Rawratyourfacex2

Favorite Book of the Moment

2012-01-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Recently I've been reading a lot of books. That's because for Christmas I received a Kindle, which I wanted because it's travel friendly. I travel an hour by bus there and back to get to university every day, and I hate carrying around books with me so I figured a Kindle would be perfect for me. I've already put it to good use and have read tons of books. I read the entire The Hunger Games series and the entire The Maze Runner series and now I've begun reading the series A Storm of Ice and Fire. For those of you that do not know, that is the series A Game of Thrones is based off of.

Walking into the series, I didn't expect much. I was absolutely blown away though once I got drawn into the story once more. I'd already watched season one of A Game of Thrones on HBO, so I was aware of the story in the first novel, but that didn't stop me from reading. I learned a lot of background that was not provided in the show and that was very nice for me. As far as the plot goes, I absolutely LOVE the series. I finished A Game of Thrones and have continued on to A Clash of Kings. Good thing I did that too, because I just found out a couple of hours ago that A Game of Thrones Season 2 won't be out until April 1st (that sucks!)

The reason I love the novels so much is because they remind me a lot of Lord of the Rings. I am a die-hard LOTR fan, so having a new avenue to channel my inner nerd is really refreshing. I also really appreciate that the novels are easy to read. Everyone knows that LOTR isn't the easiest novel to suck your teeth into, and that's mostly because of the old English used in the novels. A Storm of Ice and Fire is not like that at all though; the English is a mixture of old English and new English.

Overall, I've decided that A Storm of Ice and FIre is my new favorite book series. I have not been let down so far and I'm excited that there's many more novels in the series for me to read. I know I didn't go into detail about the actual story, but I'll link season one's trailers so I don't spoil anything.

Hope you enjoyed,
Alex

Haul

2012-01-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

I've recently been on a little bit of a spree. I bought myself some shoes, a bit of makeup and some nail polish. And soon there will be more since my birthday's on the 24th.

So, I'm going to start with my oldest purchase, and that was some shoes. I'm absolutely in love with these shoes! They're very different for me since I always seem to wear neutral shoes. Anyways, here they are:

Can you see why I'm so excited? The leopard shoes are freaking amazing! I'm so excited for them to become my new staple shoes, they're going to bring a pop to any look. The red loafers are also really nice. They were having a sale at Charlotte Russe that was buy 1 pair of shoes, get the other for $15.50 so this was my $15.50 pair. I like them because they're a dark red, not a bright red. These are going to be nice with a bunch of other looks as well.

The next things I got are not going to be a surprise to anyone since they're cult favorites all over YouTube right now. I got some of the Maybelline Color Tattoo 24 Hour Cream Eyeshadows. I got the colors Too Cool, Tough as Taupe and Bad to the Bronze. I was very excited for these because I love colored bases such as the NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencils, but don't like how these crease. I heard from various makeup gurus including Alison from Amarixe that these outlasted Mac Paint Pots, so obviously for the price I had to give them a try. I was not disappointed, these work so well! I have to test them out some more before I review them, but so far, they are working great!

When I got the Maybelline cream shadows I also bought some Revlon Lip Butters. The colors I ended up getting were Berry Smoothie and Strawberry Shortcake. The only one I've really worn so far is the Berry Smoothie one since my lips are very cracked and chapped since it's winter time. It's a "my lip color but better" type of color and I really really like it. The formula (for both, because I have tried on Strawberry Shortcake, just haven't worn it out) is very smooth and super shiny. I can see why they're so popular. I can't wait to get more because I really like these.

Berry Smoothie

Strawberry Shortcake

I also got another pair of shoes at school. They're really really cute combat boots and I can't wait to style them with anything from jeans to leggings. I've wanted brown combat boots for a while, and these casual ones are very nice.

The last thing I've gotten recently is nail polish. I'm most excited to try out the Essie Luxeffect nail polish in A Cut Above with Essie's Carry On underneath. I'm happy that I got Essie's Case Study as well because neutrals are always in season. I also saw some new Revlon nail polishes and decided I'd try out the new formula. There was this pretty olive green color called Spanish Moss that I just had to try because I don't have any colors like them. Overall, I'm stoked with these new colors.

That's everything I've gotten. Hope you enjoyed the haul.

Much love,
Alex

Chocolate Spice Cake

2012-01-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

I felt like sharing a baking disaster/triumph which happened tonight.

I was craving cake and I saw that there was a box of spice cake mix in my boyfriend Alex's garage. It just so happened that I also found chocolate buttercream frosting at my house as well. Through finding these items I decided that I was going to make cake, and boy was I excited. But then I started to think about it, chocolate spice cake, would that even taste good? Being the way I am, I searched online through dozens of food blogs like TasteSpotting, Foodgawker and even allrecipes.com to make sure that a chocolate spice cake would even be a good idea. Plus, I was worried about the idea of using cake mix. I ended up finding a good recipe on allrecipes.com which I'll link below:

Chocolate Spice Cake

So obviously, I did tweak this recipe to fit what I had on hand at the time. Not to mention I was not in the mood to bake a cake from scratch. This recipe was more for inspiration than anything since I basically didn't follow much of the recipe at all. Either way though, I'll share with you what I did.

First I made my cake batter according to the directions on the back of the cake mix box. Then, following a suggestion in the reviews of the cake recipe I linked, I added 2 teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa powder to my cake batter. I also shaved a square of Bakers baking chocolate into my batter using a microplane. My batter looked a little gross when I put it in the oven, but I was willing to risk it, it couldn't be that bad right?

When I took it out of the oven I was very pleased. My cakes smelled delicious and I couldn't wait for them to cool so I could frost them and eat them! My cakes were a little lopsided though, thanks to my boyfriend not having a level oven in his house.

I waited 15 minutes for the cakes to cool and that's where the disaster began. I could not get those cakes out of the freaking pans I baked them in! I tried to be patient and let them cool longer, but that didn't work out. I ended up destroying the cakes as I tried to take them out of the pan and ended up with a huge mess. On the plus side though, the cake pieces tasted delicious! Especially with the chocolate buttercream frosting that I had. And to top it all off my boyfriend Alex, who is the pickiest eater on the whole planet, gave it his seal of approval. Then again he barely ever dislikes anything I cook. :)

So now I have a huge pile of cake chunks, a container of frosting that me and Alex need to eat. Our plates won't look pretty, but we will enjoy some awesome tasting cake the next couple of days.

Much love,
Alex

P.S. For anyone that catches it, yes, my boyfriend and I are both named Alex.