselves and had a blast! We were shattered that evening however and couldn’t wait to be back at home and tucked up in bed.

I’m especially excited now to rock our D&D t-shirts to our next session, as well as use our new dice.

Did you attend the UK Games Expo? If so what did you pick up? Are you interested in board games, D&D etc? If so let me know which games you love playing, what your D&D character is like etc in the comments. I’d love to hear all about it!

Until next time, take care all and I hope you’re having a lovely week so far. 🙂