So, now you know that I am certainly no experienced mixologist and I also can't even handle the taste of alcohol. But it's because I don't like the taste of alcohol that I became interested in learning how to make cocktails, so I can make drinks that are actually delicious but still get me drunk. ;) For now, I am finding recipes online to recreate (adjusting sometimes to what I actually have available) but as I learn more, and stock up my own bar, I'll be able to experiment with drinks to create my own.
Why didn't the layering thing work? I think it's because the recipe said green apple schnapps but I used green apple Sour Puss because that's what I already had. The densest liquid stays at the bottom, which is the sugariest, I think. I guess Sour Puss is sugarier than schnapps, so it didn't want to stay on top. It went to the middle, actually, I guess some of the vodka without enough grenadine in it went to the top. If I had had enough green apple to make another one (I made one in the video and then another for the close-up) I would have put way too much grenadine in, to make sure it was dense enough to stay on the bottom.
Of course, I couldn't resist taking some Snow White photos while I was all dressed up. The first & last time I wore this costume was Halloween (my birthday) 2012. See those photos and how I made it here.
Sea salt buttercream (recipe found here) sounded super weird to me, but I knew sea salt & caramel was a popular flavour combo these days, so I figured it wasn't too much of a stretch that sea salt & dark chocolate turned out to also be a popular flavor combo. The icing doesn't actually taste salty. It's not like a chocolate cupcake you dropped in the ocean. (Although, I'm sure that's how Ariel would prefer to eat her cupcakes.) I found that the salt actually enhanced the sweetness of the icing in an unusual way. If you think about it, any sweet thing you make always has a pinch of salt, right? And some people (not me) actually enjoy sweet and salty foods in their mouth at the same time. It's something about contrast and juxtaposition that enhances both flavours.
The fish bowl cocktail (recipe found here) was an ambitious idea. It's clear to me now that the person who wrote out the recipe must not have actually made it like they described. The photo on the website has the ice and fish candy, but no nerds. You do not want to see what the drink looked like after I was done cleaning up after my video. (Hint: My friend said it looked like a disease.) The nerds as aquarium gravel is adorable, but not practical if you're going to take more than 2 minutes to drink your drink. I also should have had more ice and/or less drink. You can see as I'm pouring in the drink the point that the ice starts to float and my fishies fall to the bottom. You need enough ice in there that it doesn't move, so the fish candies stay in place. In the end, it didn't matter how cute the drink looked because it was actually soooo delicious! I have absolutely no taste for wine, beer, or any drink that actually tastes like alcohol, so I was pleasantly surprised when I took my first sip and it just tasted like a fruity drink. I'm also not a fan of pineapple juice, but in this drink it's just enough to make it taste very "tropical".
Are you surprised this is the first time that I've dressed up as Ariel when I've had my red hair since October? I am. When I went red with my hair it was more about fulfilling my dream of having long red hair that I'd had since I first dyed my hair bright red when I was 16. I didn't realize the Ariel comparison until I actually had the very long red hair. That's when I decided I would keep the red until at least May so that I could cosplay as Ariel for Ottawa ComicCon.
So, I'm finally getting around to making the most of my red hair by rocking the pin-up look for my TableTop Day photos (Red hair looks so good with the pin-up style, amiright?), and now being a modern/hipster Ariel for a video. My next red-hair-essential look will be a Snow White themed episode of Cupcakes & Cocktails (Skin white as snow, hair red as blood, lips black as ebony... That's how it goes, right?) I'm loving the red hair lately so much that I'm tempted to keep it into the summer months so I can actually wear my hipster Ariel outfit and get some good outdoor photos of my Ariel cosplay (her blue dress look). However, maintaining a very specific shade of red hair is a lot more work and dye ($$$) than my previous hair color, purple/pink. Purple is more forgiving because I liked it to be various shades of purple & pink, in various degrees of fading. Red has to be refreshed frequently or else I get people saying it's pink, which has always been a big pet peeve of mine.
Well, enjoy your cupcakes and cocktail. (They're honestly sooo delicious!) I'll leave you with my best #HipsterAriel impression.
Board games have become a big part of my life in the past year since I binge-watched all existing episode of Geek & Sundry's TableTop and started insisting on game nights with my friends. By now, we're all full-on board game geeks, playing together at least once a month, buying new games, and looking forward to International TableTop Day on April 11th.
Wil Wheaton (host of TableTop and well-known geek) and Geek & Sundry (led by geek queen Felicia Day) designated the first International TableTop Day three years ago. They created the day to encourage people all over the world to play board games. Local game shops and groups can organize a TableTop Day event and register it on the TableTop Day website so that local people can find it and attend.
Nothing is stopping my friends and I from spending an entire day playing board games at any time, but I see TableTop Day as a chance to play games with some new people, maybe even making some friends, and to play games that we don't have.
We're also particularly excited about this TableTop Day because they are holding a What's Your Game Plan? contest. For a chance to win a prize pack full of board game goodies, you can enter a 1-minute video about how you're getting ready for TableTop Day and what your plans are. Not knowing that it would be a random draw contest (boo!), I went into full video-creator mode and wrote a fun video idea that involved my friends and I training hard for TableTop Day. I'm really proud of it, so here it is!
I'm also really proud of our gaming t-shirts that we made. When my friend showed me an image of the Settlers of Catan pun, "Yes, we Catan!" I immediately wanted more gaming puns and the image of Rosie the Riveter saying "We can do it!" came to mind. That, and my friend's idea for matching game day shirts, led me to redesign Rosie to say "We Catan do it!" and add our gaming group name (that we came up with for the sole purpose of this shirt design), Board Bitches. With Rosie sporting the popular bandana look, we decided we'd have to follow suit. I also wanted the shirts to be like sports jerseys, so, with much difficulty for some, we came up with game-themed nicknames for all of us (TableTop Tish, MonopoLinda, YahtzKelsey, Kim of Catan, and RPJuliana) and threw our favorite number on the back, too. We made the t-shirts using iron-on transfer paper which proved much easier and better looking than I imagined and I only screwed up one t-shirt (and remade it).
We made sure to get some nice group shots of us all dressed up in our game outfits after we shot the video. I also got individual photos of my friends that day, but I opted to model for my own individual photos at home in my "studio". And I'm glad I did my photos later because I tried something different with my pin-up style hair and I loved it! So much that I had to take about a hundred photos. (As I usually do for any photo shoot I set up, and only get about 5 that I like enough to edit up nice.)
We brought a variety of games to build a game pile for the video.
Game face!
Board Bitches will fuck you up!
QTs
Channeling the pin-up vibe.
You can print your own Wil, Felicia, & TableTop trophy cut-outs so they can join you on TableTop Day, or live on your game shelf.
