Having taken some dolls out earlier last week to High Park for a traditional hanami outing, wearing pretty spring-themed yukata, I wanted to take some girls out for a more casual day in the park.

This is one of my favourite photos of the day – Rin, Serena, nkei’s Summer and MrCool’s Sawako relaxing in a beautiful sakura tree.

Summer is a DD Rise Kujikawa, but nkei has styled her so beautifully in soft pastel greens that she is like a beautiful faerie!

Summer’s little sister, Aiko, came out to say hello too. Her sweet face and endearing eyes are so adorable.

Just look at that little face!

MrCool brought his new girl with him. She’s going to be customized into Sawako Kuronuma eventually, but for now she’s nameless >_<”

CenturyStory brought Primula in this flowing green gown. It made me think of seductive character “The Lady in the Green Kirtle” in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis.

She’s has such a mysterious, dangerous expression here.

Hubby and I couldn’t agree on who to bring with us, so to be fair we each picked one girl.

Rin is totally his princess, and it’s easy to see why. She looks absolutely adorable with her little cat ears.

I had a sentimental reason for bringing Serena out with me. A year ago, I was in Tokyo at Dolpa and it was the last time that I saw my dear friend D.ark. I can’t believe it’s been a year that she’s been gone. I wanted to bring Serena because I know that D.ark would have loved to see her girl out on such a lovely day.

For a bit of fun – how many Dollfie Dreams can we fit into the tree?
Five?

Six!

Amazing!

Afterwards a few of us went out to Joon’s Korean Restaurant for dinner. It was a fun-filled day, which is part of the spirit of what going out for hanami is about!

Kevin was a bit bummed that we didn’t get some photos of the dolls in wa-loli dresses (which is a mash-up of Lolita and traditional kimono/ yukata) so hopefully the weather will hold out and we can come back to the park later in the week for more pictures!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

Serena and Rin hanging out under a parasol while the other girls are busy posing.

Today Rin and Serena were having a relaxed afternoon playing with Médée. So many plushies!

Suddenly Gabi appeared out of nowhere with a big package that the postman just delivered! Angry Bunny was suspicious so he came out to investigate too.

Gabi whipped open the box and peeled back the protective layer of bubble wrap to check out what was inside. I recognize that distinctive yellow box!

Gabi: “Let’s get this big yellow box upright so that we can have a proper look!”

Peering out from the little window of the big yellow box is Dollfie Dream Aoko Aozaki! She was a limited release at the Volks Doll Party 28 in Tokyo last December.

Rin and Gabi helped ease Aoko out of her box. Angy Bunny is on guard to make sure there’s no doll nudity!

Here’s the first peek at Aoko’s lovely face. She has a very mature looking sculpt, very beautiful blue eyes and a hint of a neko-mouth! How cute!

Aoko: “Stop staring and help me out of here! It’s stifling inside here!”

Here she is out of the box now. I had a quick look over to make sure that everything was in order: arms, legs, feet, and I checked her for any cracks in the elbows. I also installed some aluminum reinforcement pieces from CoolCat as a preventative measure against cracking.

Let’s have a look at the other items that were also inside her box. Aoko doesn’t come with a lot of “stuff” like some other DD girls. She comes with her booklet, her wig, white down coat, brown turtleneck, red dress, brown stockings, panties and her boots.

None of the clothing items are lined, and I have heard from other owners that her stockings can stain so I used a bodystocking underneath her outfit to protect her. The inside and inner soles on the boots are in white, however the zipper is brown so if any of you want to use them alone, put some socks on to protect her heels and back of her legs.

It’s a bit too warm for Aoko to wear her big down coat, so here she is without it – she looks very vibrant and beautiful.

Her wig has a bit of a golden glint to it, and her face is gorgeous!

From the moment the preview photos of her were posted online, people commented how similar her face was to the HDD-07 sculpt – so of course I had to put them side by side. What do you think? There are definite similarities but aside from the obvious difference in the mouth shape, the bridge of Aoko’s nose is taller and the tear duct area is more defined.

Thank you for joining me in welcoming this lovely new girl to my doll family! I’ve been patiently awaiting her arrival for several months now, but I’m very happy to be able to share her with all of you!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

Bubba trying to help unpack Aoko -

Hi everyone! I caught a little cold right after Anime North (a.k.a. “post-con plague”), and have been super busy since so I apologize for this late convention write-up! Machiko and I arrived at the convention early Friday afternoon to pick up our badges, check into our hotel and move our luggage inside and that process took longer than we planned. We then went over to the convention center to visit Whitefrosty in the Crafter’s Corner, and Machiko set up a few little things to sell since they were sharing the table.

Afterward, I met up with Kevin and we walked across to the Crowne Plaza hotel to check out the Doll North events. It was awesome to see the marketplace area completely dedicated to dolls, as well as a room that was for panels, games, and workshop. PlasticFantastic and I presented a couple of panels on Dollfie Dreams and it was great to see some new faces, as well as a few familiar ones too! We had some audience members from as far away as Ottawa, Edmonton and Buffalo! Thank you to those of you that came to the panel! Here’s a lovely group shot of the lovely DD’s that were out for the evening!

Meo brought his beautiful Sasara out, and here she is serenading everyone on her harp.

Photo by: FukamineRiko (Mahoro)

There was also a doll meetup on Sunday morning – and here’s a cute group shot that Mahoro snapped. I couldn’t attend since I was helping out at another event.

Photo by: FukamineRiko (Mahoro)

I wish I could say I did exciting things like go to the rave, or watching anime all night, but my Friday & Saturday nights were spent doing last minute prep for the maid café (like ironing aprons!) over a few drinks in our hotel room! LOL

Saturday it was an early start to get the Terrace Room of the Doubletree Hotel set up for Café Delish. We had a few extra support staff this year, which was amazing and it really helped make the behind the scenes experience run much smoother! Of course the stars of the café are our wonderful cast of meidos and we had a record 14 lovely girls this year!

Photo credit: SolarTempest

If you count, there are only 13 in that photo – here’s the missing meido, the lovely Keiko (right) posing here with the adorable Akane!

It’s a rare sight to have our Head Maid Yumi helping out to serve guests since she’s usually helping to oversee the operations but here she is with a couple of lucky guests. The fruit on the 3-tiered stand looks super yummY!

This year was another smashing success! We sold out all the seating in record time and had a lot of fun! Here I am with a few of my brood of little meidos ♥

After the café finished, the maids headed over to the convention center to take some photos in the Puri♥Meido photobooth! Look at how many maids are on duty!

Total “moe” overload!

Special thanks to AlphaZ for taking all these awesome café pictures!

As if one fun-filled day wasn’t enough, this year we debuted the AkibaSt✮r Cosplay Cafe on Sunday and the cosplay theme was AKB0048! We had sweet Tomochin, spunky Mayuyu, mysterious Yuuko, charismatic Takamina and enigmatic Acchan

The atmosphere of this café was more casual than tne Maid Café, and guests were free to come and go as they pleased, and the Idols mingled with the guests for photos and also performed a dance and played a Jankenpon battle! Each table was asked to cheer and support one of the Idols, and the winner’s table got a special tasty treat!

Bosu and I got put to work as food prep staff 0__0″

There were 5 food items that were themed around an Idol’s character point.

The freshly made strawberry shortcake was so popular that it sold out very quickly!

If any of you came to either of our events and have photos to share, please send them to cafedelish [at] gmail.com! Thank you for your support!

I had an awesome, but very busy, weekend at Anime North! I can’t wait until next year!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra): A few more photos from the weekend –

Machiko & Whitefrosty’s booth at the Crafter’s Corner (with Médée supervising from above!)

Takamina and Yuuko playing with a baby snake -

Mayuyu and Miku!

Immediately after all the fun and crazy antics of Anime North, I went out for afternoon tea with PlasticFantastic, Meo, Machiko, AlphaZ and our friend Mahoro who was visiting us from Edmonton! Since this was rather improptu, there were only a few dollies in attendance. I brought Micaela (DD Aoko) out on her first outing, and Mahoro brought his custom Miku and a couple of his cute little girls: Mimi & Hanako.

Warning – lots of delicious food photos!
We went to one of my favourite spots in Toronto – the Red Tea Box and ordered a mix of tea bentos and regular menu items. This is the Assam Tonganagoan Tea Feature Bento – with mango-raspberry mousse almond cake; Lime-coconut Tart; Spiced shrimp, pumpkin & coconut crispy triangles; tilapia cakes with tumeric cauliflower pickles, sesame and peanuts.

Mahoro ordered the Southeast Asian Tea Bento – with Kaffir lime tartlets w/ mango curd; Matcha cheesecake; Spiced salmon burgers with pineapple & herb salsa; Pulled chicken & mushroom taro croquettes. (The glass with the herbs in it is their house lemonade – also delicious!)

AlphaZ ordered the Mad Hatters Tea Bento served with sandwiches, smoked chicken wellington, scones and tea cakes.

PlasticFantastic ordered this beautiful cake after her lunch! It’s a piece of artwork!

After our late lunch we wandered downtown Toronto a little bit and eventually made our way to Kinton Ramen, one of my favourite ramen spots in Toronto. Here’s the Shio ramen with extra pork and extra noodles, and grated garlic!! At this point I was starting to feel the post-convention plague start to hit me which is why I packed on the garlic – it’s also super tasty!

Most of us finished every last drop of broth in our bowls and became Kinton Bowlers!

(Me, Machiko, sad PlasticFantastic, Sam, Meo and Mahoro!)

It was a fun way to wrap up Mahoro’s visit to Toronto. Hope you come to visit us again soon!

- ♥ Archangeli

Regular readers may remember that fellow DD collector Otakusan167 came to visit us in January – well he liked us so much he came back for another visit! This time the weather was much nicer so we planned a lovely picnic on Ward Island on Lake Ontario. The sky was a bit overcast but that turned out for the best for photo taking!

Here’s Otakusan’s Marisa, with my Micaela (DD Aoko Aozaki), Serena (DD Yuki Morikawa), Gabi (DDS Akira), MrCool’s Sawako and di-chan123′s Sakura just hanging out.

This was Micaela’s first big outing and she was very comfortable in front of the camera.

What is a trip to the beach without a sexy bikini?

(Okay, so this isn’t the nicest patch of beach, but the best beach area on the islands is the nude beach at Hanlon’s Point 0_o” )

Kai-suteki made a super sexy gold bikini for Tai to wear. Gotta have the bling-bling, right Tai?

The girls were soaking in the rays on the beach!

While the girls were working on their tans, Serena found a late-blooming lilac bush.

Marisa with Serena looking cute.

Gabi chilling one of the mailboxes on the island.

With all the lovely cottages on the island, it feels other worldly to look back at the Toronto skyline and it’s growing jungle of condominiums sprouting up.

Once again the only boy amongst all these pretty Dollfie Dreams, Machiko’s litle Sora (Volks yo-SD Kakeru) is just hanging out.

Meo brought his bazooka… err… massive bird catching camera with him.

The lens case is so big that Sakura could take a bath in it!

A quick outfit change for Serena as she went for a walk in the woods.

For more beautiful pictures from our day on the island, check out Otakusan’s blog post!

It was wonderful to see you again – can’t wait for your next visit!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra)

Goose butts! ^__~”

Neko

Allium, hard to believe this beautiful bloom is related to garlic!

A guy rowing himself upright on the lake o_0″

A few pretty pictures of Jezatron’s Yoko. I took her on a tiny adventure while the boys and Machiko were watching Wreck-It Ralph on a hot afteroon ^__^”

She was being coy with me.

- ♥Archangeli

A couple of weeks ago I was back in the UK for the first time since March, and took the chance to meet up with Pink_Blaise and GabrielVH on a lovely Sunday afternoon. We met up in Chinatown for bubble tea and crèpes before walking around in Soho to take a few photos.

Pink_Blaise asked me to bring Micaela (DD Aoko Aozaki) to compare her with the 07 head I had brought along on my previous visit. She brought her beautiful Neris & Kimiko, and I asked Gabe to bring his newest girl, Asuna, out for the day so that I could see her in person! Here are the girls relaxing against a tree.

Photos by: GabrielVH (I didn’t bring my camera >_<” so Gabe did all the hard work!)

Gabe changed Asuna’s eyes so they are more soft and friendly – her default eyes were very cat-like. She has a very fresh peaches and cream face-up and a sweet smile.

Neris is captivating as a redhead with these beautiful green eyes.

Here are Asuna, Micaela and Kimiko hanging out in the garden.

Shortly, Pink_Blaise had to leave us; and unsure what to do, I just followed my feet – which led Gabe and I to the British Museum! The girls were going to have an educational day out! There’s a beautiful library just off the main atrium where the girls went on a learning adventure.

There are curio cases everywhere displaying interesting artifacts. Asuna is pointing something out, and Micaela leans in for a closer look.

Asuna sat down for a moment -

while Micaela was imitating art… ^__~”

There is a life-sized replica of the Rosetta Stone for visitors to feels and get up close to. The girls were fascinated by the Egyptian hieroglyphs!

I didn’t bring my camera with me, so if you want to see more fun pictures from our day out you’ll have to go to GabrielVH’s Flickr page! ^__^”

And because no trip to London is complete without some delicious eats, we went to Abeno Okonomiyaki house for (first) dinner, and then met up with my cousin Michelle for second dinner of delicious Thai food in Soho! LOL

It was wonderful to see Pink_Blaise again, and loads of fun hanging out with Gabe and exploring the British Museum. I hope I didn’t bore you by babbling on about the artifacts. >__<” I’m looking forward to seeing you guys again in a couple of weeks!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

Dessert at Abeno. I don’t remember what it was but it was basically sake jelly with a strawberry in it!

We spotted a celebrity at the museum too, but to respect her privacy we didn’t take any photos. ^__~”

Jezatron’s impromptu visit to Toronto on his big North American adventure could only mean one thing! Improptu doll meet! I rounded up a few Dollfie Dream owners who were free one Friday evening and we went to Café Princess in the late afternoon for cute dollies and yummy cake!

Jez brought Yoko with him from London for his cross-America motorcycle journey, and adopted Ruby when he was at the Volks USA store in California! I brought Moe and Micaela (DD Aoko Aozaki), PlasticFantastic brought Maddy, Maya and Melty, and MrCool brought his custom Sawako.

Here’s Jez’s new girl Ruby, being photobombed by Micaela! LOL

AgentPanda brought Penny with her, and Anime North’s official mascot doll Momiji came out of her display case for the day too!

Here’s Penny wearing her Momiji school uniform cosplay. She looks so cute!

AlphaZ, nkei and CenturyStory popped in to say hi too – and for once we had more owners than dolls in the room! ^__~”

Here’s little Maya trying out a very pretty peach Volks wig.

Since I accidentally left Micaela’s wig at home, she borrowed Maya’s usual ginger wig! It looks very striking with her big blue eyes and soft summer dress but I think I prefer her as a brunette.

Melty is looking super cute in this pink plaid Volks dress -

It’s always wonderful to have DD owners visit us. Since I’m usually the one visiting Jez in London, it was a pleasure to host Jez during his short visit to Toronto and get to play tourist in my own city a little bit ^__^” Of course, one of the reasons we come to Café Princess is for the awesome desserts! If you’re not interested in food porn, you can stop reading now!

Here’s the awesome chocolate waffle that I had this time:

AlphaZ’s chocolate mousse cake – Enjoy! Yes please! LOL

MrCool’s epic Princess Platter with 2 slices of cake, and a mountain of fruit and ice cream!

One last shot of the girls:

- ♥ Archangeli

Hot summer days make for great casual and lazy doll meets outside! Originally we wanted to have another doll picnic down on Ward Island, but we found out a couple of days beforehand that there were a lot of things happening downtown this weekend and on the islands that would have made conditions less than ideal for doll meet, so we picked a midtown location – Edward Gardens – for our gathering.

This was one of the hottest weeks we’ve had this summer, and the heat killed my motivation to take photos, so I apologize for fewer number of photos than usual from this meet >__<”

There was an optional theme for this meet (“A Midsummer’s Night Dream”), so I dressed Aerie up in this dreamy gown.

I brought Annalise, who was looking so cute in her new shiro-neko outfit that I had to bring her out, theme or no theme! ^__~”

A last minute stow-away into my bag was Rin, who is here posing with MrCool’s Sawako.

AlphaZ was very happy to take her out, and took some beautiful photos of Rin in the park.

PlasticFantastic brought her lovely twins Alna and Juno, who are both wearing pretty summer outfit made by puppy52.

Little Maya and Cirno also came along because they heard there was a picnic!

Sorry to disappoint you little girls, but the gardens don’t allow picnicking so we could only hang out, play a fun board game and chit chat!

CenturyStory brought her lovely Primula who is a vision of loveliness in this flowing white gown -

Nkei brought Setsuko and Renne, who are looking very ethereal and beautiful together.

Epic bonus points go to Nurlindae, who took our theme very seriously and made this stunning outfit for Lynari the night before our meet! 0__0″

Photo by: Nurlindae

She also brought one of her tiny little girls with her, who looks like an adorable little woodland nymph.

Speaking of tiny girls – this is PlasticFantastic’s first little resin girl! She’s a PeakWoods doll that PF adopted at Anime North and is named DeeDee (Dum-Dum lol)

Meo brought his Obitsu 50 Black Raven Lillia – she’s so cute. I love seeing Lillia and her litte neko-meido outfit is adorable!

Photo by: Meo

His pretty Lucy also came, wearing a pretty swimsuit. I think no one told her we wouldn’t be going to the beach at the islands!

Aka brought his custom Horo doll, who he has been slowly working on since his first outing with us a few months ago! She’s coming along beautifully! Aka has posted some lovely photos on his blog, so please check them out!

We had several new faces at this month’s meet, which is always nice to see. Kou-chan brought his newly acquired Saber Extra with him and she looks very imposing in her full gear!

MrCool brought along his Oculus Rift device and everyone was really keen to try it out. There’s a headgear that you can wear that immerses the user into a 3D game.

Photo by: MrCool

A few little figures crept in amongst the dolls, belonging to Poiyo and Akuun.

Photo by: MrCool

After hanging out in the park for a few hours, we needed somewhere with air-conditioning so most of us went out to dinner at Jack Astors before heading home. It was a nice meetup, despite the heat, and hopefully next month we can head back to the island for a nice afternoon picnic! I’m looking forward to next time!

- ♥ Archangeli

Last weekend I was in London, England, and made plans with Jezatron, GabrielVH, bethykins and fransgaard for little doll meet. However, my job comes with it’s own set of challenges and things can change in a split second – last Friday there were some very heavy thunderstorms over Toronto, most of Southern Ontario and New York @__@” and as a result I ended up being delayed a few hours. I was super late to meet up with everyone (sorry!!! >__<”) but at least the weather in London cooperated and it was a perfect day. Rather than one of the big central parks in the city, we chose to meet up at the Kyoto Garden inside Holland Park and it was a beautiful place locale.

Here are the dolls all ready for a nice afternoon picnic!

Left to right are Bethykin’s Freya (DD Moe) and Sa-Chan (DD Sakuno), Jezatron’s Kanu Unchou, GabrielVH’s Sakura Matou, my Serena (DD Yuki Morikawa), Beth’s Yuki (DDH-06) and Jez’s Ryomou.

I wanted to bring Serena back to the UK as a belated birthday trip for her, it’s been just over a year since I adopted her into my doll family. I dressed her up on Thursday afternoon and packed her into my doll carrier so imagine my surprise when Gabe dressed Sakura in a coordinating outfit! This was totally unplanned!

Kanu had heard all about Jez’s food adventures whilst he was in America but he didn’t bring any of it back for her! I treated her to a McDonald’s Big Mac -

Freya was content to just snack on a hotdog bun =

After her long plane ride, Serena had munchies so she went after the gyoza-kebab. Ryomou went for the hotdog on a stick 0_0″

The garden was full of people relaxing on the grass, a few bridal parties taking wedding photos and in order to keep the garden nicely manicured there were bamboo partitions to show where people weren’t allowed to step on the grass or trample the flowers.

Photo by: GabrielVH

There are little stone shrines throughout the garden and artfully placed stones.

We had to ask the security staffer if we could place the girls on this big rock to take photos. I think having the big DSLR throws people off since they assume I’m taking photos for commercial use, but I played the part of eccentric tourist and got permission! Yay!

There was also a beautiful little waterfall, which was a popular photo spot for everyone that came into the garden.

I think you can make out some of the huge koi fish in the pond. There were so many beautiful koi and they were so large!

I tried to capture a photo of the koi but the reflection off the water in the sunlight wasn’t cooperating with me >_<”

There was this little water fountain that amused me a bit. If any of you are playing ‘Animal Crossing: New Leaf’ and have seen the ‘Deer Scare’ item you’ll understand ^__^” (It has absolutely nothing to do with deers!) Oh and if anyone has the Dream Suite in AC:NL and wants to take a dream visit to my town – my code is: 5900-2200-7411!

Sa-chan has such an adorable expression. I’m not usually a fan of pouty-mouth sculpts but she’s really quite cute.

Time passed too quickly while we were relaxing on the grass, but it was getting late so we packed up and headed into Soho-Chinatown for dinner.

Fransgaard took us to a fabulous little place called Tokyo Diner, very close to Leicester Square. We were all really hungry but GabrielVH managed to snap a quick photo of us at dinner -

After dinner we had to hurry to see Bethykins off and make sure she caught her coach home. We made it just in the nick of time with 1 minute to spare! @__@” Left with the guys, our thoughts immediately went to dessert so we went back to Soho for a Snog. Don’t get any funny ideas: Snog is the name of a chain of frozen yogurt bars where you can choose from a huge array of toppings to go on your fro-yo.

I suck at selfies >__<”

To check out the rest of my photos from this meet, pop by this Flickr set.

I had a really great time hanging out with everyone, and this was one of the most relaxed days I’ve had in a long time – truly a perfect day. I’m a bit bummed that I won’t be in town for Hyper Japan next weekend, but I’ll be back soon to visit you!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

GabrielVH at work -

Fransgaard caught this epic battle between a peacock and a pigeon! 0__0″

A friend of Beth’s found this on Instagram. None of us were offended by it – in fact we thought it was hilarious, so don’t go trolling this poor person. I’ve gotten used to getting creeped at doll meets since people who aren’t in the hobby can think it strange that we take dolls out and photograph them. It doesn’t bother me when people take photos – it’s nice when they ask first, but we live in a society where people just take photos of everything and post them immediately on social media networks, so there’s very little social grace anymore. What’s very rare is to come across a creeper photo later on!

“Snogging is healthy and 100% natural.” ^___~”

There is a beautiful Dollfie Dream visiting me for a couple of weeks for a short summer vacation – the absolutely stunning Kanu Unchou!

This gorgeous girl belongs to Jezatron. He told me that his girls were jealous that Yoko got to go along on his epic trip across the USA (with short detour up to Toronto!), so when Kanu put her feet down and demanded a summer holiday he had to oblige.

Here she is showing off some cute summer clothes – a bikini top and tank from Volks and cropped jeans by puppy52.

This girl is smokin’ hot!

I mean, it has been pretty warm in Toronto the past couple of weeks – here have been ‘Severe Heat’ warnings, paired with crazy thunderstorms @__@” But now with Kanu here, the thermostat is going to go through the roof!

Wowza! I’ve got some awesome photo ideas in store for Kanu over the little while, so check back to see more of this hottie!

- ♥ Archangeli

Did you like my crazy post title? Last March, Volks released two adorable outfits called the Strawberry Milk Heart set, and the Sugar Milk Cookie set; and earlier this year they re-released them with a colour flip (called the Strawberry Milk Cookie and Sugar Milk Heart set)! Are we all utterly confused with the names yet?! I know I am! A few days ago I rounded up Machiko, PlasticFantastic and Sam on short notice to come to my house and celebrate these adorable outfits!

Lily, Yuki, Mashiro, Serena, Nia, Juliette, Maya and Cirno look so sugary sweet and adorable!

In my title I did mention something about desserts, didn’t I? ^__~”
A magical box arrived from Snowfern Clover a few days ago containing some of her stunning miniature desserts. Sid was captivated by the raspberry-rose and lychee Ispahan.

Here are Juliette and Lily showing off both flavours of the Ladurée Ispahans – the purple one is Cassis-Violet.

Would you perhaps prefer the Paris Brest or the Divin?

Oh my goodness these look so tasty! The hazelnut cream, the crushed nuts, the toasted almond slices, the juicy raspberries! These are stunning!

Serena and Mashiro have a couple of slices of cake to share-

Mashiro is visiting me for a little while until she goes to live with InnocentSaké in sunny California! It was fun getting to play dress-up with her!

Personally my favourite Ladurée pastry is the St-Honoré Rose Framboise, and Snowfern’s newest version (on the right) features a subtle pink icing. So pretty!

Juliette enjoyed showing off the beautiful pastries, but sometimes it’s the simple things that are best. Here she is with a few macarons – Salted Caramel is her favourite!

Oooh! Maya and Cirno are captivated by the yummy sweets!

Here’s one more picture of the big girls in their lolita dress sets -

Little Cirno is the odd one out today in her black and white set, but she looks so cute. I love her little hat! I’m going to have to dress my little Médée up in this set sometime soon!

Arrr matey! Pirate King Sora is here to stake his claim on some of the treats!

Oh Sora, you’re such a goof!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

Juliette says: “Remember to brush your teeth after eating sweets, or else you will get cavities!”

I took a few photos of Kanu last week indoors to try out a couple of wigs, and Kanu hated the first one I chose for her. She said that straight bangs are not her thing and try as she may, she couldn’t get the style to work for her.

So when I opened a package from TheBobness arrived containing some new wigs, I had a feeling Kanu would like this one better -

Ultimately Kanu is an outdoors kind of girl, so we went for a walk today to take some photos outside.

But once the sun came out, she complained that her sweater was too warm!

“You don’t mind if I lay down in the soft grass and take a nap for a bit, right?”

Looks like I need to find something less “warm” for Kanu to wear… ^__~”

- ♥ Archangeli

I braved the rain and heat this summer and met up with some DD owner friends in Hong Kong for a couple of little doll meets! The most recent was the last weekend of August where I met up with Q, Stepswalker, TonyBSD and XOHimitsuOX at the Charlie Brown Café in Tsim Tsa Tsui. The café was a very relaxed place and we were able to hang out without feeling rushed. We sat in a big booth area that had ample space for the dolls to hang out!

Photo by: Stepswalker

The café was fairly quiet when we arrived, but it filled up over the couple of hours we were there. Here’s Chef Charlie Brown to greet the guests:

There are adorable Peanuts figures from all eras of the comic strip in display shelves all around the café.

Photo by: Stepswalker

I liked the informal atmosphere of the café: you placed your order and paid at the cashier and were given a number placard to take to your table, and your food was delivered to you when it was ready. We ordered a variety of dishes and everything was quite tasty! I had the Fusilli Bolognese on the top right, and I would order it again! Omnomnom!

And the desserts were so adorable! You can see the tiramisu I ordered above, and this was the Mango-Yogurt cheesecake that we all shared.

There are also 8″ cakes that you can buy and they are so cute! (There were a couple of little birthday gatherings at the café while we were there).

Photo by: Stepswalker
Princess Lucy van Pelt! OMG *____*

Photo by: Stepswalker

I brought Sidonie with me and she was joined by Stepswalker’s Sakuya, TonyBSD’s Asuna, Q’s and Himitsu’s 06 twins! ^__^” (Sorry, I forgot their names >__<” )

Here’s Sid with Asuna-

Photo by: Stepswalker
Sakuya “nyan”-pose!

Photo by: Stepswalker

After dinner, we hurried over to Harbour City mall (because it was almost closing time!) to check out the giant Totoro and Nekobus that were on display at Donguri Republic in the LCX wing section of the mall. Thank goodness I had the guys with me or I would have been totally lost @__@” However, mission accomplished!

Photo by: Stepswalker

The Nekobus was super soft! ^__^”

Shortly after we all went our seperate ways, but I mentioned at the beginning of this post that we had met up a couple of times in HK, but this post has already gotten very long so I’ll post about our other meeting in another entry! ^__~”

- ♥ Archangeli

It’s been a long time since I posted – but I just got back from vacation and have tons of photos to sift through!

In the meantime, I wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Halloween!

Here are a few photos of Serena and Rin from the Volks Tenshi-no-Sato in Kyoto taking advantage of their spooky photo space!

- ♥ Archangeli

It’s been quite a while since I’ve welcomed a new doll into the family, but I’ve been patiently paying for my newest doll on layaway for the past 6 months. Moe-chan was first to greet the postman so she brought the box into our room, where Micaela, Médée and Serena were also hanging out.

The shipping box looks so small! It was a snug fit but with Micaela’s help, Moe was able to unpack it! Here is the box for Alice Kuonji – one of the standard yellow Dollfie Dream boxes!

This is one of the pretty photos on her box – it reminded me that I need to order some optional hands for her, since she is the new semi-white skin-tone. >__<”

Here she is just out of the box. Angry Bunny is on hand to make sure there’s no naked doll business o_0″

Here is my first look at Alice. She has rosy pink cheeks, a very curious mouth and mysterious, dark eyes.

Here she is out of the box! You can compare her vinyl colour to Moe’s hand to see the subtle difference that the semi-white skin has. She is also a Dollfie Dream Sister, with a small bust – which generally I would swap up to a medium bust but I purchased a lot of Azone 50cm outfits when I was in Japan and the DDS fits into them very well with a small bust!

Here is a better shot of her head sculpt, without the plastic covering. She has lovely pink lips and very simplistic makeup. I love her milky complexion!

Here are the other goodies that were in her box: her pamphlet, wig, outfit and boots.

These are the pieces of her default outfit: the dress, cape, scarf, hat, stockings, gloves, boots, panties

The inside of the dress is lined completely in white, however inspect it for leftover navy blue threads from the sewing process before dressing your doll. I found a few stray threads inside the dress 0_o” The sleeves are very tight so the hands need to be removed to put the dress on.

The cape is not lined, but the way that it sits on the shoulders doesn’t touch the face. The scarf with pom-poms is lined in white however I only kept it on for about 15 minutes to take photos.
The hat is not lined, and the inside of the wig has a black wig cap (not shown in photo) and has been reported to stain very easily.
So far I have had a glove and a stocking on spare doll parts to test their colorfastness and after 12 hours there are no signs of staining. I expect they will be safe since the socks feel like the material from Moe’s Bear Suit (which didn’t stain) and the gloves feel like the jersey that Machiko uses for her magic black socks. There is a snap on each glove to help put it on easily.
[Update November 4: Checked on the glove and sock and they left no stains after 48 hours!]

The brown boots are not lined in white, so take proper precaution when dressing up your doll.

Here’s Alice dressed up in her full default outfit. She looks so stoic and mysterious.

She looks too warm all bundled up with her cape and hat so here she is with just her dress.

Time to switch it up a bit! Here’s Alice with a lighter purple wig and an awesome Azone Black Raven outfit.

There are only a handful of dolls that made my heart flutter the first time I saw photos of her, but the moment I saw proper photos of DD Alice Kuonji I fell in love with her face and knew that I had to adopt her into my doll family. I had to patiently put her on layaway in order to afford her, but I’m thrilled that she’s finally home! Hubby surprised me by finding her magical Robin and Diddle Daddle cat charm at the Volks showroom in Akihabara tucked at the very back of a shelf!

I’ll be taking more photos of Alice in the next little while, so look forward to seeing more of her!

- ♥ Archangeli

I managed to get my hands on the Volks Lady Wizard outfit (thanks Innocentsake! ♥) and the Lady Thief outfit earlier this summer, and decided to take a few photos using these awesome clothing sets! The overall look isn’t completely steampunk or medieval maidens but something in the middle – I hope you like!

I’m crazy about Alice’s face! She’s so pretty!

I’m liking Lily as a ginger, the colour is very striking on her.

The outfits and boots are from various Volks sets. Dolls featured are  Lily, Alice, Micaela (Aoko) and Rin.

Thanks for popping by!

- ♥ Archangeli

I just wanted to share a couple of photos of Gabrielle looking adorable in her “Sherlock Holmes” ensemble. She wore it to the doll meet in Toronto in September (which I will post pictures from soon! >__<”) but she got buried in the back of the doll pile!

“Sherlock” could be resting in the parlour of 221b Baker Street here.

“Ah! It’s elementary, my dear Watson! Elementary!”

Oh Gabi, you’re so cute!

- ♥ Archangeli

On a lovely summer afternoon I met up with some DD owner friends in Vancouver for lunch. Puppy52, LightningSabre and Danielle met me at Marutama Ramen in downtown Vancouver to try their popular chicken-based broth.

This is one of the rare occasions that I didn’t bring one of my own Dollfie Dream girls with me, but instead I had Jezatron’s gorgeous Kanu with me on a little cross-Canada adventure! Here she is with Puppy52′s Ebi-chu, and LightningSabre’s army of MISAKA’s!

OMG they are so naughty!

Ebi-chu is so tiny she fits in Kanu’s hand!

I had the Marutama Tamago Cha Shu Ramen – Mmmm lots of meat!

Afterwards we walked along Robson Street to a small dessert café called Chicco and ordered some Japanese-style parfaits.

When you’re having trouble deciding if you want ice cream, gelato, cheesecake or a macaron – why not just indulge and have them all?! Ebi-chu approves of this decision!

Alas, it was another of my short (but sweet!) visits to Vancouver and I had to head home shortly afterwards. I had a lovely time hanging out with everyone and I hope to be back in Vancouver again soon!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

Kanu went home shortly after this little meet. Here’s a parting photo of her with Sakura.

September was a very busy month! First of all special love ♥ and congratulations to PVCFantastic and DioptricStraw on their wedding day! We had some special guests in town to celebrate with them, and after the wedding festivities were over we had a doll meet so that TheBobness could hang out with some of our Toronto Dollfie Dream community. For this meet we tried a new venue: a lovely tea lounge in mid-town called T-Buds. I had heard lovely things about this place and they were able to accommodate our large group in their tea room, even if it was a bit cramped for all the dolls @__@”

The casual theme of the meetup was “Lolita” and it was wonderful to see everyone all dressed up!

Here is AkaTG’s Horo with juu-yuki’s Rina. Little Dot is hitching a ride on Horo ^__^” So adorable!! ♥

My little Médée made friends with xsnrge’s Saber.

Photo by: TheBobness

Gabi was going for a non-traditional kind of lolita look. Rather than frills and lace, she dressed up as Sherlock Holmes – how very dapper! Snuggling up close to her is Tallenvyaere’s little Soom Appini called Marius.

Photo by: TheBobness

TheBobness’s Jubei (DD Beatrice) is getting cozy with juu-yuki’s Mariko.

CenturyStory brought Primula out, and Nkei brought a very special girl. The doll hiding behind Primula is Nocte, a Dollfie Dream Marya. This is an older DD (released in 2008) and I’ve never seen one in person before. On the right is TheBobness’ Rise Kujikawa.

Photo by: TheBobness

This little angel belongs to Nurlindae, her name is Daisy and she’s so tiny she fits in a teacup! Daisy is a Lati Yellow Sophie (limited Wizard of Oz version).

The tea list at T-Buds is very impressive – if you are a tea aficionado I definitely recommend this place.

They serve a classic afternoon tea with scones and sandwiches -

Or just some scones with a bit of fruit.

Their dessert crèpes are not to be missed, and they also have a very delicious selection of sandwiches and wraps for lunch/ brunch!

After the meet, a few of us went out to a nearby park to take a few more photos. It was quite a challenge since we were losing daylight very quickly and there was hoards of mosquitos!

Here’s Sakura and some beautiful autumn leaves -

TheBobness’ Rise looks so sweet -

It was wonderful to see everyone, especially to welcome a couple back some friends that we haven’t seen in a while!

- ♥ Archangeli

Omake (Extra):

Behind the scenes as CenturyStory begins her monumental task of setting up all the dolls! We commandeered a baby high chair, and made use of 2 tripod-mounted doll stands to fit all of the dolls!