The Darklord of Derkholm review

This is yet another wonderful book by (the late) Diana Wynne Jones! It's one of her earlier books but I only just got a chance to read it because it was so hard to find. If you liked the Harry Potter books and the Discworld series, chances are, you'll like this too.

It starts off in the thick of a meeting between various people which throws a lot of info at you in a short period of time. It takes quite a few pages before you understand what is actually going on and who's who but once you get there, the story sucks you in completely. So even if you find the beginning rather confusing, don't give up! The story that follows is worth it.

As always with her books, the setting is amazingly fantastic but because you can relate to the characters, the story feels real... despite the fact that four of them are griffins :P. I loved her characters so much, was dying to read more. Lucky for me, she had written a sequel called Year of the Griffin which is even better. 

The first book reminded me a lot of Terry Pratchett at first because of the guilds and wizard university but her style is very different. The second book is set in the wizard university quite a long time after the first so you find out how all the characters end up. 

After I finished though I was really sad about the fact that there'd never be anymore :-( 

Diana Wynne Jones was such an amazing and gifted fantasy writer, I'm really going to feel her loss. All her books on my shelf are little gems of humour, imagination, intelligence and heart. I hope one day I can be as good a writer as she was.

Dark Knight Rises... ¬_¬ and sure took his time

Just a quick review, my initial feelings about the movie. It sucked...

It had a predictable and forced plot that felt unnatural, a stupid back story for the villain that felt like something out of a bad bollywood film and way too much dull boring crap in the middle.

I liked parts of Dark Knight Rises, especially the ending. But most of it was blah and badly written dialogue which was either cliche or so boring I can't remember a single line. Catwoman was actually good. I wasn't expecting her to be but Anne Hathaway outdid herself. I also like Gary Oldman's character and I loved Jospeh Gordon-Levitt but I couldn't give a rat's arse about any other character.

The emotional scenes between Alfred and Bruce Wayne just felt too fake. Also, what a great idea to make a villain who speaks even worse than Batman. When they talked to each other, it took me a few minutes to figure out what the hell they were saying. Let's get Mumbles from Dick Tracy to be the next villain eh? That would be fun.

Street Fighter Cake Pops!

Street Fighter Cake Pops

I made the cake pops and they came out pretty hilarious :-p. The kids loved these. I added nutella to the buttercream and it came out yummy.


Cammy and Chun-li look alright but Ken and Ryu not so much. I dipped the cake balls in melted white chocolate but it didn't look smooth enough to make a face on so I rolled out some flesh coloured fondant and used that on top of the chocolate. The reason the guys look weird is that the chocolate wasn't smooth enough on those ones. 

Joystick Cake :-D

This weekend it turns out I was only making the one cake because the other was postponed. I don't mind though because it meant I had more time to make the joystick cake. 


It came out pretty good and I'm really proud of it. I did the easy part first, making the basic shape, adding the buttons and joystick and details in the icing. Then I steamed the cake to get that smooth shiny finish and put it in the fridge while I prepared myself for the difficult part.

Here's the cake in its unpainted melted stage

Arcade Joystick Cake

The cake inside is vanilla sponge with a raspberry jam and buttercream filling. 

For the design on top I wanted to make it look like Street Fighter but I'm not a good enough artist to paint a character. Well, maybe I could with time and stenciling but I was afraid of ruining my lovely cake :-p. 

So in the end, I decided to just have the street fighter logo except instead of writing "street fighter" I'd do "happy birthday" and instead of "IV" I'd put the birthday boy's age which is 32, written in roman numerals as "XXXII". Very long indeed, I wasn't sure I'd be able to fit it on the cake :P. At the bottom there is usually a capcom logo so I put his name in the capcom colours.

The cake is a bit smaller than the actual size of the joystick so I couldn't do all the details exactly perfect (like writing 'turbo' on button). I was disappointed that I couldn't find a Street Fighter IV font anywhere online to make sure the letters looked perfect but I don't think he'll mind much.

Here is the finished cake:

Arcade Joystick Cake

Snow White...again

It's one of the few weekends I haven't gone to the movies. What I'd really want to watch though is Snow White and the Huntsman solely due to, of course, Chris Hemsworth. Aw there he is :-) I've seen about a dozen different versions of Snow White and this one seems interesting enough.

Charlize Theron as the Queen

Also, you just know that Charlize Theron will be a kickass evil queen. I always thought she had a real coolness to her bordering on icy. It's like she's hiding a side of her that keeps glancing through her eyes thinking, "look at those turds". I don't know, that's just the feeling I get. Plus, no one can deny she is pretty beautiful. 


I saw the other Snow White movie, Mirror Mirror, when it came out and it was a lot of fluffy light-hearted fun. The girl wasn't the best actress but she also wasn't the worst (I'll be talking about the worst later on) but she certainly looked the part and could pull off the sweet innocent character very believably. I didn't originally think Julia Roberts was the best casting because although she can be pretty, I wouldn't call her beautiful. However, the way she pulled off the role was great and hilarious. I loved her as the queen.


Now we come to the Snow White from Snow White and the Huntsman. Kristen Stewart ¬_¬ W in T absolute F! Seriously, couldn't they have found a worse person to play opposite these amazing actors? It's almost as bad as when they got that awful kid in Jingle all the Way to play Anakin in The Phantom Waste of Money.


I mean, look at her-

Even with extensive photo shop they can't make her look anything less than bland and dopey (in every sense of the word). Not that I think every actress has to be beautiful. Of course not. But when you're supposed to be the "fairest of them all" no one in their right mind would think of Kristen.

But it's not her looks that annoy me. Her fidgety, awkward, cold turkey acting makes me want to throw tomatoes at the TV screen (thank God I never wasted time and money watching her at the cinema) and the last movie I saw her in, I had to fast forward most of the scenes just so I wouldn't be driven to suicide. Why choose such an awful actress to play such a huge movie part?

WORST OF ALL this is the woman they get to play against Chris Hemsworth!!! It's a travesty, it really is. I think I would have been able to go and watch this movie perfectly happily if she wasn't his love interest. As it is though, the thought of them kissing and cuddling makes me want to puke and I don't think I could take seeing it on the big screen. That's like Hermione dating Dobby. You wouldn't want to watch that.

So, unless I can train my brain not to hate her acting, I don't think I'll be watching this movie. 

Shame.

Can't wait for Thor 2.

Preparing for a Cakey weekend

So someone asked me to make 30 cupcakes a few days ago. Things seemed fine but then my cakes sank. Never happened to me before (I swear) and I couldn't figure out why. That is until a few hours later when I passed by the other side of the kitchen and saw a bowl of eggs I'd forgotten to put in 0_0


It wasn't a complete disaster because they weren't all the eggs, I did remember to put half :-p. Therefore, I'll be using those sunk cupcakes to make some cake pops later when I manage to buy some lollopop sticks. Meanwhile, I made another batch, remembered all the ingredients and they came out fine :-p (pics coming soon)


So this weekend have two Birthday cakes to make; one a pretty birthday cake with flowers etc and the other a replica of a Street Fighter PS3 joystick. 


My friends and I saw the cake online, made by Love & Sugar Bakeshop (all her cakes are amazing, do check 'em out) and were blown away! My cousin wanted one made for her husband but as the bakeshop is in Canada, I'll be attempting it myself.


It's an amazing cake and I know I won't be able to do all the painting on it so not really going to attempt it :P but the rest looks simple enough.

Joystick Cake by Love&Sugar

I've also been asked to make some cupcakes for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in a few weeks which I am really looking forward to. Will be making crowns, roses and maybe union jacks if I get time. All cake pics will  be uploaded on my facebook page.

Dark Shadows...oh dear

I've always liked Tim Burton Movies, even before I knew what a director was. I loved and still love Beetlejuice, the first two Batman movies, Nightmare before Christmas, Big Fish and Sleepy Hollow. But the ones I haven't liked, I've really hated, couldn't bear to watch them again.
So when I heard about Dark Shadows I had mixed feelings. I hoped it wouldn't be the load of crap suggested by the trailer, hoped that after his last few disasters, Tim Burton might be back on form. 
I was severely disappointed.
The movie was pure stupidity with a few good jokes thrown in. You couldn't sympathise with the main character because he was just a git with no redeeming qualities. He has strong family loyalty (wow how amazing ¬_¬), but that hardly makes up for how evil he is. 
In fact, all the characters were awful people except the extremely bland heroine (who's barely in it anyway) and Michelle Pfeiffer (and there wasn't enough of her). It could have been so much better. 
After the backstory (which almost bored me out of the cinema), the scene begins with the heroine and seems to be centered around her... but then she disappears God knows where, only appearing for a few seconds in collages and to say a sentence in scenes trying hard to be romantic but failing. 
Johnny Depp has overly dramatic vampyric makeup on and weird fingers and yet, he gets away with pretending to be human. In fact it's a huge shock to everyone when they find out he's a vampire. It would have make more sense if they were more like "oh right, that explains everything." Even so, what's the obsession with over-the-top makeup (Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka) it doesn't do anything for the character, it just makes him look ridiculous.
There's barely a story to speak of, lots of loose ends that are left dangling and an ending that just wasn't good enough. The ending actually made it even worse. 
I am so glad I didn't pay to see it (I have an unlimited cinema pass) . What a waste of time! I would rather have watched Avengers for a 3rd time

Hugo review

First of all I have to say that I liked this movie but it was very flawed and advertised completely wrong. From the trailer I thought it was going to be some fantastic adventure movie along the lines of City of Ember or Tintin. There is no adventure to speak of. There is a mystery which is soon uncovered and isn't what you expect.

The movie starts off very slow with an  insanely pointless intro of Hugo running around the train station where he works tending the clocks. They spend so much time showing this that you think that the intricate labyrinth he goes through and the people whose lives he watches will be important. But they aren't. 


Then you have a long and pointless background which could have easily be summed up in a few minutes but is dragged out, probably in an attempt to replicate the novel (I can't be sure on this never having read the book) but things that work in a novel do not always work in the movie. 


It feels like the whole beginning section of the movie was meant to be about something else and then the story randomly digresses and follows a new story to which is sticks to the end. My sister said very aptly it's like those Simpsons episodes that start off with something random and then turn into a completely different story. Funny in Simpsons, annoying in Hugo. It's like the person who wrote it wasn't sure what it was going to be about until halfway through writing it. But it's been adapted from a novel so I don't understand why it's so confused.


When the story finally starts and you realise it's not a fantasy movie after all but more of a homage to early film makers (or rather one in particular) you can begin to enjoy it. The children acted well in some parts and awfully in others and there were times when the dialogue seemed unnatural.  


The final scene in the movie could have been good but was just anti-climatic. It's a scene of the automaton sitting with pen in hand alone in a room. You expect something to happen, for it to move or write/draw something but all you get is a creepy close up of its face and then nothing. Pointless. 


The script seriously needed some proper editing before it was made into a movie. It just felt badly thought through and disorganised. It could have been much better than it was if they had taken enough time over it.


Nevertheless, like I said, even though it wasn't what I expected, I enjoyed it for what it was in the end.

New children's cakes!

This weekend I got asked to make a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake and an In the Night Garden cake. Busy Busy! Here are the results:

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake

In the Night Garden cake

Oh frabjous day!

I just realised I didn't get around to posting about my Alice in Wonderland party yet :P. It's mostly because all the excitement for it ended right after and after all the planning and hectic setting up etc I didn't want to think about it anymore. Annoyingly, a few days later I found so many things I had bought/made for the party and forgotten about. Oh well.


Anyway, to begin I made invites that looked like playing cards and then rolled them up into scrolls and sealed with a sticky craft heart:

Next I made some wonderland creatures that I'd seen in the Disney cartoon:

Flowers with Faces

Tulgey Wood creatures

Rocking Horse Fly

And here are some other Wonderland Decorations:

Last but not least, the food! New dishes kept popping up even after the table was set until there was barely any room for the plates :-p

Wonderland Cookies 

Jam Tarts

Mini pizzas, mini doughnuts 

Alice Cupcakes

Drink Me bottle

I put 'Drink Me' labels on all the bottles of drink. Looked better on the glass bottles but didn't get a snap of that, oh well.

For the cupcakes I got Alice toppers from ebay. I set all the mini foods, (mini muffins, mini doughnuts, mini teapot, mini loaves) on a coffee table which was at the end of the dining table for all the little kids to sit at. Unfortunately, didn't get a pic of it in all it's glory. 

During the party I had two games. One was wink murder except instead of an inspector catching a murderer it was the Queen of hearts catching the knave of hearts so instead of killing people by winking, the knave was eating tarts (people) by winking at them. The winner got a Thornton's chocolate bunny.

The other game was pin the eye on the bandysnatch. I printed an online pic of a bandysnatch from the new Alice in Wonderland movie and put bluetack on the 'eye' to stick it. Whoever got it closest to the correct place won a pocket watch necklace as a prize which I bought on ebay.

At the end of the day I gave out "unbirthday presents" which I also bought on ebay. I was going to give sweets or chocolates but I figured we'd have had so many sweet things at the party, no one would want something sweet again so instead I bought some cute little handmade soaps from an ebay shop called soaps&favours. The soaps were perfect, everyone loved them and they smell gorgeous. Some people thought they were sweets :-p and I regret not going through with my idea of putting little tags on the boxes saying "wash with me" or "don't eat me".

 

I'd love to cater a Wonderland party so I could concentrate solely on the food. The cookies got rushed and I never got around to make the chequerboard sandwiches I wanted to make with white and brown bread sandwiches cut into squares and laid out together.

I also made chocolate lollipops shaped like roses which I forgot to take out and serve :-p. 

Other foods I wanted to make and didn't get time are toffee apples, a mad hatter hat cake, fruit kebabs and meringues. 

I made chocolate mousse in cupcake shaped bowls; I was going to make meringues to put on top with hundreds and thousands sprinkled on them. But it would have made a very rich desert and so I think I'll save that idea for individual deserts for a dinner party.

And so ends probably the last fancy dress party I'll ever organise for the family because no one else is interested in them anymore :-(. 

I LOVE theme parties and I am really going to miss them. I hope the family I eventually (I hope) marry into enjoys them too.

Handbag cake number 3 :-D

One of my colleagues saw pictures of my handbag cakes and asked me to make one for her daughter.  She's turning 11 so I chose brighter colours and a prettier design with flowers etc for her cake. It was so much fun to design and make that I already feel like making another one :-p. 

Girl's Handbag Cake

Girl's Handbag Cake

Oh, I don't know why it looks tinted in the photos, the cake is actually bright white. She also ordered cupcakes:

Vanilla Cupcakes with Strawberry & Vanilla Icing

I hope someone asks for a Halloween cake next month because I am itching to make one. Might just make one anyway!

:@ GRRRRRRRRR

I am sooooooooo frikkin exhausted from work today. I better have burned off a tonne of calories! 

Really annoyed with the surplus of inconsiderate gits on my way home who seem to think it's their religion to get in people's way and make things as inconvenient as possible for everyone else. 

To all those people who block up shop aisles by putting their buggy/trolley on one side and standing on the other side to stare into the abyss, those who stand in front of bus (and train) doors when they're not getting off/on even though there are plenty of seats available, those large crowds who stop and stare into space in the middle of the street or just as you get on the platform, and those shitty people who stand on the bus stairs so you have to squeeze past them to go up or down instead of just sitting on their arses - I hate you all with every fibre of my being and I hope someone punches you in the face very soon. Do you like getting shoved passed???

And also the shit delivery/post people who flick the letterbox about in semblance of knocking instead of using the damn doorbell. 

We have a doorbell, we DON'T have a knocker. What does that suggest you bloody morons! I am incredibly tempted to print the former sentence out and stick it on the door. But I have a horrible feeling they'd retaliate in some way. So am just gonna hope my local postman reads my blog :P

Catch up - cakes and Super 8

Lately I've been busy with so many things I haven't had a chance (or inclination tbh :P) to write in my blog. I am now taking a few minutes out of internet-shopoholicism (is that a word? it is now) and making decorations to catch you up on what's been happening lately. And by you, I mean you, the one person who reads my blog :-p.


Anywho, first there was my sister's wedding reception at the end of July which kept me busy mostly because I was in charge of making the wedding cake. Plus, I made 50 cupcakes too. I decided to make the cake as bollywood glam as possible so it looks a bit over the top :-p but that's what asian weddings are like. I like to think of it as my Pakistani bride cake because it has everything a bride does: roses, gold, henna and a veil draped for modesty :-p

Pakistani Wedding Cake

Everything on it was edible. My sister wanted red roses, gold leaves, a drapey thing and henna design. She initially wanted a red cake with gold henna design but I couldn't find gold writing icing anywhere! Where do people buy it from?? Anyway, bottom cake was victoria sponge and surprisingly and thankfully it held out well. Middle cake was red velvet cake which vanished in a flash as soon as the cake was cut so I think it turned out well ;-). Top cake was chocolate, my favourite.

Here are some of the cupcakes I made, also in various flavours:

Wedding cupcakes

I made these in 3 flavours; chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. They also magically disappeared. Strawberry was especially popular so I made a whole bunch of them at our next party.

 Funny thing is, I used the all-in-one method (bung it all in a food processor)  to make them because I was in a hurry and they still came out pretty perfect. Just goes to show :-p.

 Only thing is, with the all in one method they get a bit of a peak on top, which I don't mind on cupcakes because it gives the icing a nice shape, but I once used it to make a Victoria sandwich and the peak was huge, had to cut the cake to make it level which is an awful waste of cake.

Oh yes, before all of this I made a barbie cake for my cousin's birthday with strawberry sponge and vanilla butter icing. The frills took ages but it was worth it :-). The writing icing sucked though. Almost as soon as I wrote with it the icing spread and looked awful. I will just make my own from now on instead of being lazy and buying it from Morrisons.

Apart from making mountains of cake lately, also saw some movies. Most recently, finally saw Super 8. Had been dying to see it ever since the first teaser trailer but when I saw how far down it was in the US charts I was afraid it had been too hyped up. Well...I absolutely and thoroughly enjoyed it! All the kids were amazingly natural. Haven't seen kids act so well since Goonies. In fact, it was a lot like Goonies if the Goonies had been in District 9. Yes, there were a few cheesy moments but it all fit in well the mysterious creature was suitably mysterious and made us jump in our seats many a time. All in all good fun. The children in the movie are making a zombie movie throughout the film and I was really glad that at the end, they show us it all. Was so funny.

 Wish I had invited my cousins along to watch it too because it reminded me of a mystery/horror script I wrote for us. We shot a few scenes (awesome ones) but never got around to finishing it that summer and by the next summer the boys were all taller and different looking. We kind of lost interest by then too. It's the only story I've ever written that had an awesome title (which I won't reveal here in case I want to use it later on). And it wasn't even me who named it, it was my cousin Hana :-p should get her to name all my stories...

Oh yeah one more thing. The decorations I'm making are for my Alice in Wonderland Tea Party yay! But more about that in later posts as I'm having it in 2 weeks. Just hope it doesn't rain that day :-S