Space Warriors

  Star Wars is all over the news right now, what with the upcoming film (are you excited?)  There was a local exhibit recently, which is still ongoing through January, called Taiwan Star Wars Fans Festival.  

  When I was little, Star Wars was one of the only movies we had, and we were allowed to watch one movie a day, so my sisters and I cycled through the three films day after day.  I also liked browsing Star Wars official guides at bookstores to see all the details and little backstories for ships, droids, and characters.  There is so much detail in the Star Wars universe!  Later, when the new episodes came out, I tried to watch them but really only made it through the first one ^^;  Can't say it was great, and the bits of the second and third weren't memorable either, so I am not sure I will bother with Force Awakens.

  Anyway, ANO was a part of the artist side of the exhibition so we attended for the media event/interview, of course ^u^v

  There was an artist exhibit, with international artists' interpretations of Star Wars characters and events, and a collectors' exhibit, which had many collectibles and merchandise-type displays.

From the collectors' side of the exhibit, some modified light sabers!

If I were a Jedi, I'd be a fluffy one

A Lolita Wedding

The day after Halloween one of our local Lolitas got married!  This was the first time I attended a wedding ceremony, so I was very excited ^3^

We had a table for Lolitas (note that the bride explicitly stated we should wear Lolita.  Do not wear Lolita to a wedding if it may detract from the bride and groom's day!)

There are not many photos, but I wanted to share my outfit from that day!

If you are ever invited to a wedding and given the OK to wear Lolita, some things to keep in mind are:

*Don't wear white or whatever the bride's dress color is

*Don't wear anything overly fancy that may look like a bridal dress, e.g., any of BABY's fancy dresses:

It may be mint, but it's still not OK

Colorful, but far too over the top for an attendee

 *Do wear a print if you can!  Printed dresses tend to look more casual and have less froufrou
*Keep accessories simple

These are just some of the things I thought about while choose my own coordinate ^u^
It was a lovely wedding, non of us stole the bride and groom's spotlight, but of course some of their family members still mistook us for cosplayers -_-

Anyway, on to the photos!
Candy bar and mask props the bride and groom used for their wedding photos:

Bonus points if you know this cartoon!  I only just recently began watching it ^_~

Cute and sweet (haha) candy bar

And a photo of us in front of their photo wall (I'm not sure the English term for this... it's just a place everybody takes a photo at and has the groom's and bride's names on it.)
 I love the paper flowers!

Overall, it was a great experience and very sweet because the bride and groom actually grew up together and went to the same school and had been dating for 10 years!!

This is Halloween!

Happy Belated Halloween!

This year we had a fun little meetup.  We went to a restaurant that went really over-the-top with decorations.  Halloween is a time for spooky goodness, and a lot of people (including the servers) were dressed up in gory costumes or full face paint.  There were of course some more fun superhero or goofy costumes, such as big pumpkins or cartoon characters.  Many children were dressed as classics, such as princesses, superheros, witches, Disney characters, etc.

And no, "sexy" Halloween is not a thing here, for which I am very glad.  Bring on the monsters!

Before heading over, Ano and I went to a pop-up market and took the above snap.  It wasn't a Halloween-themed market per se, as they were selling everything from vintage clothing to handmade faux sweets and retro dolls.  The place was decorated for Halloween though!

 

 The restaurant the Lolita meetup was at is called Le Ble d'Or.  Usually a pretty fancy place, it got SUPER spooky for Halloween!  Look at all these setups:

 Teddy got in on the action as well:

 The long hallway leading up to the host podium was covered in these slashed and bloody paintings:

 

 The entrance was redone to say Witch House:

 These three pumpkins had MOVING expressions!  The faces are not carved, but rather projected onto the pumpkins so they would sneer and laugh and periodically disappear.  Very cool effect!

 Teddy doing some Frankenstein-esque lab experiments

 

And me pretending to be a witch:

 The interior was quite dark, but we had a lot of fun taking photos!  We took "idol group" type shots on the stairs ^u^  We all took turns being in the center, so here is my center shot!

Idol group: Owlita

P.S. Yes, my costume was a bear.  I didn't have any idea what to be for Halloween so I just added bear ears.  It's like cheating ^3^  Teddy is already a bear so maybe her costume was a people?

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween!  If you've got costume photos to share, please do, because I love seeing cute and creative costumes ^u^

Belle's Library~ Monster Hunt

It's been a while since I've seen any good movies, but recently Ano and I watched a Chinese film (it has English subtitles) called 捉妖記/Monster Hunt.

While not a Lolita-themed film at all, I still recommend it!  It's a fantasy adventure about a world where monster hunters are no longer needed because they've caught all the monsters sneaking into the human world so effectively humans no longer remember the existence of monsters.  Now the monster queen is pregnant and the monster hunters are after her and her baby as she's crossed into the human world.

The computer graphics are really good!  The film is both funny and touching, and event includes a plot twist ;)

Trailer below:



And a promotional poster:

See?  Nice graphics!

Hollywood tends to dominate the movie market, but sometimes little gems like this pop out as well.  If you can find it in your area (or *cough*online*cough*) give it a watch!

Tiered Cake Skirts Meetup

Yesterday I woke up a bit late at 1PM. Ano was putting up new lights in my work studio! ^u^
We got ready for the meetup and had to take a taxi because we were late :P But we were still second to arrive

The theme was "tiered skirts," called "cake skirts"(蛋糕裙) in Chinese.

We met at a small cafe place called 七見櫻堂 that specialized in desserts. They were out of rice and beef when we went so many of their mains were unavailable -_-; I got a small platter with a quiche, a cake, and a brownie. Unfortunately, it turns out their "garden quiche" contained meat so I ended up eating only the sweets -_-;

The meetup itself was fun, and we had lots of chatting!

Lilith gave me and Ano the wedding cookies (喜餅) for their wedding and the wedding invitation (喜貼), which was very fancy-cut paper and pretty!  "喜" (xi) means "happiness" and is seen all over wedding-related terminology.  Often you will see this character doubled up to mean "double happiness" representing the bride and groom coming together.

Funny side story: Lilith said that for their wedding shoot her "casual wear" was a Lolita wedding dress, which is casual compared to the other two wedding dresses, but the photographer was like ._. and told her fiance that he didn't need to change out of his tux otherwise it'd look seriously mismatched if he was in jeans and a T-shirt :P

Me

It was super windy out yesterday! We took photos outside because the cafe was too small, and met a small, one-eyed dog that belonged next door. The dog was a grump and had no fear of cars, but was mean to people. A big truck was coming down the alley and the dog didn't move out of the way so Lilith had to try and move him out of the way and he snapped at her (didn't really bite her though). Same when motorbikes came through. I wonder how that dog manages not to get run over every day

Haotien asked us to kiss as he was taking the photo, so this is what happened

"I'm the boss"