New Year's Eve & Happy 2013!!

Well, today is the 31st of December, and we tend to think back on the year we are leaving and reflect on the good and bad things. And we start with resolutions and wishes for the next year.

I'm fairly hopeful for 2013, and I'm fairly thankful for all the good things that 2012 had in stock for me. Not saying it didn't have bad things, cause it did, and things are not looking particularly rosy for the economy of my country or the people in it, but call it what you may, I still choose to look at the good things first and the bad ones... I just shoulder them and move on. 

That's gonna be probably my only resolution for the new year, to keep thinking positive, taking things the best I can and focusing to look on the bright side of things. Also, 2013 sounds like a good year for a big bloody change for me once and for all, so I hope I'll have scary but happy news for you guys this year!

I'm now gonna leave you with a few photos from this past year that reflect on the good part of it!

Gaurav and his friend Bhuvie, going Gangnam style underwater in Thailand

My first time attending a really big fat Indian wedding and wearing a saree! 

 My first trip to Ireland!

Guinness does taste better in Dublin! 

Wonders of the Ancient World: Newgrange! 

The good things of my job: awesome co-workers and patients that make it! 

And few things are better than the wedding of one of your best friends, and you being the photographer!

With these photos and happy memories, I wave goodbye to 2012 and will welcome tonight 2013 with my family and the 12 grapes to wish for strength and happiness for the next year! 

Happy New Year 2013!! ¡¡Feliz Año 2013!!

Friday Feature: Camamiel!

Well, my blogging hasn't really gone back into full force, but at least, I'm trying to update weekly, and hopefully I'll eventually get back into my 3 posts a week routine!

Today, the first of my days off at work for the holidays, I wanted to make a special Friday Feature! 

I might have mentioned Deb from On Cupcake Moon before, and how we have become taste twins, and how thanks to our common taste for awesome handmade goodies and shops we have connected and became great friends, and I actually can't wait to meet her in person (hopefully next year, twin!).

So, this year I wanted to make her a special Xmas gift, since I know we both love unique things, and after seeing her buying one of Camamiel's Xmas Angels, I thought that a fantastic gift would be a Camamiel mini-Deb! 

 Deb and her Camamiel's mini-Deb!

And we did it! We based the doll on a cartoon of herself that Deb draw, with her kitty, and Ana Camamiel did an absolutely astounding job making sure the doll was a faithful reproduction even to the Rocky The Zombie tee she's wearing!


And Deb absolutely loved it!! So, yeah, further proof that buying handmade is absolutely the best way to go for gift giving!!

Wearing Handmade Wednesday: Julian Bean!!

Hello everyone! Not keeping my promise as well as I should, but I'm finally back with a blog entry!

For today's Wearing Handmade Wednesday one of my besties since college and fellow nurse, Pilu, and featuring one of my very favourite artisans & crafters, Erin from Julian Bean!

I fell in love with this set a while back, and since Pilu's favourite colours is black, and this black and white set was just perfect! And Pilu absolutely loved it!

Buying handmade is always a guarantee of an unique gift, and one that will be loved by the recipient, and also, quite a wonderful experience, buying from an independent artisan that puts loads of love into their work! 

Support handmade and independent artisan and crafters!

Wearing Handmade Wednesday: ReLovePlanet!!

Hello everyone!

This week I'm having a few more days of than I've previously had, so that reflects back a bit on my motivation, and also on my blogging, luckily!

For this week's Wearing Handmade Wednesday I'm using a shot of me and the bf singing "Angels" by Robbie Williams at a bar's karaoke night!

My ReLovePlanet slouch top

I've talked about the amazing Biance and her ReLovePlan.et shop and blog before, but I just wanted to show off one of my fave tops from her, that has the perfect comfy, slouchy fit, but that also looks very nice dressed up to go out!

That's all for today folks, hopefully there are more entries coming this week!

Monday Munchies: Piwi's Tiramisu Cupcakes!

Hello everyone!

New Monday, new week and finally new blog entry and new recipe: Monday Munchies is back!

Quite a while back I shared the recipe of a Cottage Cheese Tiramisu that me and my mum found at our usual cooking magazine Cocina Fácil (Easy Cooking) that we modified a bit, and that everyone in the family totally adores! 

So it was only natural that I wanted to turn that recipe into cupcakes!

Piwi's Tiramisu Cupcakes

I opted for a basic vegan vanilla recipe for the base cupcake, since it'd be the most similar to the lady fingers taste.

Ingredients:

- 1 cup soy milk

- Pinch tumeric powder

- 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar

- 2 TBS constarch

- 3/4 tsp baking powder

- 1/2 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1/3 cup sunflower oil

- 3/4 cup granulated/brown sugar

- 2 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 350ºF/180ºC. Line tin with papers. Beat tumeric powder with milk, cook stirring often in medium-low heat till the milk starts simmering, about 2 to 3 minutes, when milk has yellow hue, remove from heat and let cool for about 5 minutes.

Add vinegar to milk and whisk to curdle. Beat oil, sugar, extract and milk till foamy. Sift in flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix until no large lump remains. Fill liners about 2/3. Bake 20 to 22 minutes.

Let the cupcakes cool for about 5 minutes in the tin, and then move them to a cooling rack to let them cool completely. Meanwhile make the chicory coffe and the cottage cheese cream.

Cottage Cheese Cream

Ingredients:

- 500 grams goat's cottage cheese

- 100 grams icing sugar

- 4 egg whites

- pinch of salt and drops lemon juice

Method:

Mix the goat's cheese with half the sugar till creamy. Beat egg whites on high speed with the salt and lemon juice, when soft peaks start forming add the rest of the icing sugar. Beat well, fold in with the cheese cream. Refrigerate till needed.

To assemble, make a hole in the cupcakes with an apple corer, soak the cupcakes with the chicory coffee (don't be shy!) and fill in with the cheese cream. Top with the cake topper and then pipe a dollop of cream. Sprinkle with Nesquik! Enjoy!

These were very much liked by my nephews and my co-workers, but on my first try, I was a bit sparse with the coffe soaking, so I'll be more indulgent next time!

Wearing Handmade Wednesday: RockerByeBaby!!

Well, yes... Hello everyone! The blog is still alive, sort of!

My motivation for blogging has been rather off as of late, and with a two weeks improptu trip to India and then many days on a row working to return the days my co-workers covered for me... I just didn't have the energy!

I will try to be more constant on the blogging, but really, I can't promise anything, except that I'll try! (Sorry Yoda).

So, here is Wearing Handmade Wednesday!

The bf with his new RBB blankie!

Earlier this year, my boyfriend's dog, Max, died, and since Max loved sleeping on the bf's RockerByeBaby blankie, G thought that Max deserved to be cremated in that same blankie. Fast forward a few months, and G was saying that he needed a new RBB blankie to face the cold months ahead, and he asked for an extra big throw blanket size, and Amber being as awesome as she is, did it! The bf still says it's a bit small, but of course, he's huge! Truth be told, it is the perfect excuse for me to steal his blankie! ;)

RockerByeBaby is a shop mostly for babies and kids, but she also has a special listing for a throw blanket size, so adults can enjoy the awesomeness of their blankies!

That's all for today, but hopefully I'll return soon, sometime this week, maybe?

Mark This Book Monday: Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst!

Hello everyone! Happy Monday!

I'm hoping I can update more often than just once a week, but sometimes work takes all little motivation I might have, and I end up just procastinating online and reading when I'm home and not at work.  Let's see how it goes this week, since I have a full week of work, but I'm hoping to have at least some photos to share with you all on Friday!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, and let me introduce you to this week's Mark This Book Monday: a book about vampires called Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst. 

I have to say, what initially drew me to the book was the cover and the title, which as you might have guessed is a cheeky play with the title of the best selling book turned movie "Eat, Pray, Love" that I haven't read yet (I guess I will eventually get to it...). And then, I went on to read the Goodreads blurb and there's the mention of the unicorn... and I was sold! A book about vampires with unicorns and with a cheeky title, I just had to give it a read!

Before getting into the book itself I have to say my history with vampire books is rather recent. I have been all my childhood terribly afraid of vampires, and after encountering a man wearing what looked like a vampire cape once returning from my swimming classes when I was around 10, I refused to sleep with my window open even during summer for a few years... but being the headstrong little girl I was, I never told anyone of my fears, so I was never reassured of the fact that not only vampires wore capes during winters... Fast forward a few years, closer to the present day, and my first experience with a book about vampires "The Historian" by Elisabeth Kostova (that I will be recommending here too, cause what a book!) and somehow even though after finishing it I had a bit of a hard time falling asleep, it managed to get rid of my fear of vampires. Still, it was only last year that I read "Dracula" but of course, by then after quite a few episodes of True Blood, reading all the books of the Sourthen Vampires and watching quite a few movies about vampires (my favourite has to be Blade) it was not as scary as it would have been a few years back.

Also, after reading all the Sookie books, and quite a few Anita Blake ones and some others, I was quite ready for a different take on vampires, and Drink, Slay, Love succeeded brilliantly on giving you a different spin on the vampire lore! No, the vampires are not "vegan", yes, the main character is in high school, no they don't sparkle in the sun, they do burn like any good vampire would, and yes, there is a love story. But also, let's not forget, there are unicorns!

Meet Pearl, your typical remorseless born vampire, that loves power plays, handles vampire politics and can't stand the sun. Everything is vampire dandy for her until the night when she meet an unicorn, horn-through-her-heart first... after that she is different, mainly cause she discovers she can walk in the sun! Her family decides to take advantage of that irregularity and decide to send her to high school so she can provide easy food for the family. But Pearl is changing in ways that she dislikes and can't reveal to her Family, or risk being destroyed as a liability.

This is a fast read, and loads of fun, I kept on giggling and laughing aloud. It even has a Twilight themed prom... and let's not forget the unicorns! So, if you like vampires and are looking for something out of the ordinary or different, give this a chance, you'll probably love it!

Mark This Book Monday: Defiance by C.J. Redwine!

Welcome, welcome, welcome! To the start of a new week, to another Monday and to another edition of Mark This Book Monday!

Today I want to share with you all a book that I have been eagerly await since I first saw the cover and read the excerpt at Goodreads: Defiance by C.J. Redwine! Aside from recommendations, that's how I tend to pick up book, I see a cover I like, I grab it and read the excerpt, if it sounds intriguing enough, I pick it! The trouble of doing it in Goodreads is that sometimes the book you like is not out yet! That's exactly what happened with Defiance, and once the book was out, I had quite a fight to try and purchase it somewhere, just the epub file to read it on my android tablet... I have a huge rant about device-centric websites for books, and how that's simply beyond irritating for me, but I'll save it for some other day!

Now, onto the book itself! First compliment for this book? It got me out of my reading slump! I'm a huge bookworm, but as of late I had spent two weeks without reading any books, the previous week I had read one book to kill the 4 hours I had to wait at the train station in Valencia waiting for my AVE, and it was Saturday this week and I hadn't done any reading either! But, since I had bought Defiance on Friday before heading to work for night shift, as soon as I woke up, I decided to start reading it!

Let me tell you, it was a refreshing change from the paranormal books I had been reading as of late, no angels, no vampires, no nothing of the like! It's a fantasy mix with postapocalytpic/dystopian kinda book, and also quite unlike some of the previous female leads in other books, Rachel is not exactly your whiney teenager that you want to slap... She starts like a headstrong and rebellious girl, and ends up broken and looking for a way to live with herself, so it's quite a journey for her. The book switches between her point of view and Logans point of view, and like the characters themselves, they're different and balance each other out, complementing each other flaws and strenghts.

This is mostly a character driven plot and not a very happy book, things don't go as you want them to go, just as life itself tends to. The world of Defiance is one that progresses and we discover more of it as the characters show it to us, it's like they keep opening doors and drawing curtains for us to see. You get to know about the world as much as the characters themselves know, and you discover things as they do.

Defiance is the first book of a trilogy, and thankfully, although it leaves questions unanswered and many wounds unhealed, it doesn't end with a massive cliffhanger, cause frankly, I hate those! And they're particularly horrible when you have to wait for a full year to get the next book! According to Mrs Redwine herself, the next book will come out Fall 2013... 

So in the meantime, do check it out, and let me know what you think!