A Home Carnival

Cotton candy flavored icing. Who'd have thought it? And yet...

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Niha (my brother Nate's girlfriend) and I were busy last Sunday night making cupcakes, for the sole purpose of cotton candy frosting. Niha went out to the store and got: 

Vanilla cake mix

Cupcake wrapper things

Gummy bears 

White icing

And... Cotton Candy Frosting Flavoring! 

It's like a sort of powder. 

So, we made up the batter... I love cake mixes. they're so incredibly easy. Put in your water, put in your oil, don't forget the eggs like I almost did, bam you're done. 

And then you are supposed to bake it. I personally wouldn't be against eating an entire bowl of raw cake batter. No need to tell me that's disgusting. 

We split the batter into eighteen cupcakes. And baked them, and...

Yowzers! (Do we tend to say yowzers?) Do those look gorgeous? We unfortunately had to wait for them to cool. But we didn't wait very long before...

Two sugar-loving girls, in a kitchen, with cupcakes, gummy bears, and cotton candy frosting. Guess the result. mmmm! 

I hope the pictures inspired you to read all of the post, and the cupcakes' beauty inspired you to get the cookbook (or rather, grocery list, water, oil, and eggs) out and try to match Niha's and my brilliance. I bet you'll fail.

P.S. I'm sorry for posting twice in the same day. I know it's not aesthetically pleasing. 

Benny and Babe

The second of Eoin Colfer's novels, succeeding Benny and Omar, is just as good if not better than the first. While he still had some improvement in him, Benny and Babe had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion.

Benny Shaw is back with just as much sarcasm and smart aleck remarks. His summer vacation is going fine, playing Hurling with the locals, but when Babe Meara and her dog come forward, the insults thrown by Benny are equally matched by the tomboy Babe's.

When Babe invites Benny to join her business of finding lost lures and selling them back to their owners. All goes well until Furty Howlin arrives...

This book kept me up reading. It's definitely a good kid's book, and from a certain point of view, I'd give it 5 stars.

Good Hair Day

My sister Mary Margaret is forever begging me to play with her hair. I generally grant her wishes, because it gives me a chance to practice lots of different braids, which I love to do. I'm a big fan of braids. Unfortunately, I cannot braid my own hair because it is too short for me to do anything fun.

This is not a tutorial for different styles of braid. This is a blog post of self-praise and slightly terrible hair styles that I'm still proud of. If you're looking for a lesson in braiding, look elsewhere.

So, I sat her down with her history book or whatever, and began to braid her hair. Then I had the smashing idea of combining hair and blog, and got my other sister's camera.

A braid based on Katniss's from the Hunger Games movie. Having not seen the hairstyle since I saw the movie almost a month ago, I think I did a pretty good job. Obviously the photo on the left is Mary Margaret's hair; the one of the right was probably done by professionals and therefore much neater and better than mine. But with practice, I will improve, and Mary Margaret never tires of having her hair braided.

And then we have a French Braid. I'm not proud of this at all. I am terrible at French braids. But again, I will get better with practice. And anyway, Mary Margaret's hair is curly, so it's extra hard to work with. And it's pretty short, too. I have done a better French braid, though, I must say.

Then there's a fish-tail braid. I'm pretty good at fish-tails. Please ignore the slightly disgusting name and look at the beauty of this braid. It's a blurry photo, yes, but you can still kind of tell it's awesomeness. yeah? I think I did a beautiful job. I just cannot believe the great job I did! Wow. I'm just stunned.

Ah. A four-strand braid. I had no idea how to do it at the beginning of the braiding session, but Mary Margaret pulled up a demonstration from the miraculous Internet and I followed the instructions. I also ran a wet brush through her hair several times to get rid of the curls. It is impossible to do a good four-strand braid with curly hair. Don't even try.

I did another Katniss braid, too. It's basically the same, though possibly a bit neater. It's still not like Katniss's in the movie, but please remember that I hadn't seen the hairstyle for nearly a month. Have mercy.






And there you have it! My brilliant braids, laid out in front of you like... like a bunch of brilliant braids. Feel free to leave a comment on them!

A Caribbean Mystery

Another Agatha Christie book where my favorite character ends up being the murderer... or murderess. No spoilers as to who the most likable, personally at least, character in this excellent novel is.

I'm much better at reading Miss Marple mysteries than those starring Hercule Poirot. I'm not really sure why. But this greatly limits my selection at the library, and I'm glad I found this one.

Miss Marple, a caribbean island, and lots of suspicious characters. What could happen but murder? From Major Palgrave, who loved retelling the past, to the ancient Mr Rafiel, who helps Miss Marple solve the mystery and almost immediately rules himself out of the list of suspects, to Molly Kendall, whose nightmares were anything but natural, the story is gripping and enjoyable.

When Palgrave is found dead in the hotel, supposedly having died naturally from high blood pressure, Miss Marple is only too quick to realize that something more impressive than a medical condition is at foot. As the characters give their versions of events, Miss Marple's investigation grows, resulting in a satisfying solve and a relatively happy ending.

Definitely worth a read. Four and a half stars.

Hey, Pottermore

After months and months of waiting, Pottermore has finally opened. I am deeply hurt that they said it was going to open in early April and it didn't open until April 14th, which is totally mid-April.

Just kidding. I didn't really care enough to be deeply hurt. But I still checked it daily to see if it was still in Beta...  well, almost daily. And it doesn't really comfort me to know that there were a million other Potter fans out there.

The only thing I was really looking forward to was the sorting hat. Which was pretty cool, once I got to it. I naturally got sorted into Hufflepuff (isn't it strange how nearly every single person in the world knows those four words? Rowling, I give you credit for creating nonsense words that have become part of everyday conversation). Hufflepuff is awesome. Their common room sounds fab, with cute yellow and black decor and round doorways. Do I sense a little hobbit-ness? Plus the kitchens are right down the hall. What could get better? I bet all the Huffelpuffs know each house elf by name.

Pottermore isn't that great, but it's fun. And now I know that I actually do want to be in Hufflepuff. I mean, everybody loves badgers, si?

And yeah, I will be going back to the site. Hopefully not on a daily basis. Really hopefully.

p.s. I just saw on a preview of this post that the photo so doesn't go with the color scheme of this blog. forgive me!

Plant to Yarn

Spinning cotton is undoubtedly a challenge. It might have been wiser for me to wait until I was a better spinner before starting, but of course I didn't realize how difficult it could be. Roving is roving, right?

Wrong. Cotton has such an incredibly short staple, basically my only choice was the park-and-draft method, where you put the spindle between your knees and draft out a little wool and then twirl it around to add some twist to the yarn. Cotton's liability to snap when you don't want it to is great. Just when you've got a good, long, pretty even strand of yarn, you feel the slight tug of fibers slipping apart, and the next thing you know, despite your frantic attempts to add some twist to the yarn to keep it from breaking, you've lost a yard of yarn and are faced with the challenge of joining another piece of cotton. It's difficult and frustrating, especially when it happens again and again without fail.

Cotton is a lot of fun to spin, but it can be SO frustrating! Which is why i took it off the spindle and put it on the niddy noddy. I counted 83 yards of uneven cotton yarn, and was pretty happy with it. The next time I try spinning cotton, I'll try and do it a little thicker. And maybe a little more even...

another burst of... um... awesomeness

I find that when I read blogs, I tend to skip over the posts that don't have pictures and read the ones that do. Hence the pictures in so many more of my blog posts. And hence an actually subject for most of my posts.

Unfortunately, I haven't been doing anything cool lately, so I don't have any cool pictures to post.

(Am I right in saying that when people use parenthesis they're telling the reader that any text in parenthesis is unimportant but is worth reading anyway? If so, I guess i'd better start using parenthesis a lot more.)

I got another badge on 750 words... I'm a phoenix now. (I'm a phoenix because I'm on a 101 day streak. Now, if you ask me, phoenixes have nothing to do with the number a hundred. I associate them more with the color gold.) Being a phoenix, I must say, is much better than being an albatross. but what will be even better than a phoenix? A pterodactyl! (btw, the P in pterodactyl is silent. and yes, i have known that for a lot longer than a few seconds. i was supplying the information for your sake.)

Just look at that sweetie! I love phoenixes. (And I've figured out why I associate them with the color gold. See those wings?)

I hope that picture has persuaded you to read the entire post! trust me, it's worth it. 

As they say on Youtube: Comment! Rate! Subscribe! (Don't ask me how you rate or subscribe to a blog. I guess you could just follow it... hint hint...) 

All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; Easter, 2012

Icing sugar cookies is one of the funnest activities in the Universe. I remember when we decorated cookies at Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter. Now it's more like Christmas and Easter, if we get around to it.

We had a bunch of gingerbread men to ice at Christmas, but we didn't actually ice them. We just ate them. I'd wanted to do a Doctor then, but the occasion never came up. But come Easter, I was like, heck, I don't care if we don't have any gingerbread men! I'll decorate a Doctor anyway!

So I did...

The Doctor and the Tardis. I know, the Doctor isn't supposed to be a rabbit. I used what I had. Would you rather he be a basket? 

Happy Easter!

Joke of the Month- April

This man is dying, and there's no way to cure him. So, he's lying in bed, racked with pain, feeling miserable, when he suddenly smells his favorite cookie. He pulls himself out of bed and crawls down the stairs, groaning in pain, and drags himself into the kitchen, and he finds a massive platter of his favorite cookies. He reaches his hand up, and just as he's about to grab a cookie, his wife's hand comes down on his.

"Don't touch those! They're for the funeral!" 

The Eye of the Storm

I just want to let y'all know that I survived the massive tornadoes that almost destroyed my home... oh wait, it completely avoided little old Irving! (Not that I'm complaining.) We spent a couple of hours huddled, terrified, around the radio, got a half hour rain fall, and forgot all about it.

As I was doing dishes today, I had a lovely view of the back garden, and the rosebush that is flourishing. I dashed out and took several slightly terrible photos. 

And no, fellow Whovians, we do not have a Weeping Angel in our garden.