#i will also be making my own cake

[nolivingdudeami]

i need to stop thinking about my wedding because 1) i'm not even engaged and 2) i don't even have a boyfriend

[squeakadeeks]

"In this world, I'm known as...the Winter King" 🌨❄️🌬

This cosplay was so so close to never seeing the light of day, as this was the aforementioned project I rage quit to procrastinate with Nekomancer on haha. I really adored the fionna and cake special (and adventure time in general) and wanted to cosplay from it for eons...although I will admit this project was intended to be "generic blue and silver winter regal outfit for a variety of characters" and it was a toss up on whether or not the first run was going to go to the Winter King/Simon or Jack Frost...but I couldn't find my jack frost wig so here we are!

This was my first time working a lot with velvet and low key....I loved it and would love to use it more.

[vacantgodling]

✨preferences should not be standards for writing advice✨

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

That cute bunny girl is called Noisette.Can you please tell me what you cooked besides pizza?

Pep: "...!"

Pep: "Si! Noisette was her name! Grazie friends! And grazie for Poco Noisette!"

Pep: "…Reh ot yrros yas ot deen I... Niaga reh ees nac I epoh I…"

Pep: "Bocnroc etalocohc ekil! Wonk I sepicer rehto eht fo emos em thguat ehs! Ssendnik reh rof reh knaht ot deen osla I tub."

Pep: "Enoyreve deef ot dah I tahw htiw dluoc I revetahw gnikam yltsom saw ti. Oot gnikab fo stol dna atsap fo stol saw ereht, azzip sediseb dekooc I tahw rof sa."

Pep: "Niaga yrt ot ecin eb dluow ti os, elihw a ni nevo gnikrow a dah t'nevah I. Noos gnikooc emos uoy wohs nac I ebyam!"

Pep: "Yrros... Naem uoy ohw wonk I kniht t'nod I... 'Sessob niam'...? Noitseuq rehto eht dna..."

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

and so begins the making of christmas presents

[sysig]

When you weren’t looking (Patreon)

[softshuji]

Any men out there wanna pretend to be my bf to get my parents off my case about marriage? I am so so serious right now.

[airyairyaucontraire]

It's strange how much, when I have time off (e.g. tomorrow is ANZAC Day and I've booked the Friday after as annual leave so I can have a four-day weekend), I feel like "ah, normal life for a bit," because work-day life never really feels like life.

Anyway, this weekend is my mother's 70th birthday and she's having a party (catered ladies' lunch) and she's sad because her sister is sick and can't come but on the other hand her best friend has flown over from Australia for it, and I will spend a chunk of tomorrow baking two large and sumptuous carrot cakes for the occasion.

The best carrot cake recipe I've ever found btw: Carrot Cake III from Allrecipes.com. I make it without the pecans, because my sister's allergic to nuts, and instead of plain cinnamon I use mixed spice (called pudding spice in the UK and pumpkin pie spice in the USA). Otherwise, I just follow the recipe and I really cannot over-emphasise how nice this cake is. My sister and mother request it for their birthday cakes pretty much every year.

It's so moist you can make it a couple of days in advance with no noticeable deterioration (provided you store it wrapped up or in an airtight container, of course). The original recipe is for a 9x13 rectangular pan but it works pretty perfectly if you divide the batter equally between two medium-size round cake pans and then layer the baked cakes with the cream cheese icing, which is my normal method. This time, however, I'm making the rectangular version for ease of cutting and serving to a lot of different people.

And it's easy. You don't actually need an electric mixer, if you have a whisk or an egg-beater and some gumption that's just as good. I speed things up by grating the carrots in a food processor - as well as being quicker, I find this results in tidier grated carrots that don't leak and slop their juice so much. In my experience, three medium-size carrots usually yield three cups of the grated stuff, and I would recommend using a grater or food processor disc with smaller holes - thinner strands of carrot give you a better-textured cake.

And as you may know if you know me, I like carrot cake to be a simple and honest CARROT cake, and this one is. There is no secret, sneaky fruit involved.* Carrot it says and carrot it is and carrot it ever shall be.

I once made this with heirloom purple carrots as an experiment. It looked simply disgusting and tasted exactly the same.

*I don't mind if you want a carrot and pineapple cake! I just think you should call it a carrot and pineapple cake. Stuff you if you put sultanas or raisins in it though.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Misc. photos from the past year or so ~

[raycatz]

In fourth grade my class had a unit where we learned all about ships and sailing and sea shanties and then spent a day/overnight on a retired ship. We were split into different roles. I was in the galley team. Which was fun. But in retrospect I was probably put there because I was one of the quieter less athletic kids. BUT ALSO. I didn't get to see anything other than the main deck and I'm so pissed about it still!!!! My classmates got to mess with the ropes and tie knots and see the ship. I got to go down one flight of stairs for the historic tour section but nothing else!!!! Didn't get to stand under any of the other masts or see any cool views or go on any of the other decks I'm o|< little me missed out I would've loved to see more. They should have made sure all the kids got to experience more. They had us take night watch shifts of like half an hour, so like, we each were woken up separately and went and stood out in the cold and were given a journal to write in. I did like that part.

[dark-immortal-kiss]

The idea that Lestat is another love of Armand’s life is going to haunt me for awhile. I know it’s accurate from the books, but to hear it from Assad. The pain of having to listen to Louis recount his great passionate and toxic love with Lestat, while Armand loves them both, painfully? Season 2 is really gonna kill me, isn’t it?

[trevanent]

I think one thing I will say about the finale was that the most problematic aspect of the concept of the show was how it feels like they had to use the Fionna and Cake plot to Trojan horse a resolution to a swathe of loose ends Simon and Betty's arcs had. They pulled it off even better than I ever wanted to let myself hope for for the most part but I would say my main issue if anything was how cramped the finale felt when I think they could have left a lot more up to season 2 speculations (especially with the resolutions for the alt universes, they didn't really feel necessary when they basically just had to egg Scarab).

I feel I liked the understated melancholies of seeing Simon recontextualized and kinda infantilized in that temporary form hosting his mind, and some people have said the Casper and Nova thing felt hamfisted but I thought the vibes were too cute to care that it wasn't particularly "efficient" as far as metaphors go, but that does slow down the pace which probably crunched the ending a little harder :'). But it also worked in further showing the sad side-effect of the crown on Simon's relationships, including that of stunting his ability to have ever matured in his understandings of love and his relationship with Betty. I also think their last scene in the memory worked because it was Simon reconsidering how he viewed their relationship for the first time, even if his attempt to do for Betty what she did for him would have just been an inversion of their original flaw, the scene rests on them understanding it's unchangeable anyway, so that decision doesn't matter so much and it's not something for Simon to dwell on.

I also feel I liked the scene a lot in spite of how scarce it felt in the finale was because of what was most conspicuously unaddressed, which was just the sheer logistical impossibility of any different choices they made having possibly been any "better." It sticks out because Betty says they could have made better choices, which kinda seems to situate their relationship in a vacuum as if there wasn't a very high likelihood had they done anything different at that crossroads, they would have just been literally nuked into orbit regardless. Sure, it seems like enough time had passed for them to have worked out their relationship better at least and then died, but that kinda seems better by an arbitrarily less tragic amount, and really it seems the least tragic possibilities ever were either that they conceive their relationship more healthily, Simon finds the crown and protects Betty from exploding somehow and also doesn't warp her to the future, and they live some terrible survival life but at least they get a chance to live something kinda fulfilling and Betty probably would have taken care of Ice King decently for the remainder of her life once Simon was gone while also having a better understanding of what had happened to him. The only other hand would be that she also was still warped to the future he finds the crown but Simon had not enabled her self-sacrificial tendencies and so she becomes less undividedly obsessed with saving him and instead integrates into Ooo more properly and also accepts what had become of him (I find it hard to think she would have just let him die either way though lmao).

That all said, they had been around a long time to have reflected over everything. I think it is a bit of an issue that they don't really allude to that, but I find it easy to believe that they did recognize how thwarted a happy ending would ever be for them by all angles of their reality, yet they still had that tender ache of that simple and small tragedy just between them two that still exists within the torrent of catastrophe that engulfed them and the breadth of their fate. So much horror in their lives but they reconnect and find themselves primarily concerned with that last regret of not having been able to make the ideal relationship they quite thought they had.

[xcziel]

it is so annoying being pre-mildly-depressed because you are anticipating feeling disappointment at a future time

[jorvikzelda]

getting myself all hyped up to bake a cake. i’m like. on the bus thinking about flavours. it’s the little joys in life i guess

[cinnamon-notes]

i love having multiple skills and random knowledge to bring up casually just because the subject emerged yet you didn't know i knew that

[sysig]

Cool guys, measured in C° (Patreon)