Saturday Song: May The Fourth Be With You!

Hello everyone!

Today is May 4th, and it's considered officially or unofficially Star Wars Day! I had considered making some cupcakes to celebrate it, but since I already have a dozen of them that I need to get someone to eat, I didn't want to push it!

If you are wondering why it is Star Wars day, just say May the 4th and May The Force, and you'll get it! ;)

So, to celebrate I'm sharing some Star Wars music for this Saturday Song! The ever so talented John Williams scored all six movies (so far) and his job was absolutely brilliant in all of them!

I'm gonna be sharing one song for each one of the Prequel movies, despite not being as equally loved by the fans and whether you can say they're not as good as the originals, the music is equally superb!

Duel of The Fates from Episode I: The Phantom Menace



Across The Stars from Episode II: Attack of the Clones



Battle Of The Heroes from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith



Here you go! Hope you enjoy! I'm gonna be wearing my geekiness proudly today and May The Force Be With You, Always!

Friday Photos: Defiance by CJ Redwine inspired cupcakes!!

Hi there again!

Remember the cupcakes I was thankful yesterday for being inspired to make? Well, here you can read all about half of them! ;)

This Friday Photos is the result of my brain wave & inspiration yesterday to take part on a contest!

What contest you may be wondering? Well, as it happens, CJ Redwine the author of one of my favourite books from last year, Defiance, is hosting a contest on her blog for the chance to win an annotated ARC of the next book in the series, Deception! Getting any ARC is super cool (Advance Reader Copy) since the book doesn't come out till August, but an annotated one? That's like 10 times cooler!

The contest called for us the readers to create something inspired by Defiance, be it a poem, photos, a cake... and even though I'm thinking of also trying to get some photography inspired by the book done, I just got the idea of baking some cupcakes!

I wasn't too sure of how to decorate them, so I decided to re-read the book last night and instantly started getting ideas! So this morning I was up bright and early with plenty of energy and super excited to start baking and decorating!

 Yeah, those are all the tools involved... a wee bit of a mess!

The cupcakes recipe is for lemon cake cupcakes, since lemon cake is Rachel's (the main character) favourite dessert, with a lemon buttercream, with fondant decorations.

And then it was time to start piping the frosting to then decide how to distribute all the fondant decorations I had made.

Celtic knots, ribbons with initials, sticky buns, a wrapped parcel and leaves from the forest, it all has a significance in the book. I wanted to include one of the "Cursed Ones" but my modelling abilities are not up to par for a wingless dragon creature yet!

The Celtic knots might be my favourite part, I love how they look and I love using the stencils with fondant!

 Don't they look cool? I love those designs! Also, I spent quite some time trying to get a fondant colour that would match the cover colour! Yay for gel colours! At one point my hands were looking as if an unicorn had barfed on them, so many colours! I think after all the hand washing and the dish washing I got rid of all of them...

So there you go! Those are half the cupcakes that kept me busy and happy yesterday. Whatcha think? They're not poetry, but I think they look quite awesome, even if I say so myself! Wish me luck on the contest!

Thankful Thursday: Days off and inspiration.

Hello everyone!

I'm a bit behind on some of my book entries, cause I have a few reviews pending, but I've been down with a cold, and my brain wasn't at full capacity!

Today for Thankful Thursday I'm just happy for having days off to recover from being sick, to rest, to switch off my brain from work, and specially this week, for having the energy and inspiration to bake, decorate and photograph a special dozen of cupcakes!

I've had such a blast and I'm feeling pretty proud of myself, so I'm feeling quite grateful!


More on said cupcakes soon! ;)

Thankful Thursday: My co-workers!

Hello everyone!

Not a very active blogging week this one, but my sleep hasn't been at its best, and despite having awesome books to talk about and other goodies to share, my brain hasn't been at its most coherent!

Today for Thankful Thursday I want to give a huge shout out to all my co-workers, that are not just awesome professionals and fantasticly humane nurses that I'd love to have taking care of me, but also great people to work with, that cheer me up when I need it, that help me when my brain is not at its best and/or work is completely overwhelming, and also, that help me get more time to spend with the bf by exchanging days and covering for me!

Thank you so much to all of you my dears!

At work and out of it, I'm super thankful for you all!

Friday Photos!

Happy Friday everyone!

Today this is gonna be a short post, sharing a few shots of a photoshoot that I did for a friend of mine a few weeks ago. He's a magician and wanted some shots for his website and business cards, and I did my best to try and get him some good shots!

So for today's Friday Photos, I give you: Emilio the Magician!

And the final photo is of Emilio with his girlfriend Gema, one of my bffs!

Thankful Thursday: Books are a girl's best friends

I'm sure you've all heard that "Diamonds are a girl's best friends", well, in this particular's girl's case, books are my best friends.

And so today for my Thankful Thursday I'm going to say thank you to all the books I've read and loved, that made me laugh, that made me cry, that made me cringe and that in one way or another have made me feel.

I want to say thank you all the writers that have shared with us their experiences and the worlds inside their heads, writing a book is first and foremost as any other part of the arts, a labor of love, so thank you for having stories for us to read.

Thank you to all the books I've read, regardless of the genre, for inspiring me, for making me a citizen of the world, for expanding my horizons, for improving my Spanish and my English, and for always being those friends I can count on to hide from the world and from my own mind when everything gets to be too much for me to deal with. Thank you for being there to help me cope and thank you for giving me all sort of worlds to lose myself to, to live a thousand lives, to dream a thousand dreams.

Thank you.

Mark This Book Monday: Apollyon by Jennifer L Armentrout from the Covenant Series!

And back again!

This Mark This Book Monday post was due last Monday, but I was still so overwhelmed with the book & "ALL THE FEELS!" that I couldn't manage to grangle all of that into a somewhat coherent review. Today, I'm gonna atempt it, and bear with me if I still do ramble a bit, I tend to do just that!

Apollyon by Jennifer L Armentrout (Covenant #4)

Apollyon is the 4th book in the Covenant series by Jennifer L Armentrout, and after it, there's only one more book coming, Sentinel, due to be released in December. Apollyon was due to be released on April 9th, but I found out through Twitter that it was released two days early on Amazon (via Jennifer L Armentrout herself) so I went to my Kindle app and got it. I had worked night shift the previous day, so I spent the whole Saturday very happily reading the book!

The Covenant series is based on Greek mythology, which was the reason I decided to check the series in the first place. It follows the story of Alex, a Half-Blood descendant of the Greek gods. Half Bloods are the children of Pures and humans, and therefore considered inferior in the society of the Covenant. Not only fantasy, Greek gods, action, romance and witty sarcastic humour are present in these books, there's also a look at social issues along with tradition and stagnation.

Apollyon starts where Deity (book 3) and Elixir (novella 3.5) left us. Alex has come into her Apollyon powers and has connected with Seth, and not just connected, but she has lost herself to the connection, and Seth has taken over her. This makes the beginning of the book a painful one to read, since I love the headstrong, independent and witty, if a bit foot-in-mouth, Alex, but this possesed-by-Seth-Alex is frustrating, scary and slap-worthy, every time she said "My Seth" I wanted to slap her! Thankfully it is short-lived and once she manages to overcome it, set up her defenses and get her own mind back, we have our old Alex back, as witty and arse-kicking as ever, but a bit more mature than in previous books. She doesn't approach everything head first and leave a disaster behind like a bull in a china shop, but finally learns to think first, at least a little!

Aiden and Alex, their relationship keeps on growing, getting them through thick and thin, continuing to love each other with or without other's approval, respecting each other choices, and growing together... they have to be one of my favourite book couples ever! And of course, Aiden is very much one of the very few characters that I could call a book crush for me! Reading about their relationship just gives me that "all the happy feels!".

There's a lot of action on Apollyon, and a lot of gods involvement, and a lot of bad news all around... war has started in full, and all hell as broken loose! I guessed who the bad guy was, but not who he was posing as, that was quite a surprise, although I knew he really was up to no good!

The ending is a very unexpected one, and leaves you with a strange sense of peace, but also a big dread about what happens next... Being at war with the gods, and with Seth still being completely blind to anything that is not what he says... Things are going to get even tougher in Sentinel, I know, and December won't get here soon enough!

Mark This Book Monday: Gold by Talia Vance (my first ARC!).

Hello everyone!

Happy Monday! Today I'm gonna have no one but two Mark This Book Monday entries! I could have done a combined entry of both books, but I thought each book ought to have their own very entry, since one of them should have been last Monday's entry!

So, for the first Mark This Book Monday, I'm going to review my very first ARC copy that I've got through NetGalley!

Gold by Talia Vance (Bandia #2).

As I've said before I requested this book on NetGalley and my request was approved, so I was sent a digital copy of the ARC of this book. As it is an ARC it is not a final copy and might differ from the finished book when it is published, but being able to read it in advance since it doesn't publish till September 8th was amazing!

I read Silver, book 1 in the series and really liked it, but this one I love! I give it 4 and a half stars out of 5!

Gold starts where Silver left us, but not exactly, since Silver left us with Brianna choosing Blake and in Gold Brianna is running to Ireland to clear her head and save her life, and she does it without Blake. And ends up at Austin's ancestral home of all places. And let me tell, this book is big on Austin time!

Through some flashbacks we find out why Brianna came to Ireland without Blake, and during Brianna's exploring of the surroundings of her refuge she gets two big surprises: one of the charms of her bracelet allows her to go back in time, the time before all Hell broke loose and the Feud started; and all of a sudden, Austin is back from the Underworld!

In Gold, we get a much deeper look at all the characters, a new threat, and discover more about how the present, the future and the past get intertwined. The plot deepens, and shows us that nothing really is as it seemed at first, with some very unexpected twists and turns!

Brianna's character goes through a lot, and how she grows to accept who and what she is, the choices she makes and why she makes them, it kept me rooting and feeling for her through all the pages and trials she has to deal with.

There's a love triangle here, and despite my absolute lack of interest on love triangles, this one never buggered me at all. The way it was presented and developed must have made sense enough for me, so I understood Brianna's affections and choices without thinking "arrgh, not another love triangle!!". Also, silly little me hadn't made sense of the book titles before, but mid-book I had a "Aha! That's why book #1 was Silver and book #2 is Gold!" moment. Austing and Blake, Blake and Austin, and surprisingly, I completely got to understand why Brianna makes the choices she does. But, I'm not gonna say anymore on that!

Talia Vance waves a very intrincate story with Ireland as the background, their myths as the inspiration and a look at human nature, choices and Fate as the main drives of it and delivers a great story that will have you turning each page wondering where Brianna's choices will lead her and the rest of the characters.

The ending is heartwrenching in more ways than one, with loss, casualties and a goodbye to Ireland, but also has a glimmer of hope in the end, and I just can't wait to read book 3! Hopefully the title will give us a little hint of what's to come!


Are you wondering if after reading the ARC copy I'm likely to buy the book once it comes out, since I already know what happens? Well yes, this is a book I want to add to my collection!



Stay tuned for the second review of the day, coming later!!