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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Serpentine Pavilion

These pictures are from this years Serpentine Pavilion, which I went to with the lovely Bel absolutely WEEKS ago. You can read her post here as Bel posted about the experience mere hours after we went, meanwhile I’ve got a whole backlog of posts to sort out. Every year the Serpentine Gallery commissions an architect or artistic group to create their outdoor Pavilion. For this year, the Spanish architects SelgasCano created a tunnel-like pavilion,  with connected chambers decorated with holographic ribbons, iridescent fabrics and streamers.

I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of these large, colourful chamber-type exhibits. The feeling of atmospheric wonder and of being immersed in a colour or particular visual aesthetic is incredible. I was a little bit underwhelmed at the Pavilion, although I think it’s always difficult to marry a unique aesthetic with functionality, especially in a temporary structure. Perhaps if  it had been on a larger scale I would have felt more dazzled.

My personal favourite experiences have been Colourscape and the Luminaria projects created by Architects of Air, which I have seen multiple times. Earlier this year I also experienced a light tunnel in Japan and walking out into the light gardens and fields was a truly incredible moment which took my breath away – you can see some pictures here. Have you visited anything similar?

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Golden Hour

Aren’t sunsets wonderful? I wanted to share these photos from Prineville; many are just from my Aunts garden but there was such a gorgeous light in Prineville every day we were there. I tried to capture the beauty and stillness. The sunset seemed to last for hours and every evening we were drenched in this stunning golden light.

My family has had ties and connections to Oregon for about 5 generations now and on this trip my Aunt took me to visit certain key areas where ancestors of mine were born, married, buried. It’s strange to think that we live an entire life and eventually get distilled into a handful of places and sentences. “Hers is the fourth plot from the left. She liked playing the piano and was a big animal lover.” “His birth entry is on the second page. He had grey eyes and everybody mentioned his big smile.” We’re left to fill in the gaps with our imagination. Maybe when our generation is gone it will be different, and we’ll leave acres of mundane photos and comments strewn across the internet that our great-grandchildren will never read.

Cats in Cardiff

Dress – £5, Daisy Street (sale). Shoes – £6, New Look (sale). Cat face bag – £3, Camden Market. Bandana – £3, Hobo’s Vintage. Cardigan – £28, Rokit.

I had such an awesome time in Cardiff wandering around the cute shops and trying out all the local bars with my friends. I had to include a picture of the stunning arcade rooftop (above) and this beautiful light which reminded me of antlers (below). It was actually in the local Revolutions which if you don’t know is a chain of bars in the UK. The Revs in Clapham is quite grim but this one was so pretty inside, I was in complete shock!

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Here I am with my cat face bag, aka the bag that everyone has! I bought this bag about two years ago in Camden Market and over the last year or so I have seen it all over London and on a number of blogs also! I always feel a bit weird putting stuff in as you’re literally placing items in the cat’s head. I’m wearing a gold brooch from Vintage Zizou and a pink bandana from Hobo’s Vintage, both bought earlier that day! I rarely buy anything on impulse (unless it’s my shift at the charity shop…) but it’s always nice to get a souvenir or two from a trip away, right?

P.S. I’ve made a Facebook page for my blog! If you’d like to, please head over and give it a like :) www.facebook.com/tapeparadeblog

Sequinned Minnie.

Vest – H&M, £3.99. Jacket – vintage from Fat Faced Cat vintage, £10 (sale). Hot pants – ASOS, £8 (via unwanted gift). Minnie Mouse ears – Mind in Camden (charity shop), 50p.

.I feel like this outfit is textbook Laila. I’m really not into planning outfits and my general “going-out” look (or “going-on-stage” look) is basically put on whatever clothes are nearest, throw on something sparkly, add some novelty headwear and then hope for the best! In these pictures (taken after a show at VAULT) as well as some charity shop ears and my newest sequinned item I’m wearing my trusty studded white boots, and my vest and dance shorts from rehearsals earlier in the day. Add to that my leftover show make-up from that evenings performance (classy) and my black and red camera bag and that’s my whole thrown together after-party vibe!

.These photos are from the week of performances I did at VAULT and I promise this will be my last post on the festival! Essentially every night after our show the whole cast and crew would hang out at the venue (big underground labyrinth of tunnels and rooms) and party, so being easy to spot was a good thing amongst all the other people! I’m aware some people save sequins or vintage for special occasions but I’m not like that at all. I don’t want them to just hang on the wall for fear of damaging them; I want them to get a bit frayed from messy piggyback races and end up smelling of smoke and spilt drinks from too much jumping around on a crowded dance floor. Clothes are for living in and not just looking at after all. :) What does your textbook outfit look like?

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Denbies II

I originally wanted to call this “Denbies through the Seasons” but I’m not entirely sure my real life cynicism, sarcasm and constant irony really come through on this blog and was worried people might think I was being serious. Anyway, these photos are from Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. I first visited back on one of the first sunny days of the year, and it was lovely to visit again and see the changing colours of the leaves against the perennially golden fields.

If things look a little different, I’m trying out my new camera lens! This lens will take some getting used to as it has an incredibly shallow depth of field which is great for portraits as it focuses on one subject (i.e. notice how blurry and undefined the backgrounds are in the photos of me), but I do like taking shots that show detailed tableaus and this lens is not great for that (i.e. the banana sign is way clearer than the others, where as in previous posts those kind of flat detailed shots are very clear as I’m using my other lens – like this one).

I’m wearing my newish Orla Kiely coat (!!!) which was 65% off in their sample sale and then a further 35% off the marked sample sale price when I got to the till (isn’t that the best feeling ever?) and my new shoes which were £6 from New Look in the sale. One of the many perks of having massive feet is your size is always left over in the sales. I love mustard (both as a colour and a condiment) and have wanted a coat in mustard and gold for such a long time, so it was like a dream present to myself. Does anybody else have dream items in their mind which rarely seem to actually exist?
P.S. I’m going to be shutting down my Raccoon Circus Facebook page soon so please follow me here or here instead and I recently signed up to both LookBook and Pinterest, so you use those sites do let me know! 

Coat – Orla Kiely (sample sale), shoes – New Look (sale), dress – Miss Patina (sale), bag – ModCloth (gift), leggings – Tesco, socks – Monki

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My blog is now officially a month old as of Saturday! Thank you if you’ve been reading and especially following/commenting – it means a lot to me. Any feedback or suggestions let me know!