Showing posts with label St Patrick's Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St Patrick's Day. Show all posts

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Happy St Paddy's Day!!

Hello there guys!!

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!!


As one of those Irish-ish people (that means I'm not Irish but for some strange reason I'm in bloody love with that country), I love to celebrate St Paddy's Day! Which means I'm wearing green today, started my morning with Irish Breakfast tea, I'm listening to me Irish instrumental playlist and will be downing a few Guinness while I watch Boondock Saints tonight after work!

And since books are my thing, I want to recommend a few books here that are either set in Ireland or that have a certain Irish flair to them, or where Ireland is part of the plot, setting or motivation!




Sláinte!!


See Me by Wendy Higgins

While most seventeen-year-old American girls would refuse to let their parents marry them off to a stranger, Robyn Mason dreams of the mysterious McKale in Ireland, wondering how he’ll look and imagining his cute Irish accent. Prearranged bindings are common for magical families like her own, however when she travels to the whimsical Emerald Isle she discovers there’s more to her betrothal and McKale’s clan than she was led to believe.

What starts as an obligatory pairing between Robyn and McKale morphs over time into something they both need. But one giant obstacle stands in the way of their budding romance: a seductive and deadly Fae princess accustomed to getting what she wants—and what she wants is McKale as her plaything. Love, desire, and jealousies collide as Robyn’s family and McKale’s clan must work together to outsmart the powerful Faeries and preserve the only hope left for their people.




 The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long

A darkly compelling mix of romance, fairy tale, and suspense from a new voice in teen fiction

The trees swallowed her brother whole, and Jenny was there to see it. Now seventeen, she revisits the woods where Tom was taken, resolving to say good-bye at last. Instead, she's lured into the trees, where she finds strange and dangerous creatures who seem to consider her the threat. Among them is Jack, mercurial and magnetic, with secrets of his own. Determined to find her brother, with or without Jack's help, Jenny struggles to navigate a faerie world where stunning beauty masks some of the most treacherous evils, and she's faced with a choice between salvation or sacrifice--and not just her own.





 Girl Against The Universe by Paula Stokes

Maguire is bad luck.

No matter how many charms she buys off the internet or good luck rituals she performs each morning, horrible things happen when Maguire is around. Like that time the rollercoaster jumped off its tracks. Or the time the house next door caught on fire. Or that time her brother, father, and uncle were all killed in a car crash—and Maguire walked away with barely a scratch.

It’s safest for Maguire to hide out in her room, where she can cause less damage and avoid meeting new people who she could hurt. But then she meets Jordy, an aspiring tennis star. Jordy is confident, talented, and lucky, and he’s convinced he can help Maguire break her unlucky streak. Maguire knows that the best thing she can do for Jordy is to stay away. But it turns out staying away is harder than she thought.

From author Paula Stokes comes a funny and poignant novel about accepting the past, embracing the future, and learning to make your own luck.



And I'll leave you with one of my very favourite instrumental songs from my Irish playlist!! 

 

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Showcase Sunday #27!!



Showcase Sunday is a weekly feature hosted by Vicky of Books, Biscuits, and Tea where all book lovers can share with others what bookish goodness we got this week, be it purchased (physical or eBook), won, gifted or for review!

This week was a fairly light week, since I only bought 3 books, all in my Kindle, and one of the a novella that I had preordered! I should remind myself to stick to this pace since in April I have many preorders coming!


Purchased (via Kindle app)



See Me by Wendy Higgins



Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick




I'm hoping to keep next week more or less on the same vein, and I don't think I even have any preorders coming that I can remember right now.

What all did you guys get this week?

Friday, March 7, 2014

Lucky IS Reading Giveaway Hop!



Hello everyone! Today I'm super excited to take part in my first giveaway hop organized by Valerie from Stuck In Books!

I wanted to take part of this one because it's March and that means everyone is a bit Irish and everything can be green for St Patrick's Day, and with my love for everything and anything Irish... I just had to!

That's why I decided to give away a copy of a book set in Ireland and with a lot of Irish myth and folklore in it: The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long!

I read it last year and loved it! And really, that cover is gorgeous, isn't it?




Well, to enter you only have to fill the Rafflecopter below, easy peasy! Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Now, you can check the other participants in the Hop to see what other books you could win! Sláinte!

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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Monday Munchies: Wilton 1 Intensive and Cupcakes for St Patrick's Day!!

Hello everyone and Happy Monday!!


This a very belated blog entry! I was actually working on it (uploading all the photos when the debacle with the coffee and the laptop happened, back in March!) but I think it's high time I finally publish it!


On Saint Patrick's Day this year I attended the Intensive Wilton 1 Cake Decorating Course at La Tienda Americana. And I absolutely loved every minute of it!


The course, although it gives a lot of general basics on how to bake a cake, cut it and cover it, mostly deals with the use of the piping bag and different piping tips, to create all sort of amazing decorations solely using buttercream!


Loleta, our teacher is a certified Wilton instructor and an absolute prodigy of the piping bag, the things that woman can do!


On these courses you get a kit with a book, and materials necessary for it, which means a lot of quite awesome Wilton goodies! (I'm not a fan of Wilton cupcake liners, cause they're crap, there I said it, but the rest of the Wilton stuff is awesome!).



















And since I spent the whooole day at the course, I didn't have any time to make some St Patrick's cupcakes, so I made them the next day!


I thought that for St Patrick's a must would be a recipe with Guinness, so using the vegan recipe for stout and chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, I used Guinness instead of the vegan stout suggested and then used the Bailey's buttercream recipe from Lola's Cupcakes book, except I used a little less icing sugar than recommended, it gets too gritty for my taste otherwise. And since it's St Patrick's, green cupcakes were a must, I went for a mix of the Green Tea cupcakes recipe from the Primrose Bakery and the vegan recipe from VCTOTW!


For the decorations I used sugarpaste/fondant and some awesome stencils I got from Coppergifts (another awesome place to get stencils is Designer Stencils) with some edible sparkly powders (Sugarflair and Wilton). It's a rather simple technique but you get some spectacular results!












Guinness & chocolate cupcake with Bailey's buttercream!



























I sent all the cupcakes to the nephews, the liked the green tea ones enough (but they said they sort of tasted too healthy? My sis-in-law loved them though) but they ADORED the Guinness & Bailey's ones, go figure!




Oh, and I forgot to show you my diploma! Course 1 done & bagged! I learnt a lot, had a blast with my fellow students and got some awesome goodies!