King’s Park, a large botanical gardens in my city, has just installed a little japanese garden and in celebration of this (as it is the middle of the wildflower season) they are hosting Hanamatsuri, the flower festival.

This morning Mira, Clara and I cooked up a japanese picnic and dressed in our kimono and yukata before heading off to the park. We met some friends there and enjoyed a lovely little picnic with katsu chicken, oyakudon, tempura, usyaki tamago, meatballs, teriyaki tofu, octopus frankfurts, salad and fruit! Mirai made baby radishes in to the cutest little toadstool shapes and clara mad an apple to match! I cut carrots up to look like sakura flowers and added them to the salad, it was a real feast!

After lunch we went to see the Ikebana demonstration, the artist was amazingly talented! My favourite of her works was a simple construction of three lilies, though they were all very beautiful! I would love to learn Ikebana some day. There was also origami and martial arts demonstrations, and kite flying!

Eugene was kind enough to take some photos of us by the japanese garden. It was fun dressing up as a japanese Princess for a day, though my kimono is very plain I like it because it is the colour of autumn leaves I really want a summer yukata now though!

I finally got on to a few projects I had been meaning to start today. This morning I made some gifts and wrote some letters, Its nice to be able to use up some of the cute stationary I have laying around (gives me an excuse to order more! ) I also took Abbie’s canopy to the post office. I think I will have to make another trip there tomorrow, I have a second batch of invites to send

When Mirai got home we did a little cleaning and went grocery shopping, we needed some food for Hanamatsuri this weekend and also to start baking for my party. I bought a couple of bags of cute little green apples which we are going to make in to yummy Toffee Apples with vanilla and cinnamon flavour! I think there will be a lot of cooking in the next couple of days!

I haven’t bought flowers in a little while but I cut the heads off my everlasting and filled a crystal bowl with them. They make a colourful, sweet smelling potpourri!

I have spent far too much time today playing on this japanese fashion site called Poupee Girl! It is fun to create your own little avatar and buy clothes for her , I also like seeing other people’s styles and wardrobes! I only wish there were some lolita clothes you could buy.

This afternoon I went shopping, but not for myself! I have so many presents to buy at this time of the year its exhausting and the christmas decorations are already up in all the stores, as if to remind me how fast that is approaching as well. I recieved my first rsvp slip back today, for my birthday party, although some people have also replied via email. I still have so much work to do preparing for the party.

If you create an account on Poupee Girl, please add me as a friend!

The Prince had a long day at work today, so Mirai and I decided to bring him dinner! We made katsu chicken (one of his favourites ) and went to meet him after work. Once dinner was finished we headed over to the arcade where some of our friends worked and spent the evening playing games.

They had the cutest little wind up toys! Mirai wanted the chicken and I wanted the panda so we played on the silly childrens games to win ‘tickets’ for them. Then we had a race! I’m sad to say my Panda lost, I still think he is cute though, with his rosy cheeks!

Oh, and there is a new article in the writing section, it is about Lolita Inspired Decor Please enjoy!

I am eating the most delicious mini-lemon meringue pie as I write this yummm. Today was rather relaxing, I spent the morning looking through some old gothic lolita bibles, I have a few sewing projects lined up and I was looking for some ideas. Its interesting how much the style has changed over the years, I look back at some of the past seasons and see a certain simplicity that I miss.

Speaking of nostalgic things, I watched Sleeping Beauty today, a live action version made in 1987 that I remember watching as a child. I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was around 6, and yet I still remember so much of it, even some of the songs! I like how they used some of Tchaikovsky’s score as well.

The costumes are pretty and I love the fairies, especially the Fairy of White! She is so cute, I’ve gleaned some more ideas for my Titania costume now. I loved Rosebud’s (Sleeping Beauty’s) room too, she has a pretty bed draped with pink curtains.

I’ve started work on a new section for this site, I hope to have it up by the end of the week. I hope you will like it!

This morning was spent very productively in tidying and re-arranging my chambers. I had to find a home for the lovely MA doll claire gave me, and I wanted to remove an old monitor and free up some shelf space. Its not completely finished yet, but definitely and improvement

The canopy has been up for a few weeks now, but I decided to take a photo to show Princess Abigail, who will be recieving a similar one shortly. I added some white organza roses and leaves and a big pink ribbon. Parfait and Éclair seem quite happy beneath it. I also rearranged my bookcase and now Marie Antoinette has her own little space, shared only with Milky and Fleur who are enjoying a little tea party.

In the afternoon Skwerlie and her husband joined us for a little visit and we all went off to Tranby House for tea. Mirai and I had devonshire tea and they had chocolate cake, all of which were delicious.

There is also a new Princess Lesson in the Writings page!

When you go up in to the hills the air is crisper, fresher, sweeter. Mirai and I got to enjoy the difference today when we visited Araluen botanic park, a special little place nestled in the hills above perth. We were worried it would rain but the sun shone for us all the time we were there giving us a chance to take lots of photos and explore.

The tulips were still in season, so brilliant and colourful. My favourite flowers were these little Snowbells though, I can just imagine them as fairy bonnets or cups. We went all over the park, jumped over steams, walked across bridges and ate icecream by the lake.

However, that wasn’t the only reason we were there. In a month or so’s time, my birthday party will be held there! The theme is a Midsummer Night’s Dream, inspired by Shakespeare’s magical, mischievous little comedy. I am going dressed as Titania and the Prince as Oberon. It will be staged in the lovely little lakeside grotto you can see in the gallery. I have been planning this for a little while now, its so exciting to finally see it coming together.

Clara invited the Prince and I to join her at the art gallery today for a very special exhibition. We got to wander through several rooms full of egyptian arterfacts brought over from the Louvre. They were truly amazing, the details of the artworks and the fascinating stories behind each piece.

There was a variety of exhibits, from huge sarcophagi and metres of papyrus to tiny jeweled and carved amulets. This is a picture of my favourite, its a Ba amulet from the Ptolemaic Period made of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli and turquoise. It was so tiny and yet detailed and the gold still shone brilliantly The thing I love best about egyptian art is the wing motifs, though I am also fond of the goddess Neith of whom I was happy to see a tiny statuette.

After the exhibition we all went for bubble tea and I had pudding flavour which was yummy! Tonight the Prince and I are going to a birthday celebration in honour of the Queen. We have a big present for her wrapped in pearl paper and a bunch of everlastings I picked on the way home. I hope she likes them!

I had no plans for today at all, except relaxing after my exciting night out to Cirque de Soleil, however Mirai came in to my room mid morning to announce that she was hosting an impromptu tea party and had invited Clara and Skwerlie over to join us. So, I quikly got dressed and ready and helped Mirai prepare the devonshire tea. Clara arrived looking beautiful in blue check and gave us a boquet of pink carnations which we put in a vase in the table, Mirai picked Steph up and she wore punk lolita!

We had tea, chatted and shared news and then spent the evening playing with our dolls, karaoke and looking at cute and pretty things on the internet. Clara had to go home but Steph stayed for dinner and we sat up late talking. It was really fun to have such a casual get together with no real planning involved.

I also had a chance today to take a photo of Claire’s beautiful gift! She is a Franklin Mint Marie Antoinette doll and she is just exquisite. I love her detailed outfit, with matching shoes and jewelry. Her coiffure with its tiny gems and feathers and her painted porcelain face which looks so true to the many paintings and busts I’ve seen. A thoughtful gift, thank you Claire!

I dare anyone to get bored at a Cirque du Soleil performance, I just don’t think its possible. There is so much to look at, so much colour and movement and sound you can emmerse yourself in it. Varekai is related to the story of Icarus, or rathe what happens after Icarus falls from the sky. I love the prevailing theme of wings and birds and clouds, there was even a great helium balloon! I did feel the story aspect to this performance lacked much depth though, I would like to have seen it incorporated a little more, rather than just something that ties the acts together. I thought to begin with there was a bit of a nature vs. technology theme going on, which was interesting but I may just have been imagining it.

The costumes were wonderful! Very colourful and vibrant and exotic. You could see influences from tropical fish, lizards, birds all made some how foreign and different. My favourites were the white “birds” with their gossamer feathers and the woman in the cobweb-like gown with a huge collar that cast her face in shadow, when she carried a lamp it lit up her sleeve like veined amber.

The vocalists were wonderful! I think they always pick such great singers, and I love the live element they give to the music score. The acrobats and performers were of course, amazing. I feel like they have tried to go back to the core basics with this show, demonstrating the pure skill and abilities of the performers without the need for showy props and settings to impress. It had a very natural feel to it.

My only dissapointment was the clowns, I found them a bit tacky. The last performance I saw, Alegria, had incorporated the clowns in such a beautiful way that they fitted the story and didn’t seem like a seperate act. There were two clowns like this in Varekai as well, but then there were another two clowns that seemed to have nothing to do with the show and were rather bawdy. Part of me was left wondering if they were some local duo that Cirque had invited to join the show for the evening.

Our seats were excellent too! We were in the second row so we got to see the details of the costumes and the expressions on the performers faces, its a magical experience and I was glad we had the chance to see it up close.

All in all, a wonderful evening’s entertainment. It transports you to another world.