Although the Christmas period is well and truly over I'm one of those nosy people who love finding out what other people got for Christmas, so I thought I'd follow the trend and show you some of the presents I received this year. Rather than including every single thing I've decided to be selective and instead choose my top five presents to show you in no particular order - these aren't necessarily the 'biggest' or most expensive ones, just my favourites that I'd like to share!

I really love history and learning about the past so when I saw this in a bookshop a few months ago I knew I had to add it to my Christmas wishlist! It reminds me a lot of a similar book I had when I was little but this is much more orientated at adults and teenagers in terms of the topics and writing. The cover is stunning with really beautiful gold lettering, and it has great page spreads that are really engaging and dynamic with a good balance of text and photos to keep things interesting. It's absolutely massive too and weighs at least a couple of kilos, which is the only downside because it makes it quite hard to manouevre - the past couple of times I've been reading it in bed I've ended up pinned under it! Definitely one for the coffee table I think.

I've been wanting this for so so long and I'm so happy to have received it! I just love the bottle, I think it's so luxurious and obviously it smells gorgeous too. But as is always the way with expensive perfumes, I'm finding myself reluctant to spritz it and wanting to save it for special occasions! 

This is the latest addition to my little vinyl collection which so far just consists of my favourite albums in vinyl form. Electra Heart is one of my favourite albums of all time so I've wanted it on vinyl for ages and it does not disappoint! It sounds really good even on my slightly crappy Crosley cruiser (I know, I know) and it includes all the lyrics on a separate piece of paper. There are actually two records in here, and they each have 3 or 4 songs on which is slightly annoying because you have to swap them around a lot but it's all part of the charm in my opinion! 

It might seem a bit weird to have a washbag as one of your favourite Christmas presents, but words cannot express how much I love Paperchase's Gothic Garden range in any imaginable form. It's honestly the most me range I've ever seen; I love the darkness of it and the floral elements with the gold accents, it's truly beautiful. I think it was new in this autumn so it must be reaching the end of its store lifetime which is tragic but also brilliant because hopefully it will be on sale soon! I needed a new soft washbag as the one I currently have is huge and doesn't squash down very well even if it's not full (if that makes sense?) so this is a great replacement.

I'm including these collectively because I just can't choose between them and they kind of go together anyway. The Grand Budapest Hotel has been one of my absolute favourite movies ever since I saw it in the cinema, and it's definitely one of my top 5 films of all time. I've also seen Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me before, but it wasn't great quality so I'm excited to watch it again. I'm slowly building up my Twin Peaks collection (I also got a book on it this Christmas) in preparation for the revival this year! And last but not least, this is possibly the only DVD production of Hamlet I haven't yet seen so I just had to get it. It's the 2000 version with Ethan Hawke and Kyle MacLachlan (aka Special Agent Dale Cooper) and it's set in contemporary New York City which is so interesting. 

It's been a while since my last haul post so let's kick off the New Year with an exploration of my recent purchases. Since going back to uni for the autumn term my love of charity shops has been taken to the next level as I discovered that they usually have quite a lot of books and DVDs in addition to clothes. I'm not quite sure how I'd managed to miss this up until that point but there you go. 

As I think I mentioned in a previous post, I now take the bus most days to get from my house to lectures. In actual fact I take two buses, not because it's a particularly long way but because the bus routes don't go in an ideal direction so rather than going in a sort of full L-shape I have to take a different bus for each bit of the shape (if that makes any sense?). As a result of taking four buses a day I have ended up spending quite a lot of time waiting in the bus station where there's a really good charity shop that I pop into at least once a week so I have ended up with quite a haul! Here are the bits and bobs I bought in Durham over the winter term - they were about £2 each, sometimes £3 so really good deals all round:

I also visited family in Gloucestershire between Christmas and New Year and happened to go into an Oxfam shop while out shopping where I picked up three DVDs. Everything was half price that day so these came to a grand total of £4! Which is especially amazing as the 3-disc one was only actually £1. Out of these ones I've seen Moonrise Kingdom and Notting Hill before, but none of the others:

And that's my little charity shop haul for the past few months! Here's to finding more great bargains in 2017.