mod cloth order and halloween costume dilemma solved

I had placed an order with Mod Cloth about 2 weeks ago and their website said that it would take about 7 days for packages to Canada to arrive. Every day, for the past 2 weeks, I would expect the package to be there when I got home, but it never was. I would always envision a package, sitting on my desk while I would run to it, with huge and excited eyes, before ripping the package to shreds, revealing all the gloriousness that is my order.

It arrived when I least expected it. It arrived on a Wednesday, along with a package from a friend from Japan. My mom actually called and asked me if she could open the package from my friend and I gave her my consent. She didn't mention the Mod Cloth box at all.

That night, my brother and I finished kickboxing about 15 minutes later than usual (our instructor got carried away making people spar in the ring). My brother tells me at we were packing up our stuff that my parents were picking us up that night since my dad was doing overtime. My locker was a 5-10 minute walk away from the gym so I rushed there and back, adding more sweat to my already soaking self (paints such an attractive picture).

When I had arrived home, I was tired and was looking forward to a glorious and epic shower. I walked into my room and what do I see? A glowing light shining on a package from Mod Cloth! Forgetting all about how sweaty and disgusting I was, I ripped open the package and admired my long awaited goodies.

Amazingness from Mod Cloth.
I wanted to get this cute bat bag since Mod Cloth first put it up for sale but it sold out really fast. I was also a little hesitant about getting it since it was tiny (and I love big bags, I carry everything in them) but there are days when I don't feel like carrying a huge bag, only my wallet, keys and phone. When I got the notice that this bag was back in stock, I didn't hesitate adding it to my cart.

The official name is Baby Got Bat Bag, cute isn't it?

As I mentioned, it's a pretty small bag but it's the perfect size for just putting your wallet, keys and maybe even your phone in. The feel is faux leather and the stitching seems pretty resilient. I'm looking forward to using it!

This will give you a better idea of it's size.

Cheer-io Up Lunch Bag by Shinzi Katoh.
I've wanted this bag the moment I saw it on Mod Cloth, unfortunately, I don't check Mod Cloth on a regular basis and it was sold out when I found it. This was back in July. I was anxiously waiting for it to come back in stock since and I had been harassing everyone I knew to ask Mod Cloth to restock it (they have a function where you can ask them to, and they do restocks based on demand). After waiting for MONTHS, it finally came back in stock and I ordered it without wasting any time.

Cute tag.
I'm extremely thrilled with this lunch bag. It's the perfect size for carrying your lunch around. One of the reasons that I wanted to get this bag is because it'll keep your food cold or warm. I've been looking for a lunch bag like that for a while but all the ones that I've seen weren't cute. Also, I love how the artist, Shinzi Katoh drew Paddington Bear. This lunch bag's perfect. I'm going to the envy of of the office (whenever I take out my lunch, hahahahahahahaha!).

Inside.

Not only is the front super cute, Shinzi Katoh did a great job of designing the back of the bag as well.

Size of my vintage Tuxedo Sam plush.
To give you a better idea of the size of the lunch bag, I'm going to put on my plushes inside it. I used my vintage Tuxedo Sam plush that I won on eBay about two months ago. As you can see, it's pretty big.

Tuxedo Sam all nice and snug in my new lunch bag.
But it manages to fit into my lunch bag. Although, I can't zip it up, it went into without any problems. I didn't have to push it in or anything, it just fell in, smooth as butter.

You can buy these two adorable bags, as well as a whole slew of other awesome goodies, at Mod Cloth.

On a unrelated note, remember that post I made where I was agonizing over what to dress up as Halloween? Well, after much more agonizing and whining, I finally decided what to dress up as!

My Venetian mask.
I decided that I'm going to go as a masquerader. I love these masks too much not to use them so last Monday, Alex and I went to a party store and I basically tried on so many different masks. The ones where you have to hold them are really nice but I didn't want to hold on my mask all night so I opted for the ones where you tie behind your head.

I love this one, especially the swan that's over your left eye. There was two other ones that have the same design but instead of the black glitter, one was silver and the other was gold. I loved the silver one too but it didn't have the rose attached to the feathers and it looked really cheap, especially since you could see their crappy glue work.

Close up.
I also received two super cute Halloween bows from my friend Cathy about a month ago. She makes beautiful bows and I couldn't resist these two. I think they're both called the Spooky Bow but they're anything but spooky! They're totally cute and the fabric is of excellent material.

Orange and Purple Spooky Bows with my Halloween White-san.

Aren't they adorable? I fell in love with the fabric design when I first saw it on her Instagram. I had no idea that she bought them for her bows. Obviously, when I found out, I had to place an order from her :). Her shipping was really fast and she included all these awesome goodies!

I'd have to say I like the purple one better. Love how the little ghost is right in the middle. But the orange one is more noticeable and it has more adorable ghosts all around.

You can buy adorable bows at Cathy's shop, Lunabowtique.

Happy Halloween from me and White-san!
Last but not least, Happy Halloween everybody! I hope that you'll have an awesome one, with loads of chocolates (omg, yum!). Unfortunately, I'll be stuck doing my assignment for my CMA program. I'd rather be kickboxing tonight but because of my bag time management (it's so hard to get back to doing homework after a nice long break >_<), I'm stuck analyzing the cost of alternatives for a company T_T. What are you Halloween plans?

Hope you get a lot of these!!

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latest arpakasso + strapya world goodies

I received these goodies in the mail about three weeks ago and with everything that's been going on, I haven't had the time to blog about them yet.

The first order of business is these adorable accessories that I bought for my iPhone. I've had my eye on them since they first came out back in the summer but I was really really really trying to be a big girl and save money. Luckily, Strapya World was having this great coupon code worth 30% off your order and I was saving quite a bit (more than the shipping cost) so I bought them.

Strapya goodies.
Although I have so many iphone cases (too many in fact, trying to sell some of them), I couldn't resist this one. It has these adorable koi fish all around and the fabric is awesome! They also have something that I've been dying to find on a nice case for a long time, CELLPHONE CHARM SLOT!!!!! Finally, I can now put some uber adorable kawaiiness on my phone.

The slot where I can put phone charms.
These two cat plugs are SO ADORABLE! Their official name is Niconico Nekomura. There's an interesting story behind the creation of these little kitty plugs. Otako Nekomura, a mangaka who is obsessed with kittens, posted on Twitter a simple sketch of the cat plugs. A manufacturer found it and decided to make them based on her sketch.

Cute kitty plugs
CINDERELLA STORY!!

Actually, it was more like this but I don't know what it says since I can't read Japanese but you can imagine the gist of it.

There's a bunch of different designs but these two were my favourite. I was thinking about buying the whole set but then thought to myself that I didn't need so many plugs and the other ones were cute but weren't to die for kind of cute.

But there's one that I found hilarious.

LOOK AT HIS BALLS!!!

Priceless.

The next package is an arpakasso package. I haven't really gotten any new arpakassos in a while (except when I was in Japan, which I'll blog about soon, I promise!). It was pretty exciting and this was the package that I was most anxious to get.

It arrived in about a week, so fast! When I ripped open the package, it was like there was an angelic choir singing in the background and the light was shining on the contents. Almost.

Arpakasso goods.
There hasn't been any arpakassos that I've been dying to get lately. I don't like the new Starbucks/cafe series and I didn't like the star tiara-wearing ones either so I haven't been looking for any to buy. To be honest, I think I fell out of the loop when it concerned arpakassos just because they stopped making really cute ones. My favourite series are the cotton candy ones (omg, can't even begin to love those enough) and after that, there hasn't really been anything that I really really wanted. The pirate baby arpakassos were kind of cute but not,"OMG I'm going to diiiiiiiiiiie if I don't have them!" I actually won two of them while I was in Japan just for fun :D

But, when I laid my cute arpakasso deprived eyes on this set, I almost fainted. They're SO CUTE! The series is called Arpakasso Kidz (yup, with a "Z") and the babies have finally grown up, even though they still look like babies, so they can now stand on all fours instead of lying on their stomachs all the time like a seal. They're also each holding a piece of candy, since all kidz like candy! I chose the beige one, who is my always, if not usually, my favourite out of all the baby arpakassos.

Beige Candy Arpakasso Kids. The newest addition to my arpakasso family!

Even though I had already placed my order for my kitten plugs, being a smart buyer, I also bought an arpakasso plug! My first choice was all sold out (boo, but that just proves I have good taste ;))

Picture curtesy of the seller.

Arpakasso plug.
Again, even though I had just placed an order for yet another cellphone case, not only did I buy one but TWO arpakasso cellphone cases! I couldn't resist the kawaii arpakasso iphone case designs. Not only that, I couldn't decide between two of them so I bought both!

Check these two babies out.

I like this one a lot better than the other one.

I'm actually thinking of selling this one...

The back of the box of both cases.
Now I can totally pimp out my iphone with my endless iphone accessories. I can totally arpakasso-ify my iphone if I liked, with my arpakasso case and plugs.

The last item I bought from the arpakasso seller is this tiny little strap. It doesn't look like the usual arpakassos but it's cute nonetheless. The feel of it is pretty cool, really squishy but a little rough at the time.

Itty bitty Arpakasso strap.

Last but not least is the awesome freebies that she included! It's not the arpakassos by Amuse but they're still arpakassos and an adorable Hello Kitty pen. The arpakassos are actually from the same collection as that funny looking pink alpaca plush that I bought.

Everyone loves freebies!

If anyone is interested in buying arpakassos, other than buying from myself, I would highly suggest you buy it from Wendy, the person I bought all these arpakasso goodies from. She's very nice and extremely patient, shipping is really fast (I received mine in a week) and she responds to her e-mails very quickly.

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fun kawaii apps i've been obsessed with lately

These past few weeks, I've been obsessively playing these two cute and fun apps on my iPhone and/or iPad. These games are so addicting and so kawaii, that anyone who likes cute games should definitely try them!

I discovered this game about two or three weeks ago while I was checking the Apps store, hoping to find a good and free app. This was listed under the "New & Featured" or whatever it's called.

Zookeeper Start Screen.
It's called Zookeeper Vs and not Zookeeper Battle like it says. It's by a Japanese company called Kiteretsu. It's the first app that I've used by them.

Playing Instructions.
The instructions are pretty simple, you have to match three of a kind either horizontally or vertically as shown in the picture. Whenever you get a match, either your attack points or defense points will increase depending on the animal. The hippo and the elephants increase your defense and every other animal increases your attack points. Every round, there's going to be a bonus animal that increases both your attack and defense points.

I'm leaning more towards the crocodile.
When you first start the game, you can select your username, which will be displayed when you play against other players as long as it's under 12 characters. You also get to choose the animal that you want to use. I chose "Sushiibear," as always and for some messed up reason, I chose the giraffe. I only play on my iPad because I like the bigger screen but I downloaded the app on my iPhone and it doesn't sync my iPhone and iPad together so I can have two accounts if I wanted. I'm stuck for another username for my iPhone but I know that if I do start a game on my phone, I'm going to choose either the crocodile or the lion, way cuter.

Game play.
After you're done setting yourself game, you select "Battle" or something like that and the app will automatically find you someone to battle with. I think what they started going with the latest update is they pair you up with people who are about the same skill level as you, which makes a lot of sense. Your skill level is indicated by a 4 digit number on the bottom left screen. I think when you first start, it's 1550.0 and it'll increase or decrease depending whether you win or lose. The higher, the better. When I first started, the game was literally released about a day or ago and I was paired against these crazy good Asians (all had Japanese or Chinese characters) and was destroyed. My score was so sad, went down to the 1200s! I even had a 19 losing streak. But I finally either got better or they just paired me up with more even matches and my score's up to 1600 something.

Battle time!
After you're paired with someone, you can choose which greeting you want to give to your challenger (there's 4) or you can wait and it'll automatically give the default one, which is " Hi!" I personally like to select any of the non-default ones since it's always nice to personally greet someone instead of just waiting for the game to continue (even if you're planning to cream the poor sucker). Alas, most people just wait for the game to start and don't bother with the greetings. Once the game starts, you're shown the bonus animal and you have 30 seconds to frantically search for 3 combos of animals.

After 30 seconds, your animals battle and only your attack and defense score is displayed. You don't know what your opponent got. As the battle phase continues, your attack and defense decreases until both parties run out of both. When your defense decreases to 0, you start taking damage. If you survived the first round, the same thing is repeated for the second round, up until someone dies or until the 5th round, where if no one dies, the one with the most health at the end of the 5th round will be declared the winner.

I love this game but there's a few things that really irk me about it. The first is that you have to WAIT for your stupid CP bar to fill up before you can play a round. When you play a round with someone, a piece of your CP bar is depleted and it'll take 6 minutes to refill it again. What's even more annoying is that, even though your actual CP bar has like 6 pieces, you can only fill up 2 by waiting unless you make a purchase at their stupid online store. Another thing is that you can't change your animal after you're selected yours so you better make your animal selection wisely. Don't end up regretting yours like I did.

The next game is one of those games where you breed and collect all the animals/creatures. I'm talking about Tiny Farm! I've heard about this app for a while but never really got around to it until I saw that they started having ALPACAS!

Tiny Farm App for iPhone
I started playing on Thursday night and honestly, my farm is really sad and pathetic looking but I know that it'll take at least two months because it's starts looking pretty cool and awesome.

I tried to log onto my Tiny Farm just not but there's a connection server. I was going to show my sad little farm but it looks like I won't be able to :( Instead, you'll just have to be content with other people's farms that I found on Google Images.

I wish my farm looked like this.

Or this.

But it looks more like this.
The goal of the game is to collect all the different types of animals. Even though it's supposed to be a farm, bears and penguins can live harmoniously with your rabbits and zebras...and unicorns.

I'm assuming most of the animals can be bought (at least that's how I got all of my basic ones) and then you breed them. To be able to breed them, both your animals have to have a heart over their heads and they also have to be mature. To get that floating heart, you just need to give them love, which is indicated by the big heart on the top right corner. The higher level you are, the more love you can give. After you give one of your animals love, it takes 8 minutes for it to replenish. For your animal to mature, you just wait. Each animal has a different maturity time so there's not much you can do except wait.

Animals that are ready to breed.
Whenever you breed your animals, there's always a chance that you'll get an upgraded one, meaning one that can be sold for more. For example, when you breed two of your regular sheep, you have a chance of getting a brown sheep, which is more valuable, or another regular sheep.

Gotta get 'em all.
Once you've obtained all the different types of a certain animal, you receive a prize. Most of the time, the prize is an ugly statue instead of an animal.

You can also grow crops for some extra money and experience points. You might also need to grow certain types of crops as a quest or whatever. It's really easy to grow crops, you just select which type you want to grow and you wait however long it takes for it to grow.

There's a few things that I don't like about Tiny Farm and one of them is there's actually a limit on the number of animals that you can have outside the barn, grazing. I'm at level 10 and I'm only allowed 10 animals, when you have at least 3 of each animal, it adds up pretty fast, especially with the quests to breed this type and that type. But I'm also the hoarding type, I like to have one of each animal. You can put your animal in the barn and store them, but while you do that, they don't level up (the higher level your animal, the more you can sell it for and their babies are worth more).

I also don't like that everything is so expensive, just buying an animal can set you back a couple of hours. This is probably a problem that only happens in the beginning because you're dirt poor when you first start off but still, it makes it hard to get super awesome animals! Last but not least, it's the WAITING!!! Like all app games, they really like to make their players wait forever before they can do anything, which is why I really prefer video games. But since I can't carry my Wii or Playstation around with me, these app games will have to do for the time being.

I hate waiting.
There you have it, the two apps that I've been constantly checking my phone for! It's really killing me inside that I can't check my Tiny Farm right now because I think my tomatos are ready to be harvested!!! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!? My username is, once again, Sushiibear on Tiny Farm so come visit me and my animals!

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