Festival of Lights
04/01/2026
Hi-hi-di-ho! Can you believe we're already over a month into 2026? That's disgusting. I'm disgusted. Where does the time go? I've been up to a lot of fun stuff in the past month, so much that it's kind of hard to find where to start about it. I've been to parties, on beach trips, to movie nights. Life has been good!
I guess I'll just tell you about the holiday that I went on! Yes! D and I went on a wonderful weekend holiday to see The Festival of Lights in New Plymouth. We went on a thrifting road trip as we drove up the coast where we ended up buying basically nothing despite hitting a lot of stores. When we finally got to New Plymouth we started out with a brief daytime trip to Pukekura Park to check out the part the festival is held at in the daytime. After working up a sweat walking around we hit the historic Tarawhata Mineral Baths. The mineral baths were established in 1914 and restored in 1999. The bath house itself was gorgeous with dramatic high ceilings and carved inlays. We booked a private bath and it was very luxurious. The water was very buoyant, you floated quite a lot and it made your skin very soft and smooth.
After our bath we got dinner at Deluxe Diner which is an Americana style diner. We got freckled (deep fried pickles), burgers and a banana split. The current and imminent downfall of the American Empire is pretty unsettling, but I still do love retro americana aesthetics. The food was really yummy and there were even some cute vintage cars parked outside. I kind of regretted not wearing lolita here, but coming straight from the baths it would have been weird. Following this we headed back to the motel to nap off out big meal and wait till night time.
Once it started getting dark we could go on to the main event of out holiday, The Festival of Lights as Pukekura Park. I had only been to this as a very small child so I couldn't remember much. The park itself is incredibly beautiful. During the day there are many lovely areas to picnic and bush areas to explore, but at night it becomes a light up wonderland. There were lights everywhere as well as multiple huge light up interactive artworks. My favourite was the artwork titled The Eye of the Forest which involved a huge hanging circle of lights and many projections around it making amazing shapes and patterns on the forest. If you are ever passing through Taranaki during the summer holidays I highly recommend you check it out. It's entirely free! Just be sure to have dinner beforehand and bring a bottle of water with you as there is no food or drink at the venue.
The next day we slept in until right before checkout time and then went for brunch at Chaos Cafe for an honestly amazing eggs bene, juice and chili hot chocolate. New Plymouth doesn't have a huge amount to offer, but it does have a lot of really nice restaurants and antique/bookstores! We also had a wander around the museum and waterfront before getting on our way back home. We stopped at a lot of nice beaches on the way as well, making the most of the good weather. Which I'm glad we did as ever since the weather has been not so great.
Following my delightful little holiday I've been busy with sewing a new lolita JSK to sate my hunger for an AP solid dress, working on finishing the renovations of the lounge room which is almost done, busy with work and busy with being sick. I got a nasty cold and it's been keeping me down for the past week. Through it all i still managed to haul my ass out of bed and see Iron Lung at my local cinema. UGH it was so good. Mark really outdid himself. It was so refreshing to watch a movie where it just told you nothing. You don't need to know anything you idiot. Just sit there and be anxious about Markiplier in a pear wiggler containing a varying amount of corn syrup for 120 minutes. It's obviously not a perfect movie, but for a film debut it's incredible. I highly recommend you go and see it if you like horror movies (and i mean like horror for the sake of the narrative movies and not slasher/gorefest movies). Going to see Iron Lung I also saw a trailer for a movie I'd like to see called Marama which is a New Zealand horror film set in the colonial era.
Seeing as I'm already talking about movies, I might as well get on to the media portion of this blog. My long awaited Nitro Chiral Anniversary order finally arrived and it was well worth the wait. I love my Fujitowa nuis. I'm so excited to bring them with me everywhere and take stupid photos of them. Also for my freebies I got the main cast of DMMD somehow?? Mythical pull on that. I also picked up This Wolf is Not Scary by Rico sakura which is a charming little animal characteristics BL featuring a relationship between a grey wolf and a brown bunny. This is the first in a series about these characters and seems to be very popular in Japan right now, but alas only the 1st volume is currently in English.
Apart from that there's not a lot of media I've been engaging with that I haven't already discussed. I'm still watching Kyou Kara Maoh though I have slowed down on it as I near the end. I also didn't pull Olivine in his winter rerun event. Fuuuuuuck youuuuuu but it's ok bc I pulled Eiden in the new year event. I really want both Blade and Edmond in the upcoming event uuugh. Stupid fucking gacha game. I HATE GAMBLING. I watched a lot of shit anime and shit youtube while I was sick because I was too tired to pay attention to anything actually good.
Once I and everyone around me get over this nasty cold I really want to go somewhere fun in my new lolita dress. I've been thinking about lolita a lot recently, how I want to wear it more and look for more items. I wish I could do more things surrounding the fashion as a hobby but it's hard when you live so far away from anyone else who would want to dress like this with you. Maybe this is the year I finally start vlogging haaahh... Who wants to watch me take my nuis to the beach and get fish and chips?
Until next time!
