It's a Manic Monday: It's MY Birthday Giveaway!!!

Hellooooo there guys!!

I might be a lil too happy for it being a Monday BUT it's MY birthday!! And even if I'm getting rather old already! (I can't believe I'm turning 35!!, I wish I could have got stuck at 28, I loved being 28) it's a day to celebrate and to do whatever the heck I want!

And because of that, I'm gonna be hosting a giveaway that will last the whole week here in my blog and another one in my Twitter!

As an unrepentant bookwyrm there's no better way to celebrate my birthday than with books (and of course cupcakes!!). I wish I had a bit more time to have organized a lil bit more of a celebration of my birthday, but with my regular work and all the work that is still to be done in my apartment... I just didn't have the energy!

 This year was a recovery year for me, and I think I'm fully recovered yet but I'm getting much much better and I have so many amazing things that happened to me, so I gotta count it as a win!

- I attended BEA and got the most awesome roomies ever (I love you Britt, Becs and Sarah!!), and also got to meet and hang out with other amazing bloggers that I loooove and that I cannot wait to meet again next year!! ( Cassi, Octavia, Nikki, Christina, Cristina, Melissa!!).

And of course meeting so many amazing authors and getting books signed and getting some brilliant early ARCs and well, it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!

And BEA is relevant to this giveaway because what I'm giving away is a preorder or copy of one of my top 5 books from BEA that I've read so far!

And which one are those books you might ask? Here they are:

- Fall Out by Gwenda Bond

- Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman

- Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

- Illuminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

- Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

The 5 books are all 5 stars for me and I can highly recommend them all, so they lucky winner will choose one of these! The giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY since the book will be ordered via The Book Depository!  (Obviously if the book is not released, I'll be preordering the book at TBD for you!).

I will be checking the entries, so no cheating dears, I'm in a celebratory mood but I don't like cheaters, so don't get cheeky!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Best of luck everyone! I'll have a busy day having lunch with the parentals, spending time with a friend in the afternoon and having my nephews over for dinner! Oh boy, I think I need a cupcake now!

Have a great Monday and Happy birthday to me! ;)

A Handmade Birthday!

Hallo everyone! Such a late entry!

But, it's gonna be a short one too, cause today is my birthday!! (less than an hour left here in Spain) And I just wanna share a few photos of some new food I've made today for my own (and friends & family) treat, and how I've celebrated my b-day!

Yesterday I went with two of my besties to Madrid, to try cupcakes in a few bakeries that I discovered through Objetivo Cupcake, and to buy some baking goodies at some of the shops that I found out about in the same blog! Pilu, Sara & myself started the afternoon eating sushi for lunch, yum yum!

Sara & Pilu!!

Sporting my Vivifromage Sushi top!

Afterwards, we went on search for cupcakes! We started with Happy Day Bakery, a bakery with a lot of American style and very yummy cupcakes too! I tried a Red Velvet and it was really nice!

We decided to drop by Comercial Minguez, a shop for everything baking related, and I was so overwhelmed that I only bought a pair of sprinkles and some super cute liners for Holidays time... and! I saw Alma, from Alma's Cupcakes, my future cupcake teacher! But since I wasn't sure it was her, I was a bit shy to go and ask her... silly me!

Then we went to Cream Bakery, but it was closed cause they were prepping for Sugar'09, the baking national fair that is this week, and so were other shops that I had checked online, so we decided to go back home. We've agreed we need to plan another trip for more cupcakes!

Today, for my birthday lunch, I decided I wanted to make home made mini pizzas, with goat's cheese and zucchini, and chicken brochettes! The mini pizzas recipe will be up on the blog soon, and the chicken brochettes recipe is HERE!

And in the afternoon and evening I had some friends come over, to spend some time catching up, so I baked some Chai Latte cupcakes, with a recipe from "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World" and instead of the suggested icing, I used a honey buttercream from a new blog I've discovered, Carrot Cake! Very yummy!!




I got some nice pressies, some of them handmade! and also spent some awesome time with friends and family, so it was a very nice birthday! Tomorrow will go back to work, with the leftover cupcakes, to share with my co-workers!

Shopping Handmade: Pilu's Birthday with home baked cupcakes!

Friday is here, once again, and this blog entry is dedicated to last Friday and my friend Pilu's lil birthday celebration and gifts, all done the handmade way!


I had promised Pilu I'd make her the delicious Mojito cupcakes from Heaven is a Cupcake blog, so on Thursday evening I got onto baking them, and they came out looking pretty yummy! I used the "Happy Birthday" liners I got from the Cupcake Social, and once again went with some shortcuts for the recipe, using Mojito mix instead o white rum & lime & peppermint extract, and for the frosting, I used the Flying Bird Botanical's Lavender Mint cacao, it really gave them a lovely minty flavour!




I was waiting for some bakery boxes I had ordered from Paradise Cupcakes, and they luckily arrived on Friday, so I could pack up a dozen frosted cupcakes without them being squished or arrive looking all wonky.






I used a bit of ribbon from my last SugarKitty corsets order and a HK as a panda sticker to give it the final touch. And yes, I am aware cupcakes are not corsets, but hey it was the only ribbon I had handy!




My parents drop me at Guadalajara's train station on their way to the cottage, where Pilu picked me up (thankfully I didn't have to take the train with two bags of presents, two boxes full of cupcakes and a handbag) and we drove to order some sushi to take, and two Sapporo beers for the birthday lunch!




We returned to Pilu's house with our loot and set up table to eat our veggies tempura, small sushi & maki set and the restaurant special, salmon & tuna tempura maki! Miss Indy, Pilu's doggie was hoping she'd get a bit of food, but sushi & beer is not for doggies!











What she did get was a new Fabulously Fierce Pets collar, cause her old one is too small for her now, she's grown quite a bit in the two months I haven't seen her! She's such a gorgeous and loveable puppy! I also got Pilu a pair of leash bags, and she absolutely loved them! They're perfect to keep treats for the doggies when walking them, or for keeping your phone & keys if you have no pockets!

Miss Indy modeling one of the leash bags!

After lunch, it was time for the presents, while we made room in our tummies for the cupcakes! I got her a ComfortRead pillow from Inverness Studios, and she absolutely loved it! She's as much as a bookworm as I am, and I knew she'd love the idea of having something to rest & hold the book while reading in bed or on the sofa, and with the pocket to keep the bookmark, no more fumbling around for it! And can also be used as a travel pillow, cause it has a handle.




Since she's a huge tea lover like myself, I got her two tea kits from Purpose Design, a chai tea kit, and a herbal tea kit. Both are amazing, and smell great!




I also got her a RockyTheZombie t-shirt, I knew she loved Rhi's shop cause she had seen my t-shirts and loved them, and even signed up for Etsy to buy a RTZ baby tee for a friend's baby boy, so I just got her a Zombie Kitty tee in green, her favourite colour! She absolutely loved it, and I think I might have got her hooked for good to RTZ...




She also loved her b-day card, custom made for me by the talented Deb of On Cupcake Moon with Miss Cinnamon in them, and that I hand stamped with my Skull And Cross Buns cupcake stamp!


After all the gifts, we moved to the kitchen and decided to prepare some nice & spicy Chai tea to go with the cupcakes, with her new kit that includes the recipe! I prefer to throw all the spices & tea directly in the milk and boil it all till the colour & smell is right, so that's what we did, we overdid it a bit on the sugar, but otherwise, it was really yummy!






Once the tea was ready, we went onto devour the cupcakes, which Pilu really loved, cause she ate three right away! I ate two, and poor Alberto, Pilu's boyfriend arrived in time to eat the last one of the box! Luckily for him, there was another box!








After we enjoyed a tea with cupcakes and chit chat, we decided to go for a walk with Indy, since the day was great & sunny, without being hot, a lovely early autumn day! The perfect ending for a very nice day & a great way to burn those cupcakes down! ;)

A birthday recap, with handmade and recipes galore!

Hello everyone! Friday is once again here, and once again I work the weekend...


That's why I wanna share a lil recap of my birthday celebrations, with some photos and recipes, to face Friday and working weekend, with yummy food and fun times!


Last Tuesday was my birthday, so I chose the lunch menu, and went with cold curry rice with apple chunks & raisins, and sweet & sour chicken brochettes! As you can see, they were both super yummy and really easy to make! The key for the brochettes was the marinade, half honey & half soy sauce.






Then, we had my bro, sis-in-law and nephews over for dinner, and we had some nice grilled cutlets and other meats. I decided to make something different for dessert, so I made Kheer, an Indian rice pudding. I really like it, but my bro wasn't too keen on it. Joel, my older nephew loved it, till he chewed one of the cardamom seeds!




On Saturday, I was doing a joint b-day celebration with my friend Emilio, so we decided that I'd make the desserts and also try my hand at making some Indian dish, to add something different to the usual dinner food!


For dessert, I decided to go for Chocolate Mud Cake, you can find the recipe here, in the lovely Rose's blog. Lovely chocolate-y goodness, that I dunno why decided to not be fully baked in the centre and collapsed, which made me improvise and turn it into a donut cake, with an extra spiced chocolate frosting layer all over it... too bad I have no pics of the finished cake, cause I made it on Friday, but had to save the disaster on Saturday before leaving for the dinner, and I was too much in a hurry to take pics! It looked quite nice, and tasted delicious!





I also made some really yummy Mojito cupcakes with this recipe, from Heaven is a Cupcake! I had to improvise a bit, since I couldn't get any peppermint flavouring, but I decided to skip the issue by using a ready-mix Mojito cocktail, instead of just white rum! ;)






These I didn't frost cause I didn't have the right way to take them with me to my friend's house where the dinner was gonna take place without the frosting arriving all wonky! They were a real hit, very chocolate-y, with a hint of mojito and really moist and fluffy! I can't wait to make them again for my friend Pilu's b-day, with frosting this time!






For the Indian dish, I turned to one of my recently purchased Indian cooking books, where I found the recipe for Seekh Kebabs, G's favourite dish, Miss Masala: Real Indian Cooking for Busy Living! It's a great book, with loads of pointers on how to deal with all the unknown spices and ways of cooking, and with really yummy recipes! She also has a blog, with more yummy recipes!






Making seekh kebabs is not too laborious a process, cause I'm not the biggest fan of cooking, but I can't wait to make more! I made the seekhs a bit more mild than the recipe asked for, for two reasons: first, I was missing the chilli powder, couldn't find it anywhere here, and online it wouldn't have arrived in time (I got it now, ready for next time); and second, none of my friends are really used to trying spicy Indian food.







They were a real success, everyone loved their different taste, so I plan to make them more often!




I got many presents for my b-day, though only the ones I got for myself were handmade, so I'm gonna show off, what I gave Emilio for his b-day:


Two canvas print of a two shots, one taken by G, and one taken by yours truly!




I really love this shot, it's still one of my favourites. I took it last year in Wisconsin, and it's the shore of its namesake river.




I packaged them, and since I didn't have a manly & big enough wrapping paper, I decided to use a pair of my Skull And CrossBuns stamps to make it look more like a present! I also decorated the custom birthday card that Deb from On Cupcake Moon made for me!




Since Emilio loves cooking, I also got him a set of grilling spices from Purpose Design. As always, they come with super cute woody tags, and with recipes and suggestions on how to use them best!



And in case you're wondering, we (I) finished the open mojito bottle, after all, you don't turn 30 every day!