recent eBay purchases ♡

Hello there!! So recently I've ordered a few things from eBay so I thought I would share with you what I've bought, it's mostly Harry Potter related I will warn you now..

1. Time Turner - £2.65

I actually bought a time turner keyring at the Harry Potter Studio Tour (you can read my blogpost about this here) and I was going to buy a chain so I could wear it but I saw this on eBay for under £3 and thought I might as well just buy this, seeming as this actually has the engraving on it and the one from the tour didn't. You can't actually buy this specific one from eBay anymore because that deal has finished but there are others which are under £4, and if you get it from China it can be as cheap as 99p but I didn't want to do that in case it broke on the way and I had to send it back. It also came really quickly, I ordered it on a Monday and it came by the Thursday!!

2. Hogwarts Library (inc. Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard) - £16.75

I wanted to buy this a while ago when I did a little Harry Potter Haul with my friends (you can read my blogspot on this here) but the only shop that had it was Waterstones and it was £25, I knew they had them at WHSmith but they didn't have them in stock at the time so I went onto eBay on that day and found it for £16.75 which is the best I've ever seen it. You can buy this here and now I see that it's even cheaper (that's a bit annoying) but yes, I haven't read any of it yet but I knew a true Potterhead should have read them so I will read them eventually and maybe do a review on here :)

3. Totoro Purse - 99p

I know I said before that I wouldn't want to order from China but I saw this purse and really couldn't resist, I love Studio Ghibli so much - in fact I'm watching a new Studio Ghibli film every week until my exams end. The quality isn't great, I won't lie, there are a few loose threads and you can see there's a bit of a dent at the top but I really like it and I haven't really changed my purse in years. It is 11cm x 11cm so it's bigger than it looks, I doubt it will fit my cards in too but it's really good :) you can actually buy this here and it's still 99p if you want to buy it, there are lots of designs you can get and they're all really cute but I wanted this one the most. It took a couple of weeks to deliver but it's from China so what can you expect??

Thanks for reading!!

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Harry Potter Haul March 2014 ♡

Hello there muggles! I haven't posted in a while because honestly I've not been out that much, I'm finding A levels quite stressful at the moment and I've just had my mocks but as a reward this week I went to Kings Cross (to go to the Harry Potter Shop) and Oxford Street to buy some Harry Potter merchandise so I thought I would show you what I got :)

1. Harry Potter Glasses (£4.99) - Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9 3/4 (Kings Cross station)

I hadn't gone into the shop intending on buying these but as we walked around the small shop I decided to pick them up so that I can be Harry, James, or John Lennon...

2. Large Hedwig Toy (£15) - Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9 3/4 (Kings Cross station)

This is something I had planned on buying because I had seen it on the website but I had not idea how small it would be in real life, it felt like quite a frivolous purchase but I had intended on buying it and I felt sad just leaving it in there, it's about 20cm so it's not tiny but it's not what I would call large.

3. Platform 9 and 3/4 ticket (£1.99) - Platform 9 and 3/4 Shop (Kings Cross)

I knew these could be bought here but I wasn't planning on buying it initially because I felt it would be a waste of money as you can print out tickets from this website but it looks really nice, it's printed on nice paper and the gold is sort of engraved into the ticket, you can buy a ticket attached to a lanyard for £5.99 which I considered because I could take it to school but I decided against it.

4. Postcards (50p each) - Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9 and 3/4 (Kings Cross)

I knew I had to pick up some postcards to stick up on the Harry Potter section of my wardrobe and these were much cheaper than the one I got at the tour (read about that here), but the selection at the tour was much better, the ones at this shop were mostly plain and moreso advertising the shop but I liked these two postcards because little Harry is adorable and I believe in house unity (I'm a gryffindor)

5. Hogwarts Pin Badge (£3.99) - Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9 and 3/4 (Kings Cross station)

I'm not sure where I'm going to pin this but I'm considering ordering some robes from eBay so I may pin it on there, I was considering getting a house pin but as I said I believe in house unity so I thought this would be nicer.

6. Badges (£1 each) - Harry Potter Shop at Platform 9 and 3/4 (Kings Cross Station)

I really like the D.A badge I got because I like to think I would've been in Dumbledore's Army (or Defence Association), I also wanted something to represent my house so I got a gryffindor badge that I can wear with pride.

7. Golden Snitch and Sticker Kit (£5.99) - Waterstones

I had seen these kits on amazon before but I didn't realise they were still being made, they had a bunch at the Waterstones in Oxford street, I haven't seen them in the smaller waterstones. They had them for time turners, hogwarts snow globes, horcrux lockets, mini Hedwig models.. I was considering getting a time turner but the one that comes in this kind of kit is chunky and doesn't look like the ones in the films that much so I have ordered one on eBay for half the price. I like this kit the most because when I make the snitch up I can put it on display next to my chocolate frog boxes from the tour, and I don't know what I'll use the stickers for, they may just be added to my evergrowing sticker collection.

If you're a tourist planning to make a stop at Kings Cross, I'm going to save you the trouble we had by telling you if you get to Kings Cross St. Pancras on the tube, LEAVE THE STATION and cross the road to the big dome and that is Kings Cross and pretty soon you'll see a mass of people lining up to take their picture at platform 9 and 3/4. We walked around St Pancras for a long time then had to ask someone where the shop was and they directed us across the street, we weren't alone though we got stopped a few times and asked by foreigners if we knew where the shop was (our house scarves, my Hedwig backpack and my Harry Potter shop probably made us look like Potterheads but who knows...) At the shop there is a photo opportunity, there is a cart half way in Platform 9 and 3/4 with a sign and you can line up and take your picture, we were considering doing this but we live so close and we didn't want to get into a queue so we've saved that for another day. The shop itself is quite small and can feel claustrophobic but it is a must-see for any Potterhead, the things in the shop range from fairly to cheap to quite expensive so I reckon you would come out with something whether it be a postcard, which is probably the cheapest, to some of the official prop replicas which can go up to £300. They do have chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's every flavour beans but they aren't the same ones sold at the tour, the frogs are small and the only cards you can really get are Professors so do yourself a favour and go to the studio tour (or just the shop that's there because it's free to enter the shop) and buy a proper chocolate frog there!!

I got a bit rambly but when I was looking for posts about this shop I couldn't really find anything so I didn't know what to expect, so I hope I've informed you if that's what you're looking for, or I hope you enjoyed seeing what I bought!!

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Harry Potter Studios and What I Bought There ♡

Hello there! So I went to the Harry Potter studios in Leavesden on Friday 13th December 2013 (won't be saying 2013 for much longer), and it was absolutely magical (see what I did there), I took some clips and had originally filmed a haul but long story short it wouldn't upload so I've just got the clips put together and I have quite a lot of photos and what I bought - on with the show!

 The Harry Potter bus!
If you want to take the bus to the studios (which I recommend unless you're driving), it's £2 for a return ticket and £1.50 for a single. It picks you up from Watford Junction and comes about every 20 minutes, the journey takes roughly 12 minutes and they play a video on the bus so sit at the front! Me and my friends said right at the back to be together so we couldn't really hear the video but oh well..

These passports come with a child's ticket but all of my friends are adults, we had a really kind tour guide who saw we wanted them so she ran off and came back with a stack just for us! They basically have spaces on each page for you to imprint a pattern which you can find at different locations in the tour, it's just a nice little souvenir to have especially if you don't want to have to spend too much in the gift shop but want to take somethinghome!

Gryffindor Boys Dorm

The Mirror of Erised

Dumbledore's office

Me and Antoinette being Ron and Harry

Me and my boy

Again.. me and my boy

The knight bus, I apologise for the lighting - it was night time. Next time I go, I'm going in the day time just to get better photos but at night it was absolutely beautiful - night and hogwarts in the snow is a great combination.

The wand chooses the wizard Mr Potter! Click over to Isabella's page

When we all got back to Antoinette's, we watched all 8 movies back to back. Well, maybe I should say me and Antoinette watched all 8 movies back to back. Lizzie watched with her eyes closed.. I tried to take a picture of the golden snitch cake pops we had but it was really blurry and I didn't realise until they were gone. We also made cauldron cakes but they were a bit of a fail, and we bought chocolate frog moulds but we didn't use them in the end. We made butter beer too but we didn't follow the recipe and so I had a big blob of butter in mine which was.. great..

WHAT I BOUGHT:

Time turner - £8.95
I really wanted one of these, I'm going to acquire a chain for it so I can wear it like a necklace but it's really cute. There are cheaper key rings, but they're still £5 - £10. It's a pricey store, I'll tell you that.

Chocolate Frog x2 - £7.95 each
Some pricey chocolate BUT you do get a wizard/witch card with each chocolate frog, the frogs aren't hollow so it's pure chocolate, and it's huge. The cards are also sort of holographic, I got Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw. Apparently you can only get the house founders which was disappointing, I was hoping I'd get Godric Gryffindor because house pride!

Snape Postcard - 95p
One of the cheaper things in the store, you can buy a pack of 10 for £8.95 but spending nearly a tenner on postcards felt a lot so I just got a postcard of one of my favourite characters. They didn't have one with Draco on, I'm guessing they were sold out or non-existent, otherwise I would've gotten one with Draco on it.

Hedwig backpack - £29.95
A pricey backpack (sorry I'm overusing that word now). I wanted a Hedwig plush toy which from what I read online would be about £22.95, I was prepared for that, but they only had Hedwig puppets and the backpack looked cute so I got that instead. They have plush toys of loads of the animals, like Scabbers, Fawkes, Aragog, random owls, Crookshanks, pygmy puffs..

Harry Potter t-shirt - £15
I'm glad I got a tourist type t-shirt because I don't have any Harry Potter shirts and this has most of the characters on (some were under my skirt such as Draco..) and I wore this to school on the following Tuesday (I wasn't emotionally ready for school on the Monday) and so it sparked conversation with people asking how the tour was, which was nice, I'm still not emotionally ready to upload all the photos to facebook (Facebook isn't ready either as it won't let me do it)

That's everything I bought, hoped you enjoyed the post!