Ah the festive month has finally started, time to do a bunch of Christmas things and blog about them! Firstly: winter Castlefest!

Castlefest is a fantasy festival where I spend a couple of days evey year. It’s actually the only place you’ll ever find me sleeping in a tent willingly. Every year it’s a party that feels like home, filled with dancing, strolling past the market stalls, eating amazing food, drinking mead and above all: dressing up in fantastical costumes. The festival is like a fairytale, where everyone (and I mean everyone, you stand out if you don’t dress up) wears a costume. There are elves, pirates, characters from tv shows, movies or books, orcs, knights, princesses… you name it and you can find it there. It’s lovely, every single year.

This year, we went to the winter edition of the festival, which is a lot smaller and of course, colder, so we only went a couple of hours instead of a few days. But we had fun nonetheless.

I have several costumes for the summer edition of the festival, with skirts and corsets, but for this winter festival I decided to dress up warm and I wore my Cheshire Cat onesie, which was super comfy!

There was special winter food this edition, like warm mead and snert (which is a traditional Dutch meal: pea soup). We started our day with some delicious stew and then strolled around with a cup of hot chocolate in our hands. For dinner, boyfriend had pulled pork pie, one of his favourite festival meals, and I had the tradional knobi which is something you’ll have to try when you’re visiting the festival.

Though I love the summer edition, this one was also really fun. The food was great and there were lots of good bands and we danced a lot. A great way to stay warm! There was a balfolk workshop and some great bands, like Kelten zonder Grenzen, Ye Banished Privateers and Cesair.

Besides dancing and eating delicous food, you can also do some shopping. There are lots of different market stalls that sell unique and original Christmas gifts. My favourite of all time is Loeff, that sells lots of adorable things. I have to buy something every single festival, I just can’t help myself! They have plates, mugs, cards ,buttons… you name it, and everything is the cutest!

We had a great time today! I think we will visit the winter edition again next year, but now the summer edition is up first! Let me know if you guys would like to read a post about that too!