Liz Lisa Stuff (& Slow Cooking 1st Attempt)

A while ago, I bought three Liz Lisa pieces using From Japan and received them last weekend.

Piece #1: Liz Lisa Argyle Cardigan

I had been looking for this cardigan for quite a moment but couldn't find it. I love the bows as buttons and the camel color will look great with my brown/beige/white-colored sukapan.

Only thing is that the material feels like some wool, which makes it more susceptible to imperfections (and there are already slight ones, sadly.)


Piece #2: Liz Lisa Blue Floral Dress

I know, I also bought the same dress in pink, but I love its style so much I've been wanting to own the three colors (so yes, I do plan on buying the white one once I catch one.) Lol I definitely have zero self-control for this dress.

Piece #3: Liz Lisa x My Melody Piano Pattern Dress
I'm about one year late, but I got my hands on a Liz Lisa x My Melody collab dress. I ordered it from TokyoKawaiiLife (TKL) in April but received it only recently.

My Melody patterns are very cute

I really wasn't fond of the pink color of the dress at first, which uncannily reminded me of Pepto-Bismol (and I wasn't interested in the white version) :

source

I do admit though I really liked the bust area with the ribbons. Yet I could not get over that shade of pink.

A couple of months passed by after the release of the dress, and I started to see a certain number of them being sold on Japanese flea markets. I tend to think this is a bad sign—there are some items that no matter how good they look, generally fit bad on anyone's body—but the more I saw the dress, the more I came to like it. Besides, various pictures of the dress on the Internet showed a nice soft pink colour. Then one day, TKL lowered the price of the dress and I was sold.

I received the dress and was relieved to see that it is a much softer pink than what is shown on TKL. As for the fit, well, it's not the best, and because of one thing: the pleats on the bust part make it look wack on me. I'll post a picture when I'll try it on*, but it just doesn't look good. I think it would look better on a girl with a smaller bust (even though I highly believe I am part of that demographic.) Anyhow I'm presently keeping the tag on the dress while pondering over the fit issue...

*there's a try on picture of me with the OP in this post.

"Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Mexican Quinoa"
My parents graciously bought me a slow-cooker last week and I used it for the first time yesterday (yes, I'm aware I should stop merging fashion and food posts together because it's a weird combination.) I tried this quinoa dish because it seemed there were lots of nutritious ingredients in it.

13.17: just starting to slow-cook

16.29: after giving it a stir

At that point, it was starting to smell really good in the apartment.

18.19: after another stir

I left it slow-cooking for approximately 7 hours on low. As for the taste, it's great. And I personally find it tastes even better when microwaved (in some cases I prefer leftovers to fresh-made food.)

However, I didn't expect the dish to be that sweet (which, in retrospect, was predictable since there are sweet potatoes and corn...) But I still felt like a chef God when I actually only tossed in the ingredients (except the potatoes and the onion that needed to be sliced and chopped prior to) and let the slow-cooker do all the work. In all seriousness, this may be the most (succeeded) balanced meal I've "cooked" in my entire life... I will definitely look for more slow-cooking recipes to try, since this way of cooking is rather fun and very practical.

Finally, with regards to my summer so far... well, following my one-week holiday in June, I've been working. And aside from cleaning and doing my laundry, I'm not doing anything mind-blowing during the weekends, although I do try to take walks, learn to cook more and prioritize reading books instead of looking at my phone—not a success so far. By the way, I'm currently reading for the second time Annabelle by Marie Laberge and I love it. I read it once when I was younger but never grasped the deepness of the story (I'm not sure if I do either today but anyway.)
Truth is though, I do enjoy not doing anything exciting during the weekends... it's a wonderful feeling compared to how I felt when I was studying... as much as I feel I'm currently wasting relevant time I could use to do more meaningful and/or useful stuff.

Quebec City and Liz Lisa Clothes

I've been meaning to write on here earlier (I was on holidays from June 18th to June 22nd.) However, I don't know whether it was out of laziness or because the week was just very stressful, but I couldn't bring myself to blog. Anyway, today I'm posting some pictures of a short unprompted two-day trip in Quebec City I did with my mother and my sister last weekend.  We slept at Clarendon Hotel for its proximity with Old Quebec (actually it's localized in there).

Note: the following pictures were taken only on day 1, none were taken on day 2.

When we arrived in Old Quebec, we headed right to Hotel Château Frontenac to walk on Terrasse Dufferin.

(My OCD tendencies make me want to slightly rotate

the picture so it doesn't tilt on the left anymore.)

View from Terrasse Dufferin

A little street in Old Quebec... forgot its name.

Favorite picture. Love the old-fashioned style

and the fact that few people photobombed it.

We went to Sapristi to eat supper.

View from our table

First time eating arancini, tastes amazing.

Ingredients are olive oil, tomatoes, chorizo,

kalamata olives, pine nuts, some greens.

Terrasse Dufferin around 8 o'clock

(we had climbed up a few stairs.)

Also, here are two new pieces I got from Mercari via Japonica Market.

First piece is a Liz Lisa pink floral dress. I was looking for the white one but didn't find any that checked all of the boxes (condition, price, domestic shipping).

The same dress below, albeit in pink, still had its tag and the price was affordable, so I decided to buy it (regardless of the color) and I don't regret it.

I don't know why the color looks whiter here.

The second piece I got is a Liz Lisa white tweed sukapan. I first saw it last spring on berri-doll's blog and I liked the details and material, although the price put me off. I was glad to find it recently on Mercari for a much lower price.

I'm really satisfied with the quality of the sukapan and it fits better than expected. To see a try on picture, you'll have to head over to my Lookbook. I think this website will be the one where I'll post my outfit pictures in the future.

Thanks for reading. :)

Cooking Reattempt & First Lodispotto Item

Last week's cooking fail didn't prevent me from giving another go at another recipe... this time, one rather "safe" I had previously made years ago.

The recipe is "Rice, Broccoli 'n Cheese Cups" from Kraft. It's really simple and you can easily eyeball the ingredients, so it's pretty practical.

I kinda went overboard with the eyeballing thing and cooked a gigantic amount of rice... which consequently made me add 6 eggs to smoothen the consistency.

Before cooking

After cooking

I didn't expect them shrinking that much (must be the cheese and broccoli), so I was rather surprised when I took them out of the oven. The rice on top of the cups was also a bit overcooked so it was crunchy, maybe a little too much. Since that was only the first batch, I adjusted the amount in each cup as well as the cooking time for the following ones.

The recipe uses extremely simple ingredients and no spices at all (I suppose you can surely add what you want though), which results in a not-so-exceptional taste, but it's still edible and I find it nice to eat. In total, I made 42 cups.

I'm going off topic now to post pictures of the new (secondhand) Lodispotto cardigan I ordered with JaponicaMarket. I had been stalking this cardigan long ago, before Christmas, but in pink. The price was in the 9000 yen or something, so I never gave in and one day both colors (black and pink) got sold out.

I found it in black a couple of weeks ago on Mercari for a much more affordable price (+ good condition) and was glad I could snatch it before someone else.

Item name: ミルフィーユバイカラーニット (you can see it there in Lodispotto's A2017 collection)

It's not pink, but I eventually grew fond of both colors since I liked the cardigan so much. I do plan to buy the pink one once I spot it somewhere though.

The reason why I try to avoid black clothes is because lint looks more visible as you can see in the above picture. However, I make exceptions for certain pieces of clothing...

Sleeves have a mesh layer

It's such an adorable cardigan that looks as lovely when worn, whether with a dress or a high-waisted skirt.

This being said, I discovered Lodispotto a while ago and fell in love with their collection mille fille closet. Although their clothes are pricey and I doubt I'll be buying brand new from their website (but we never know), I'm still looking forward for their next creations.

I'm sorry, this post feels a tad monotonous. I could give a better description of the Lodispotto cardigan, yet I don't feel like it. Actually, I feel a little bit sad tonight. Not unusual, but I do suspect that the soon-to-be-over three-day weekend is part of the reason behind my low mood.

Thanks.

The Bobon21 Shoe Saga Goes on & Cooking Fail

It is currently 21.03 p.m. and I feel tired. My day was quite unproductive and had some fails. I really want to go lay in my bed, but prefer to shoot this post here first.

Today, on a sunny Saturday morning, I wore my Bobon21 low heels for the first time. I was very excited since I had been anticipating this moment for a while. Turns out they hurt like crazy. I did mention in my last post that the shoe vamp felt a little tight and manifested disappointment over the fact that I couldn't wear socks with them. Well, not only wearing socks is impossible, but walking in them isn't really do-able either (I mean if you don't mind feeling pain -gradually increasing- each time you make a step, I imagine you can walk in them all day long).

After two hours running errands, my feet looked like this.

It doesn't look that bad, but it really hurt.

Because the pain was too distracting, I had to return to my apartment and forget about errands I still had to do in the area (I was downtown).

My father works in a shoe repair, therefore my mother advised me to hand them to him, and he'll try to make them bigger/larger—I'm not sure what exactly. But there's already enough space lengthwise. Anyway.

As for my cooking fail. Three years ago, I bought a recipe book to encourage an organization that offers various services to help its local community (but also because the recipes look delicious). Sadly, I had never tried a single one until this afternoon. I "cooked" a punjabi chole from India (chickpea curry).

I can't justify why I decided to add a can of potatoes even though the recipe didn't ask for potatoes. I also added three tomatoes while the recipe asked for two. Lastly, I used only one can of chickpeas instead of two as shown in the picture.

It smelled really good. Only, the saucepan I used was too small (it was the only one I had). I eventually had to waste some liquid in the sink, unfortunately.

Showing the mess around.

The taste was strangely very bland, even after I added a substantial amount of salt. There's probably something I did wrong, I admit I'm not far from being a lost cause when it comes to cooking.

I was very disappointed in how the final result turned out and in myself. Cooking takes time and makes your kitchen dirty and in the end, it wasn't worth the fuss.

Hope tomorrow will be a better day. I'm off now.

Qing Hua Dumpling, Chinatown, Forever 21

Yesterday, my sister invited me to eat dumplings (she stayed at my place during the weekend because she had a job-related conference in Montreal). We went to Qing Hua Dumpling, near metro Concordia.

I remember going there with her in 2015 for my birthday, but I don't remember clearly how I thought the dumplings were nor do I even remember what I ordered... I, however, do recall waiting an unusually long time for our dumplings...

There weren't a lot of people when we arrived, so we were seated right away. I felt the place was less packed than when we went in 2015, which was nice.

Our table

My sister ordered beef and coriander dumplings and I ordered pork and coriander. I was a bit disappointed because the server asked my sister whether she wanted her dumplings fried or steamed, but didn't ask me (and assumed I wanted mine steamed), while in reality, I would have liked them fried. I know I should have just told the server I actually wanted my dumplings fried, but I was too shy/embarrassed. I don't mean to say the service stinks, just want to mention it because it made me sad a little right at the beginning. Speaking of the service, I thought it was great. The dumplings arrived faster than last time (took approx. 8-10 minutes). Our glasses of water were also often refilled. Staff was courteous.

I don't remember my sister's, but my dumplings arrived all stuck together. It was really annoying. Attempting to use my chopsticks to unstick the dumplings from one another was far from being a success. The skin would most of the time peel out, but maybe I didn't have the right "technique"?

Sorry for this repulsive picture, but eating each of my dumplings looked somewhat like the above—a total mess. I would get sauce everywhere on my face and turned two napkins completely orange. Part of it is because I am simply incompetent at eating with chopsticks, but also because I couldn't shove a full dumpling into my mouth. Some dumplings can be eaten in a couple of bites, but this one is the kind of juicy dumpling that has broth in it. (T▽T)

Although the taste wasn't exceptional (after all, it was pork and coriander), the dumplings tasted really good. I ate them all and also ate two of my sister's. But in one of my sister's dumpling, there was way too much coriander, it looked like the mixture beef-coriander had been unevenly distributed (I don't know if the one I bit into was an exception or not).

The sauce was okay but it tasted a little bland. I think it's because there weren't enough pepper flakes, most of it was just oil.

PC: my sister

We then headed to Chinatown and wanted to buy some Chinese pastries, but when we got there, there weren't any of the ones I like left.
However, I finally managed to buy 3:15pm Milk tea. It is my former Taiwanese language partner who introduced it to me back in 2013. I strongly recommend this flavor even though it doesn't taste like tea (it's really soft & sweet and not bitter as tea is IMO). For about one year, I had been going multiple times at this supermarket that usually sells it, but they never had the milk tea flavor. One day I bought the oolong one, but I really didn't like the taste.

Hello Kitty soy sauce. Very cute, isn't it?

I've seen it on Pinterest and didn't think I'd actually see it in Montreal.

Earlier during the day, I also had bought this dress at Forever 21. I had a credit since I had previously bought an item and wanted to return it—only to learn that the store didn't accept returns (I was surprised since it's the first store I had come across that didn't issue refunds).

The dress is available here on the website. Gingham seems to be really popular this season and I love this pattern, so I was happy to find it. I also bought a white shirt but didn't take a picture with it.

You can see that I'm wearing my Bobon21 low heels, in size 36. I know I wrote a post a couple of months ago about my disappointment with Bobon21 high heels being too big (size 36). Well, I ordered a size 35 earlier this year (low heels this time) and they were too small. -_- Thing is, the high heels seem bigger than the low heels (in the same size), not much in terms of the shoe sole, but more the shoe vamp that is tighter. Because of this, I can't even wear socks with the low heels. x_x Nevertheless, they still look really cute...

Sporadic Life Update & Liz Lisa Sailor Dress in Blue

I don't often use this place to share more personal details in my life, but since these three changes are rather big, I do wish to mention them here. And when I'll go back to this article in a few months or in a few years, it'll be great to remember how the beginning of the year 2018 was a peculiar one that had brought significant changes.

In two weeks, I will finally be graduating (for the second time) from university. I have this final paper to give which I've almost finished writing (needs some last editing and revising) and I'll be done with school (for good, or at least for a good while). This is one of the reasons why I haven't written something here for more than one month, although I did have some content to write about. Thing is, I still had time to blog even when I was in the middle of the process of writing this paper, but I don't enjoy writing here while being conscious of the schoolwork I need to do.
Anyway, it's a strange feeling talking about graduating when I'm reminiscing about the time I started this blog, which was in the summer of 2013. That time, I was entering university in August for the first time. My bachelor was in East Asian Studies, by the way.

Additionally, I started working almost two months ago, and it's harder than I imagined... The nature of the work requires much more analyzing and reading than I expected. It's also hard to show how I can contribute to the organization when I have zero (relevant) work experience. Basically, it's been really stressful and depressing since I started (not really a good sign nor encouraging I know). I would like to be more autonomous, but I feel I'm not experienced enough and that would just make me even more anxious and most likely result in some really poor quality work.
While I've been doing my best to learn and gain experience, I've also told myself that it's not the end of the world (although still regretful) if it doesn't work out in the end.

Finally, I officially moved into my first apartment to be closer to my workplace. It's okay, but I miss the proximity of downtown Montreal where I used to live (I didn't live in the downtown area but if I took the subway, getting there was fast thus convenient).

I could go on about my fears and distress, but I'll end this personal segment here.

---

So a couple of weeks ago, I bought the Liz Lisa sailor dress in blue. I already owned the pink one and it was my favorite out of the three colors (the dress also exists in brown/beige).
I initially didn't really like the dress in blue, and pink was my favorite, but gradually, my mind changed and I started liking the blue one also... The purchase was, however, totally unexpected as I was casually browsing Liz Lisa items on eBay when I saw it for sale.
There weren't a lot of details given on the dress condition other than "really good", which seemed suspicious, but I still impulse bought it (and shortly after sent a message to the seller to ask if the dress had any dirt or damage -- should have been asked before buying I know, but I was too worried someone would buy it while I'd still be waiting for the seller's response.)

I received the dress last week, and I was really impressed with its condition. I don't know whether it's because the dress has truly not been worn a lot, or it's just Liz Lisa quality that makes it look flawless even though it's secondhand.

It's my second dress in the same model, but I'm still in awe of the details and the soft plaid.

The fit is also lovely. It fits even better than the pink I already have (which is a little sad because I also love the pink.) I'm incredibly satisfied with this purchase.

---

This weekend, I also dyed my hair for the third time with this natural hair dye (well, my mom did):

You can see from the price sticker in the upper right corner that it's not the cheapest hair dye (yet still cheaper than at the salon), but I've been loving it since I used it for the first time—approximately one year ago.

Unlike the regular hair dyes I originally used to dye my hair with, this one doesn't make my hair feel thinner nor make the ends of my hair brittle.

I buy this dye at a naturist shop, but I'm certain you can find it elsewhere also.

Before (excuse my greasy hair)

Uh, I don't have an After picture right now because I forgot to ask my mom to take one... I'll post one once I have one... sorry.

As you can see from the picture above, I recently cut the ends of my hair. Back in January, my hair was past my butt, but the ends were what they call "fairytale ends" and it was atrocious.

Taken back in December

You can see korilakkuma's face through my hair—unbelievable.

I despised how my ends looked in the above picture but I absolutely didn't want to shorten my hair by cutting them. I eventually got sick of it and therefore, chopped the ends.

My hair is shorter now, but the ends are thicker, which all in all looks much healthier. Now I'm eager for my hair to grow out so there isn't any hint of past brown dyes and bleaches left anymore. Weird to say this considering that until October 2016, I was desperately striving to have blond hair...

Thanks for reading.