Collective Toy Haul: Tsum Tsums #1

So I haven't really been collecting Tsum's for very long at all. As explained below, it started off when I heard from social media about these and I thought they were the cutest things I ever did see. I adore Disney, as you all should know by now, and I just needed them. My boyfriend got me Stitch and Winnie a few months ago and I fell in love with them. Unfortunately, because of a small child in the house, I have been hesitant to display them in case they were stolen or damaged, etc, but I do keep them beside my bed where they're very well looked after and cared for, I promise! 

I got the alien and the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts about a year ago...oh, wait, which means my boyfriend must have got them more then a year ago. Wow! Only collected six in over a year. All my money must have been going on food, obviously! Anyway, I went on a shopping trip for a few clothing items and came across them in the store and I just had to have them.

Bing Bong and Baymax were bought very recently when I went out to the same shopping centre, this time for college supplies (that haul is already up, shameless self promo). It was a hard choice, I wanted Cruella DeVil, Lucky, the ordinary dalmatian, and Anger (Inside Out). I might go back there a bit later on in the year but right now I have wasted too much money and am now on a strict finance plan! But these little guys were part of a great start to my year.  

So here they are! On the very top is Winnie from Winnie the Pooh and just underneath him to the left (ha) is Stitch from Lilo and Stitch who I got from my ex-boyfriend a few months ago, it's what really got me into the collection. Next to Stitch is one of the aliens which I probably should have got three but I didn't want to (waste of money, but it would be more accurate) from the Toy Story trilogy. Underneath it, from left to right, is Baymax from Big Hero 6 (a recent movie I watched and fucking loved), Red Queen/Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland (she has hearts on her undies!), and then Bing Bong from Inside Out. 

So yeah. I also recently learnt that Disney releases a new collection of Tsum Tsum's each month and I do wish my bank account would allow me to have them, but alas I can not! January's was The Lion King and they are oh so cute. I simply cannot wait for the Beauty and the Beast collection to come out. If they already have or you know when the date is, please let me know. Thank you for reading, I'll see you all next time. 

Birthday Haul Part Two || Shopping Trip (LUSH and Tsum's!)

I think I mentioned this a couple times before, but on Tuesday 18th August, I went on a shopping trip to Carmarthen by train. We left kind of late, around 11pm, and it was boiling hot, it felt like the waiting room to Hell and I imagine we were also the laughing stock of everyone in America...yeah, yeah, I get it, you'd be wearing jackets in our summer times!

Anyway, I thought I would show you the things I bought while I was there - which really wasn't that much, but I tried okay, I tried. I'm not good at spending money because I'm such an indecisive person!

The first place I went to was kind of a weird place to go, but it's Clintons, a card store. Reason why? Because of these beauties: 

Yes, this is the ass of the Queen of Hearts with her fancy underpants. 

Disney's Tsum Tsum's! I already have a couple, Winnie the Pooh and Stitch, that Austin my boyfriend got me a little while ago because Winnie the Pooh was my favourite TV program has a kid (and one of the movies I am obsessed with, still), Stitch is just adorable. I think everyone loves Stitch, you're crazy if you don't! 

It was really hard to pick the ones I wanted, I eventually settled for a Mini Queen of Hearts (from Alice in Wonderland/Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and Mini Alien (from the Toy Story series). I wanted all of them! They had Minnie Mouse, a badger, Bambi, Dumbo, Jessie, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Peas in a Pod...I'm going to have to go back there! They were £3.50 each. 

I was running out of pens and I also have a fountain pen at home, so the next things I got were these from Ryman's: 

The ink cartridges were their own brand, I think, and cost £1.99. I already have blue cartridges, but...this may sound weird, I just hate writing in blue ink and much prefer blue. Where I live, black ones seem to be non-existent so I just had to get some. It's a nice big bag for cheap, too. The pens are one of my favourites because of how smooth and easy to write with, the Bic Biro Original Crystal pens in black.Hopefully, I don't lose these, why do pens love to go missing?

These gems were from Waterstones, a fairly expensive but popular bookstore in the UK (and if it's in anywhere else in the world, I don't know about it). I think it was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's anniversary, as it has a whole two bookshelves dedicated to it. Different editions of the books and merchandise, mostly. I'm a huge Alice fan, and if I had the money, I would have bought it all. Instead, I got some small things that I knew I would use often and would mean more to me then adding yet another Alice book edition to my shelves for £25. I couldn't find any of these online, so sorry I cannot provide any links! The small Cheshire Cat badge was 99p, the bookmarks were £1.50 each. I think it's good that it has a little information of the artist on the back, it's pretty interesting if you ask me. They're also really hard, but still plastic/paper bookmarks, so I think that means they'll have a stronger durability (RIP past bookmarks, you're missed).

You can get your own VooDoo doll from the website, WatchoverVooDoo but I got her from TheCardFactory!

Anyway, these are cute little VooDoo dolls found at a card shop (which was also shared with a chocolate store, pretty cute?) and there was so many but this witch stood out to be the most. They're £3.99, she claims to give me confidence and etc, but I don't believe in magic like that even though I obviously really like Harry Potter. I just thought she would look cute hanging from my bag.

I then went to a charity store for a bit because my mother had wandered off somewhere and I couldn't find her. I had bought the movie editions of New Moon and Breaking Dawn (which I actually really like) and have been looking around for the other two for a while. The Twilight series is commonly found in charity stores, so it shouldn't be hard, it's just finding the first book that I'm having difficulty with. I can't remember if I liked the series or not, seeing as the first time I read it I was pretty young and under a stronger influence from a friend of mine who really loved Twilight. Actually, a couple of friends of mine. We'll see...when I find the first book! I don't think I ever finished Eclipse!

I also got some earphones with strawberries decorated on the earbud but they broke and I therefore don't have a photo of them - they were pretty cheap, I was expecting them to break, from a shop called Tiger in Carmarthen, Pembrokeshire. 

And (my personal favourite from this haul), my first experience with buying from LUSH (even if you have money, visit that website...the animation of different bath bombs being thrown into water is amazing). I've tried their Blackberry Bath Bomb before, and I liked it but I didn't love it. It smells more like blueberries, which is good, because I actually hate blackberries and till I looked it up just now I thought it was blueberries. It was slimy, and doesn't do anything to the bath, it's a pretty simple and boring bath bomb. But, the bath stuff I bought for myself for my first time buying experience was *drum roll please*:

If you can read the labels, you can see I got the Sex Bomb Bath Bomb (oh, the pun) and if you click on the link, it'll show you what happens to it when you put it into a bath - if you can't be bothered to click it, it basically just turns pink. And, for my vegan readers, it's 100% vegan! I had a bath with it tonight, it was so relaxing and I still smell so good. Usually, the scent wears out after I have a shower because well I guess shower gels weren't meant to be strong scented! The second one, I haven't used yet, but it's called a bubble bar, I think? It's Rose Jam I think, but it doesn't look like that, it's more like a rose shape...I think? Anyway, I'm heading to England tomorrow and I'm bringing it with me so I'll let you know how I like it! Probably a lot more because it creates bubbles!!

That's not all I got, though, worry not:

My mother bought me the shower jelly by them quite often when I was younger, I forgot to mention, it reminds me of the ocean even though it's lime-scented (and the label makes me chuckle!). It's called Woosh, another reason why it reminds of the ocean, and it smells so good even if it is a bit hard to use in the shower. It's just fun to use, I suppose!

The second is something new, not just for me but for LUSH itself. It's a Yuzu and Cocoa Shower Cream that smells just like chocolate oranges! (also, the women in the image is just WAY TOO MUCH...such a pet peeve of mine!). It's a small 100ml bottle, to test it out, but also it's because it's kind of expensive. The prices of which are listed below: 

Sex Bomb Bath Bomb - £3.35
Woosh Shower Jelly - 3.50
Rose Jam Bubbleroon - £3.75
Yuzu and Cocoa Shower Cream - £4.75

I really hoped you enjoyed reading, I'll see you in my next post - goodbye for now!

COQ: Anne Frank: Patience in Paper.

(sorry for the wrong post today, new kitten, she's hard work!)

Puffin Books, 2002. 

Page 6. 

"Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen year old schoolgirl. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest. 'Paper has more patience then people'...Yes, paper does have more patience, and since I'm not planning to let anyone else read this stiff-backed notebook grandly referred to as 'diary', unless I should ever find a real friend, it probably won't make a bit of difference. Now that I'm back to the point that promoted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don't have a friend"  

My added post-it note comment: 

"Apart from the fact that you are much wiser then your years and wrote such a respected historical document, that is" 

Yes, our second COQ post is another post about journalling, but Anne Frank's diary was, after all, a diary so of course the first few pages are going to be mostly a focus on that, a focus I find interesting. Although there's many a thing in this particular quote that I want to talk about. 

First of all, we'll talk about the obvious thing to be talked about, "Patience in Paper".  My reasoning for starting a journal was the same as many others. I wanted a friend. I wanted someone who I could talk to about my troubles, my desires, my deepest and innermost thoughts, someone who would not judge me for what I had written and someone, most importantly, who would listen. However, even though this became Anne's aim and was supposed to start of as her aim, it was like she knew deep down that diary would become something. Not become what it has been, she would never have known her fate, but become her wanted future novel "The Secret Annexe", perhaps that was in the back of her mind from day one but she quickly crossed off that thought and decided her diary was to be hers and hers only, she would never share all the information out, just her own selected parts. And, for this opinion, I feel like not everything was shared with her diary and she kept a lot of it to herself. Even from day one. But, paper has patience, what she wrote was something getting off her chest and I feel like we can relate on that.

Secondly, on Anne not having a friend and seeing her journal as a friend. Many would see this as weird, however I like to think that the people who do follow this blog or at least read some selected posts do a fair bit of reading themselves and therefore may possibly keep a journal. You would understand the satisfaction on keeping a journal, how it can keep one from going completely insane, and help us during a time of need. I would be lost without my journal and I am thankful I have both hands in which to use it. 

Anne Frank was wiser beyond her years, as many thirteen year olds would not understand this. I am not taking a stab at technology, I am quite a fan of it myself, but nowadays (because I can't refer to a time I haven't lived in) thirteen year olds are more focused on gaining the attention from others in negative ways, most commonly faking mental illness or doing something drastic, and are so glued to their phones and focused on themselves they don't take into account deep thoughts like this one. Of course, this is a generalized thought, you are not 'dumb' just because of your age. 

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy these, and I'll see you for my next one, cheerio!