Halloween Special!

Work has been really crazy on my end so I haven’t been able to get an actual Halloween movie review or bake or any of those things.

So here is a little something to share in the Halloween spirit.  Its the first time I ever recorded and shared with anyone my piano skills.  I did this really quickly to share with all of you.  Hope you enjoy it!

Its the Candyman Theme Song!

If there are any problems with the video, do tell me and I will fix up the problem.  If you like this, you can also tell me and give me suggestions. I’d love to share more piano covers once in a while.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Daily Prompt: Wicked

Today’s daily prompt is: Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind.

I just watched “The Wizard of Oz” last night for the first time.  I know, I know, you can close your opened mouth.  Everyone that I saw that to seems to have that reaction.  I saw Wicked Broadway in August when it was on tour in Montreal.  It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.  I’m serious.  It was fun, the songs were fantastic and now I understand the link and twist of the Broadway from the movie/original story.

Of course seeing the movie afterwards, I had to slightly analyze and compare the two to see what happens and how the story before Dorothy got into Oz.  There are certain parts that we doesn’t really connect but still, this Broadway musical is the top of the line.   Part of me would like to see it with the Original Cast with Idina Menzel  and Kristen Chenoworth.

I have the soundtrack and till now, I’m still listening to it and singing along when I’m not walking in the street.  You know, that would be somewhat weird.  Although I do smile and chuckle to myself when I walk in the streets listening to podcasts.

Back to Wicked, so for those that haven’t seen the broadway, its the “Untold Story of the Witches of Oz”.  We get to see how Glinda (the Good Witch) started school and made friends with Elpheba (the Wicked Witch of the West).  Its a story about love and friendship, to do things against the flow, you know, defying gravity.  If it does stop at your city, you really should see it.  I loved it and I wouldn’t hesitate to see it a second or third time if it came back to town.  I saw it with my best friend and we both enjoyed it a lot.

Have any of you ever seen it before? What did you think? Any other Broadway musicals that you’d recommend?  I have my eyes open for anyone new ones right now.  We have Mary Poppins and Billy Elliot scheduled to tour in the next few months.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to catch it.

Halloween Party!

Halloween is just in a few days. I’m not a child and I don’t have kids so I won’t be out trick or treating. Although this year rumour has it that no one will be going since we expect the hurricane to hit here around Tuesday or Wednesday. But, on to happier things…

As you may have known from previous post, I went to a Halloween party yesterday night at my boyfriend’s sister’s place. It was amazing, seriously. The theme was famous characters. We had a range of characters of the following: Buzz Lightyear, The Scarecrow, Little Red Riding Hood (×2), Big Bad Wolf, the Pope, Greek god, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and the Dictator.  We also had Beetlejuice and the bride.

Buzz Lightyear

Jason

Beetlejuice

There was also Uma Thurman and Samuel Jackson’s characters from Pulp Fiction which was my boyfriend and his sister.

Pulp Fiction

So through that whole line up there was also one characters that I haven’t mentioned. That’s my character.  A lot of people thought I was Lara Croft.  My boyfriend’s dad thought I was Claire from Resident Evil.

Resident Evil Alice in Apocalyse

The effort was incredible by everyone. They had a secret vote of everyone’s favorite costume and the Dictator won.

Dictator, Little Red Riding Hood, & co.

Beetlejuice was really in characters when he walked through the door and throughout the night. When Jason and Michael Myers entered, the room seriously went quiet and just stared at them walk by with their masks and machete and knife respectively. I think everyone was trying to figure out who was behind the masks. It was epic.

That was a little recap of the Halloween party.  I apologize for the pictures being dark.  The lights were dim and second reason is that I didn’t really tell anyone I would post up their snapshots so I tried to avoid any full on front shots to keep some privacy for them.  At least you all get the idea of the costumes.

Being Alice rocked especially when it was quite an easy costume to put together.  I think this is ranked as one of the best Halloween parties ever!

What did you think of these costumes? Did you or will you be going to any parties or dressing up? What are you going to be?

Glow in the Dark Cupcakes!

Last night I went to the Halloween party and being inspired by a recipe from another blog, I decided to make chocolate cupcakes with glow in the dark frosting.  I had asked my boyfriend’s sister and she went to get the black light to make it all work.  Originally, I had wanted to do a test run of these cupcakes first but ended up doing the Pumpkin Spice Muffins instead, so I brought some of those as well as a backup plan if the others ones weren’t enough or others weren’t interested.  It will also be the first time that I used my frosting piping set that I had bought last month.

This is how they looked like at my place before going to the party:

Later on, I’ll show you what they look like under the light.  First of all, I’m going to show give you the link for the recipe.

The cupcakes are called Devil’s Food Cupcakes found on Sweet Little Thang’s blog: http://sweetlittlethang.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/devils-food-cupcakes/

She also came up the Glow in the Dark Frosting which can be found here: http://sweetlittlethang.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/glow-in-the-dark-frosting/

See them glowing? The top ones are more obvious.

First off, I’d like to say that my cupcakes are lacking a bit of decorative skills. I tried my best though and I guess they look okay.  I will try to practice more.  Now for the changes I made to the cupcakes recipe.  Instead of cocoa powder mixed with hot water, I just melted Semi Sweet Chocolate Chunks.  I also decreased the portion of butter and sugar because that just looked way too fattening.  I used 1 cup butter and 2 cups sugar (not sure about the sugar modification). As for eggs, I used 3 extra large ones.

As for the frosting, I just kept it the way it was and I think it tasted alright.  The only thing was that I ran out of time so when it said to dip 4-6 times, I only had maybe 3 or 4 times.  I’m just glad it glowed so all the hard work wasn’t wasted and plus, the friends that ate the cupcakes seemed to enjoy it.  The only thing is that with the frosting process, the green ones need to be in the freezer for an hour so it was still pretty hard when it got to the party.  Although it sat in the fridge for a bit afterwards and I think it helped a bit.  Still, it seemed to be a hit.

The whole glow in the dark concept of it as it gave a little extra Halloween spirit to the dessert.  Extra because the place was decorated with spider webs and body parts, and everyone that came was dressed up really nice to the theme.  I’ll have another post touching on that soon.  As for anyone that wants to do this, try to schedule in maybe 2-3 hours from making the cupcakes to doing the frosting and making them glow in the dark, if you plan to do it all in one day.  If not, just do the cupcakes first and then the frosting and all the remaining work another day.

So what do you think about it? You think that it would be something interesting to do? Anyone going to give this a shot? Anything special that you usually make for Halloween?

Petalled Cat Collar!

Halloween party is tonight for us.  We have our costumes pretty much done.  Since we’re leaving our little kitty, Flea at home, I had this fantastic idea to mash up crafts and a little something for her.

I got inspired by Martha Stewart to make a Petalled Collar.  Flea is going to be a little red flower for Halloween!

I know she doesn’t like collars much except for her own. So I just kept her in it for 5 minutes to take some quick pictures.  I’m actually glad she was still, very  much less sitting up.  Still, I think it was a fun project.

So some of the things I used and the final product looked like this:

I used black and green thread, red wool felt, purple ribbon.  You don’t see it here but I also used velcro as the fasteners

Not too bad, right? I used the ribbon to imitate the idea of having it around something so it’d curve up a bit as well.  I think its pretty nice for a first attempt.  I had a few road bumps along the way and I had to make some finishing touches today to make up for the mistake I made.

Here’s how Flea looked in it.  Of course, this was an extremely short photo shoot so I didn’t get to take too many and a lot of them were a bit blurry.

Pretty cute, right?

If you have a cat that is a bit more still than her, then this will work perfectly.  At least she won’t try to rip it off..this is what happened as a cue to stop.

If you want to know how to make this, check it at this link on Martha Stewart’s site: http://www.marthastewart.com/852543/petaled-collar-costume

I did this one over a course of a month or so.  From buying the materials from arts and crafts supplies store and Walmart. Then  another day, using the template to cut out the petals and sewing it to look like petals. These last two days have been intensive on sewing it onto the ribbon.  I thought it still turned out okay.  It will get better once I get the hang of sewing for starters.

Hopefully, I will get a few more crafts done by the end of the year.

Pumpkin Spice Muffins!

You don’t actually get into Halloween spirit without having something or another made with pumpkin.  I don’t cook pumpkin or squash much but I do bake. The debate was really between Pumpkin Pie and something in the form of a muffin or scone or cookie.  I went with muffins as they are easy and should be as close to foolproof as I can get for the first time baking with something new.

These are called Pumpkin Spice Muffins (at least I call them that).  The recipe that I got it from was from Looneyspoons and of course, they had another witty and long name, it was Pumpkin and Spice and Everything Nice.  Just to say, I followed everything to the recipe and only had two omissions. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

PUMPKIN SPICE MUFFINS (Looneyspoons Collection by Janet and Greta Podleski)

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I made my own with 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground ginger and 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup canned pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

1/2 cup plain low-fat yogourt

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup finely grated carrots

1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven at 375F.  Spray a 12 cup muffin pan with cooking spray and set aside.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, whole wheat flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together pumpkin, yogourt, maple syrup, butter, egg and vanilla.  Stir in carrots.  Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir using a wooden spoon just until moistened.  Fold in chocolate chips and walnuts.  Batter will be thick.

4. Divide batter evenly among 12 muffin cups.  Bake for 20-22 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center of muffin comes out  clean.  Cool on wire rack.

 

Looks pretty good, right? I’m eating one of these as I’m typing up this post and its exceeded what I thought it’d taste like.  I was always worried that the pumpkin taste would be strong and it isn’t.  Its a well-balanced muffin.  Its not dry either so thats too my taste as well. I did make a few modifications. I had to take out the yogourt and chocolate chips from the recipe and instead of chopped walnuts, I put in chopped almonds.  Thats about all that I have to say. The taste is definitely pretty good.  I was pleasantly surprise and maybe will make it again next year.

Although, due to this recipe, I have the remaining can of pumpkin to use up and I have no idea what to do with it.  I’m pretty sure I’ll look for something randomly and make it.  I should be back with more pumpkin in some form of meal. Any suggestions?

As always, if you try out this recipe, please tell me how it turned out.  I’d love to know if you liked it or if you would make any changes to it, that sort of thing.

My FIRST: One Lovely Blog Award Nomination

I’m still feeling a bit dazed and confused right now.  My first award…its been about one year and 10 months that I’ve been blogging and I’ve read millions of posts about others getting awards and it never occurred to me that it’d happen to me…and it has.  Give me a few moments to wrap my head around this…I’m just happy!

First of all, I’d like to thank Aan at Sigoese for the One Lovely Blog Award Nomination.  I haven’t followed his blog for a long time but he has some amazing content that goes up. You definitely need to check it out.

These are the rules below, as copied from Sigoese for the nominees to follow:

1. Thank the person who nominated you
2. Add The One Lovely Blog Award to your post
3. Share 7 things about yourself
4. Pass the award on to 15 nominees
5. Include this set of rules
6. Inform your nominees by posting a comment on their blogs

Seven Thing About Me:

1) I love music a lot: I play the piano, sing, and am learning guitar (very slowly) and I listen to music every single day.

2) My love for Dragonboat is the reason and motivation that I exercise and train.

3) I am a collector of  Disney(Pixar included) movies and Hayao Miyazaki animations.

4) I have a digestive disorder that makes me sensitive to caffeine, lactose, MSG, and a whole bunch of random vegetables and foods.

5) I believe that crafty DIY gifts mean so much more than any store-bought gift.

6) I watch too many TV series that I can’t possibly catch up anymore (Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, The Mentalist, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, and some other guilty pleasures like Gossip Girl, etc.).

7) I hate having a cellphone (even if its a necessity) because I see it as a tracking device on my whereabouts.

Now, on to 15 blogs I’d like to nominate:

1. Thirdeyemom
2. Lead.Learn.Live
3. Head In A Vice
4. 50 Year Project
5. The Wish Factor
6. Crazy Train To Tinky Town
7. Sethsnap
8. Homemade with Mess
9. Bucket List Publications
10. Ali Does It Herself
11. A Word in Your Ear
12. Ridha’s Kitchen
13. Salt and Serenity
14. Modern Home Kitchen
15. A Nature Mom

If you are interested in movies, recipes, photography, crafts, travels and adventures, at least one of those blogs will fulfill.  Thanks again to Sigoese for the wonderful nomination!

Who, What, When, Where, Why…The Last

A cute and touching video called The Last I’d like to share with everyone! Enjoy!

My best friend shared it on her Facebook wall and I really loved it! Just so sweet!

Daily Prompts are Back: One thing I hope people never say about me!

As of yesterday, it was announced that daily prompts has made its comeback.  I’m really happy.

Last year, on January 19th, 2011, it was the daily prompts post a week challenge that got me started into being a dedicated blogger.  Lets just say it was my initiation (link to that first post).   I didn’t really get anywhere with that as I didn’t get involved as it was just a form of self-expression.  When I entered 2012, I had to work up my imagination and creativity and figure out how to keep this blog going without any more of those prompts.  Its thanks to that that I’ve not only gotten all you wonderful followers and I get to meet others through their own blogs and their fantastic contents.

Yesterday’s topic I just realized coincided with the A Word A Week Challenge about what is the most precious thing I’ve lost.  My dog is definitely a part of it.  2010 was a horrible year.   I lost my cat earlier that year and experienced the death of my 22 year old friend from unknown reasons and the death of my aunt in Hong Kong from sickness within the same month.  It was just depressing.  BUT it was also what made me want to have changes in 2011 and motivated me to connect with others.  When you hit the bottom, the only way you’re going to go is up.

Today’s daily prompt question is: What is the one thing you hope people never say about you?

I’m human.  As much as I don’t try to reveal in my posts, I have buckets of flaws.  Some I know I can keep in check most of the time and not exert too much on my friends.  One thing I know I would never hope for people to say about me, and is also now how I choose the people in my life that I associate with, is being a “drain”.  Do you know what a drain is? It was some time last year, I had written a post about friends.  The link is here if you’d like to give it a quick read.

The last paragraph says it perfectly about Drains and Radiators.  I would hate for my friends to say that I’m a drain.  I really would feel offended and saddened by that.  That post was written in April 2011 and I read it over again and it ended as I don’t know how to define my friends back then.  I’m telling you that after more than a year, I have been able to figure that much out.  I can detect drains in my friends most of the time.

Drains are people that take away your energy.  During a conversation, they are negative and depressing to talk to.  They are not encouraging and always find something wrong in their lives.  They continuously complain and there just never seems to be something good in their lives.  I understand that people have problems and we all do.  Life throws us curveballs all the time.  The difference is that some people talk about their problems but they are able move past and find a way out.  Find some uplifting aspect to move us forward and change or extract themselves from whatever bothers them.  They will have happy moments and positive thoughts to share also.  I haven’t had a chance to read through The Secret yet, but I’ve heard that the idea behind it is that when you are negative and say negative things, you are attracting negativity and things will just get worse and feel worse.  That is what a drain will do to you.  Their negativity will impact you and make you feel horrible about what you have already.  I once finished having a conversation with a “drain” and I went home and burst into tears then went into this ugly mood.  Now that you somewhat have an idea as to what a drain is, you can see why I don’t want to be labelled as that EVER.

How could I ever think about being a person that doesn’t bring a smile to someone’s face or encourage and support for people I care about but instead drag them into the same ditch.  I always want to be a happy  person to my friends. You know, the radiator that picks up others and gives them a little smile.  I’ve learned that being positive pays off.  Everything negative usually will have a positive turn and it just depends on whether you can change your mindset.

Halloween Movie Marathon Follow-up Stats!

Just a short post as a recap/follow-up!

I was curious during the last segment on that day off that I took on how the 3 parts would reflect in the general public score boards.  I used IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes as the main statistics review to see which list was the most widely accepted by the public on average.  Lets check it out!

(If you haven’t seen the list yet, I have linked it back to the 3 parts.)

Part 1: Animated Movie Marathon

IMDB: 7.15/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 72.56% (this was over 9 movies because there wasn’t a rating for Garfield Halloween Adventure)

Highlights of this list:

– Kiki’s Delivery Service has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

– It’s the Great Pumpkin had 93%

– Ichabod and Mr. Toad had 92%

– Corpse Bride is CERTIFIED FRESH at 84%.

– Coraline is also CERTIFIED FRESH at 90%.

Part 2: Thrillers

IMDB: 7.6625/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 78.375%

Some highlights on this list:

– The Others is CERTIFIED FRESH at 84%.

– Silence of the Lambs CERTIFIED FRESH at 96%.

– Paprika is CERTIFIED FRESH at 83%.

– Buried also CERTIFIED FRESH at 86%.

– Sixth Sense CERTIFIED FRESH at 85%.

Part 3: Intense Horror

IMDB: 6.52/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 50.44% (over 9 movies because Three Extremes are not rated)

A few highs (and low):

– 28 Days Later is CERTIFIED FRESH at 88%.

– Pulse was the lowest scoring in all 3 lists with 10%.

– Dawn of the Dead is CERTIFIED FRESH at 75%.

So thrillers was the best list and most widely appreciated.  Do you think so? I thought that list was pretty good.  I’m a huge fan of thrillers so I guess it helps that I’m a bit more analytical when it comes to that.  Rotten Tomatoes had it almost all Certified Fresh, which is always a good sign, right?

For the horror, I’m still a baby at it but I’m sure that there are lot of better ones.  I’m easily scared so horrors are challenging regardless of how crazy they really set out to be.  I also believe the the horror genre is always the hardest to suggest as its also the most subjective.  My boyfriend and I had this huge discussion about that.  Some people who believe strongly (or mildly) in religion will get spooked out by demon possession.  Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai (I can’t really categorize them in general as Asian) would believe mostly in spirits and ghosts and thats why you see these aspects so vividly.  Our horrors in Chinese are literally translated as “Ghost Movie”.  We believe the existence and how they have unfinished business and therefore was unable to cross over and reincarnate.  Some people enjoy blood and gore, so slasher flicks are the way to go.

I really was just curious on how the lists were to the general public.  Was there any inspired choices? Were you surprised at the averages of the lists? Do you ever have movies that you feel were great but reviews/general public thought different about or vice versa?