Christmas Presents

The real point of Christmas is the amazing times you share with friends and family, and I am so grateful I had so many wonderful times which I have already documented in detail. But… the presents aren’t half bad either! My friends and I are quite big on presents but this year my parents and I exchanged gifts as well, which was unexpected but really nice. I’ve felt incredibly grateful integrating these new and lovely items into my life so I hope it doesn’t seem vulgar of me to share them.

Gifts From Friends

Cute twine, a half-head cat mask (I’ll have to share photos of the completed mask!), adorable notebooks and the biggest most beautiful book of Peanuts comics I’ve ever seen. My pals know me well. This is actually just a selection of the gifts my wonderful friends gave me: other gifts included an emoji cushion, a beautiful blue and red dress, afternoon tea, Prosecco, an adopted zebra (!!!), a Peanuts coffee pot, beer pong and tickets to a show. Pretty perfectly Laila. <3

The chocolates are actually from my students; I also received a chocolate Santa, perfume and tickets to a play from some of my other pupils. It sounds cheesy as teaching is it’s own reward, but it’s also a job that requires a lot of extra work around the edges when you’re not technically “at work”. It’s certainly not expected, and so I always feel so much gratitude to the pupils who give cards and presents to acknowledge this at the end of the year.


Gifts From Parents – Sailor Moon

It was only a few weeks ago that I mentioned my deep and unfaltering love for Sailor Moon. This year my Mum came through with the absolute motherlode of Sailor Moon goodies! We’re not big on presents in my family so to receive so many things which were all so perfectly suited to me was wonderful. Above you can see the Sailor Moon accessory set (mirror, bag and hair tie), earrings, locket necklace and cleaning cloth – SO perfect for glasses wearers like me. My Dad gave me a new camera lens which is perfect for close-up images such as the ones in this post…!

Gifts from Family

These socks are from my Mum and they are super comfy! My Auntie gave me this beautiful gold scarf and the glittery golden bow is from a cousin. I wear something in my hair every day and the gold bow was/is perfect over the festive season. I also received a giftcard from my Auntie which I’ve yet to spend – I’m terrible at remembering to use up gift vouchers so I’ll need to remind myself.

So there we go! I feel so incredibly lucky to have been given so many lovely things! What did you get for Christmas this year?

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Sakura at Yoyogi Park

Hello! I’m so, so happy I can finally share with you my photos and thoughts from Japan! I’ve spent the last month with a dead laptop – huge and endless thanks go to this guy for extracting the contents, replacing the hard drive, re-installing everything and saving me multiple and expensive trips to the Genius bar!

I went to Tokyo last month – we timed it for the world-famous Sakura festivals. The sakura last for just a couple of weeks – a few days where the blossoms are at peak bloom, with a couple of days either side of buds appearing and shedding. We arrived just as the blooms were opening and caught the full wonder of the season – from seeing the tiny unfurled buds everywhere and anticipating the first full trees to blossom, to the wonderful days (and it was really just a couple of days) where we woke up and all the trees were in full bloom, not a single petal out of place. By the time we left they were starting to shed – the falling petals looked like soft snow and carpeted the roads in baby pink velvet.

These pictures are predominantly from Yoyogi Park. There’s something about the pastel pink against the clear blue sky that just seemed so whimsical and dreamlike to me – like the parks and roads had been dusted with candyfloss and pastel clouds. I’m already feeling wistful about returning. More from Japan very soon – yay!

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Dress of dreams

We were wandering around Cardiff when one of my friends noticed a shop selling brightly coloured sequin maxi dresses and said “Laila, your dream shop is here!”. I ran inside only to discover the most BEAUTIFUL dress I have ever seen nestled on the back wall. Peachy satin corset, sequinned lace flowers, frilly bows and diamnate ruffles leading into a lengthy feathered train; what more could any self-respecting fairy princess want?! The very friendly shop assistant told us it was the only one of it’s kind and had never been tried on. I pretty much leapt into it when I found out it was in my size and she kindly let me cavort around in it long enough for all the boys to get bored and head to the bike shop next door.

I always loved fairies and princesses and the bigger and more whimsical the better! My Pinterest board of dreamy clothes has a lot of frilly fantasy items and my love for princess clothing has led me to amass quite the collection of second hand wedding dresses over the years (sadly no groom in sight) and probably a few more tiaras than is necessary for a freelance musician and volunteer charity worker. Sadly I didn’t have a spare £365 to add this particular number to my collection, but rest assured as soon as I can I’ll be back to snap it up for future gigs, carnival parades and midnight dances with charming members of fairy royalty… well, I can dream right?

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