“I changed when you came into my life. Time and experience had left me rough around the edges. I learned to get on, without needing anything or anyone else. I never wanted to be different or try and be better for any other person. But then you happened. You showed me what it was to love. How beautiful it could be to share something like that with another person. And then I wanted to be better for you all of the time. For some reason, I was never able to do it.”

This is just a small section from the thing that I read today.
The full story is here.
It’s from a site called LeLove.
LeLove is a website that is made up of reader submissions about stories of love. The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s not all cotton candy romance. I like that.

One day, sometime soon maybe, I’ll open my eyes again.
I’ll give up the ghost of you and move on.

French Chocolate cupcakes with White chocolate Ganache.
I really really adore French Chocolate cupcakes. Know why? These cupcakes actually use chocolate rather than cocoa.
Plus they are French. Yum. <3 Speak to me in a French accent and it’s guaranteed that I’ll swoon.
I am swooning already in anticipation.
(PS- The original recipe is here.)

For the Cupcakes -
180g Chocolate. (We used dark.)
225g Butter.
4 Eggs.
250g Flour.
2 Tablespoons Baking Powder.
1 cup Milk.

Oven = 180° C or 350° F.
-Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. (Cheap double boiler! – Place the chocolate in a bowl and put the bowl into a pot of boiling water.)
-Keep on stirring until chocolate is smooth and then take off heat.
-Beat eggs with a whisk in another bowl.
-Cream butter and sugar until pale.
-Add the whisked eggs to the butter-sugar mixture.
-Add chocolate to the butter-sugar-egg mixture.
-Shift the flour and baking powder into another bowl.
-Add the flour-baking powder alternatively with milk to the butter-sugar-egg mixture.
-Pour the batter into liners 3/4 full and put them in the oven for 20mins.

White chocolate Ganache.
200g White Chocolate.
200g Icing sugar.
150g Soft butter.

-Melt white chocolate in double boiler or the same method as above.
-Cream butter and icing sugar until light and pale.
-Add chocolate, mix and refrigerate until it is firm enough without running.
-Pipe!

I actually made these with Syill on one of our baking days. We also made Sausage buns.
C:
I love sausage buns.
Mmmmm yum. <3
You know what people of the internet?
I’m going to make more.
;)
Just because I can.

xo Mel.

WHAT IS THIS?
I am less than impressed with you.
In fact, I am so less than impressed with you that I am going to find another recipe.
That is right.
Do you hear me now?

You have ruined our relationship Russian Fudge Recipe.
Literally ruined it.
To the point of where Google has no clue how to fix it.
It is that serious.

We are over.

xo
Your-soon-to-be-ex Mel.

(I finally got the second batch to set and even now it’s still on the soft side.)

Owl ring!
All the rings that I have bought of Ebay have been less than $4USD each.

Actually, this owl ring is mildly annoying to wear. It’s very easy to twist around my finger.
(Owl ring cost? $0.25USD! No joke! The rest was shipping. DX)

But wait!
There is more!

OCTOPUS RINGS!
I couldn’t decide which ring colour I wanted.
So I did what I thought was obvious.
I bought both.

My hands! With the rings on!
Huzzarh!

Oh? Did I mention that I have already bought a Fox ring and I am just waiting for it to arrive?
No? Well, now you know.

But! The ring I really, really want isn’t an octopus ring or an owl ring it’s a JELLYFISH RING!!
There is a slight problem with the Jellyfish ring. The only Jellyfish ring that I actually like costs $2100 USD. Ouch!
But one day, this amazing jellyfish ring will be mine!

The animal rings aren’t the only new things that I have bought.
You see, mum is a Nutrimetics consultant.
Sometimes Nutrimetics also sells bags.
Mel needs a new bag.
Do you see where this is going?
Huzzarh! New bag for Mel! Only $10!

(Of which Mum gave me for free. <3)

Huzzarh! I actually really like that bag.
It’s big enough for my day-to-day things. Of which I have a lot of.

Of course I couldn’t not buy nail polish.
What sort of world would that be if I didn’t?
A very sad world indeed.
Considering that I only have 1 red nail polish in 30+ nail polishes, I decided that now was the time to get into the reds.

Speaking of nail polish! Did I ever mention that the holographic nail polish had arrived? No? I am shocked and horrified at myself on your behalf.

Behold! It is actually rainbowtastic!
The camera does not capture it in all of it’s holographic glory.

Holographic nail polish wasn’t a waste of money!
Huzzarh!
It’s kind of difficult to apply but that apparently plagues even the best holographic nail polishes.

Shopping hasn’t been the only thing that I have been doing. There has been lots of baking as well.
Currently I have 4 litres of unset fudge. 1 batch is half set but the first batch? Gone burger. I have no idea where I have gone wrong. This has induced much kitchen rage.
I will post about this later to fully vent out my kitchen rage in letter form.

Okay, I am off. I have a batch of hot cross buns waiting to put in the oven and a coffee cake to bake in the morning.

Happy easter (and the like!)

xo Mel.

xo Mel.

xo Mel.

You can see actually the place where Ness nicked the icing.

<- More Ness oddity. I was sitting at my laptop doing…something. I turned around and the first thing that caught my attention was Ness playing her violin with one foot inside of the washing basket and the other one out.
Why?
I have absolutely no clue.

a

a

a

a

And a recipe for Ginger-lime cream. C:

Ginger-lime cream. (Yoinked from Sky High by Alisa Huntsman.)

4 egg yolks.
1/2 cup sugar.
Zest of 1 lime.
1/4 cup Lime juice.
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger.
1 1/2 cup cold cream.

Whisk the egg yolks in a saucepan. Gradually whisk in the sugar, lime zest, lime juice and ginger. Cook it over medium-low heat, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan with a spatula.
Keep it on te heat for 3-5 mins until the yolks visibly thicken.
You know when it is ready when you drag a spoon/spatula along the bottom of the pot and a clear path remains. Also? It should reach a custard consistency.
Take it off the heat and put the mixture through a fine mesh sieve to remove the zest and the ginger shreds.
Cover the mixture and put it in the fridge for an hour or until very cold.
In a large mixing bowl whip up the cream until stiff.
Fold the mixture into the cream.

YOU CAN NOT REWHIP THIS CREAM SO IT IS BETTER TO MAKE IT JUST BEFORE YOU WANT TO ICE THE CAKE.

The cake by the way is Ginger chiffon cake with Ginger-lime cream in the center and as the frosting.

xo Mel.

In reference to my astounding (pff) French knowledge, here are some ‘photos prises cool sur mon appareil photo’ .

These are 5 random but cool photos off of my camera. Because I can’t choose them all, and I gotta capture them all (oh gosh pokemon references make my stomach hurt)

I will keep you posted ;D

1. A photo of Mel reading a book which was actually rather surprisingly good-

2. A photo of my watch and the thingy on my wall-

I do like this photo, my hand shook at the last minute of taking this photo and it turned out better than intended, to be honest.

3. This is a photo of some scrapbooking paper in a frame. (I did scrapbooking in like, year 5 for a day ot something but hey- free morning tea, who’s complaining?) it is kind of backwards. I would tell you that’s because of my artistic  creative license and stuff but the truth of the matter is, I shoved it in the wrong way and frankly, I couldn’t be stuffed changing it back. Judge me.

4. Hey. I like chocolate.

That was actually extraordinarily yum.

5. Earth hour ’10.  We ended up sticking scissors into melting wax etc. …  and 6 because I couldn’t help myself. whoops.

<3 Vanessa

Dad has been taking us (by us I mean myself amd Karl) to art classes.

2 and a half hours of pure freedom from homework, pottering around in a class and making cups of tea. :) <3

It also spells out one thing-  M O N E Y.

For this painting I scored 20 bucks off dad (Be mindful he also payed for a bajillion canvases, new paint, photos to use, and the cost of art classes)

1) is taken off a magazine (WHOOPS) and is of a panda with the same markings as Jean Simmons off of Kiss. (Markings equalled probably P H O T O S H O P P E D)

^ A better resolution photo is of this one:

Do you see the signage on the right hand corner? OH MY GOD I AM IN LOVE WITH SIGNAGE.

Father was pretty much begging for the name Van.C  (Yeah. No.) but arguably it sounded far too like Van Gogh for my liking. Another painting I am rather partial too (number 2) is one I have painted of my eye. It’s not perfect, but it’s damn well pretty and took less than two hours to paint.(It is however actually rather frightening when waking up and finding an eye staring at you.)

Dad (the silly man) has a strong dislike of the strand of hair covering my eye.

Number 3- Me, Mellykins and Karlisle at a young age.

Please don’t look at my brother. I know, Karl looks like he has eyeliner. I know, he looks sunburnt. (Trust me, it’s on the UNFINISHED label for a reason. UNFINISHED meaning far from ever making it onto canvas ;D)

There is one good side to this painting though.  Kittyface.

ANGRY ABUSED KITTY FACE.

Ack. It’s just too cute.   ——–>

Number 4)  is one father showed me. Initially it was a Chinese paper cutting, now turned painting. This turned problematic due to the finite detail in the papercutting, which was funnily enough printed at twice the size as my canvas meaning I had to paint and reduce it into DOUBLE FINITE. Father decided doing detailed work was more beneficial than my norm- (two hours of slapping paint on a canvas, chucking different colours everywhere and declaring it ‘finished’)

But my problem is OH MY GOD IT’S SO BORING REPAINTING TINY LITTLE FLICKS. Just…   No!

This is what happened on one of the earlier painting sessions. I did not have a photo so I was basically doing my slap paint and hope it works routine.

She (this adorable old woman painter tutor that always has a cup of tea and a biscuit in hand who joins my father in coversation to discuss the best way to grow orchids and to talk about the good old days of music. Yes. Old people) fixed me up with a picture and thus:

SHIPS.  Note that this is unfinished and my camera was being a poo with the flash. I hate flash sometimes! (It is belooooow a bit)

So the moral of the story is I love mum’s proper camera.

But my camera’s flash kind of sucks sometimes.

It takes pretty face pictures but DESTROYS (and I do literally mean destroys) a painting.

Argh.

:)  Love from Ness

14 and still kickin’.

One day when I grow old and I am a film director and an artist and a linguist and a lawyer and teacher and owner of a PIE com…famous you will look at this blog and think. Oh my! I remember that young girl from those good old days of acrylic and oil paint.

I AM THAT YOUNG GIRL. ;D ohmy.

xo Mel.

There is another advantage to this goldfish memory of mine.
Whenever I walk into the kitchen I see the cake and then I remember that I have cake!
Cake!
W00t!
This is also forgetting that fact that I was the one that baked the cake and I have had that particular cake before.

Mmmm Pandan Chiffon cake.
This particular cake is a wee bit denser than what it should be.
I blame the egg whites.

As you can see in the photo in the left.
When I was beating the egg whites and after I had finished adding in all of the sugar, the egg mixture wasn’t as stiff as it should be however it was super super shiny so I thought it would still be okay.

No! It is not okay.

TADATRADAH!
The rest of the cake.
Of which there is less than half left.

Omnomnomnom cake!

Oooo! Do you know what I remembered?
I HAVE CAKE!

Mmmmm cake. <3

xo Mel.