Salaam everyone!

As you probably already know, the VAT has increased in Saudi Arabia from 5% to 15%.This will be a financial burden to some families here. A lot of people took this as an opportunity to go on shopping sprees before the increase happened, myself included. (Although I wasn’t as extreme as my sister-in-law who bought a new car the day before the tax increase, but that’s another story for another day.)

With everything being closed or having a curfew because of the Coronavirus, I haven’t been out much lately. The university I work for recently started providing transportation for us to local shopping destinations again, so I decided to take one of the trips just to get out of the apartment for a while.

I found some really neat stuff I wanted to share with y’all. I went to a store called  MINISO. It is a very modern and minimalist store from Asia. Miniso claims to be a Japanese store, however there are many rumors that it is actually a Chinese store masquerading as Japanese. I personally don’t care where the company is based as long as the products are good quality.

Probably the coolest thing I bought was nail polish. It is water based and can easily be peeled off.  The label says the color changes based on mood. The silver one had some purple sparkles in it after use, although I highly doubt it had anything to do with mood.  I don’t wear nail polish personally, but my 3 year old daughter loves it. It’s very convenient to use the glitter colors because its less likely to show smudges which are inevitable when painting a toddlers nails.

I also purchased everything shown in the photo above. I have been wanting a carry all tote bag for a while now, so I was really happy to see the peach one pictured above. It was 26 sar and feels very sturdy and good quality for the price. The Hello Kitty keyring was 16 sar which also feels like a good price point considering Sanrio products can get expensive. It doesn’t look inauthentic either, which was a concern of mine. I have summer courses coming up so I grabbed a pack of notebooks (3 for 9 sar) and some vibrant gel pens (7 sar.) The pens are a good quality for the price, but the aren’t as nice as the pens I have purchased at Jarir Bookstore. Finally, I hit up the beauty section of the store for some hair ties- only 7 sar a pack, and some makeup sponges. I have purchased sponges in the past that weren’t great quality, so I am not expecting much. Like I said, I haven’t been out much during this pandemic, so I needed to stock up on everything.

I did get one last item for my daughter, Diyala. I felt a bit bad because almost everything she has is a hand-me-down from her big sister, Dahlia. And while I realize that she is only 5 months old and doesn’t have a concept of things being new or used, I still suffer from mom guilt. I walked by a giant stuffed turtle and immediately I knew I had to buy it for Diyala. I am really glad I did, too, because she made cute baby sounds when I gave it to her. I’m pretty sure those sounds translate into “thanks mom, I love the turtle.” At least I hope they do.

Thank you all so much for reading my post, I hope you enjoyed seeing the spoils of my Miniso haul. If you were interested in visiting a MINISO store for yourself, you can visit their instagram here, or buy directly from their shop on NOON. 

Salaam,

KC