Friday, October 12, 2012

In our town of Halloween...

In the spirit of the season, my friend Hannah invited a few of us to her place this past weekend to carve pumpkins and watch Halloween movies!

Hannah absolutely loves carving pumpkins, and as a result, decided to splurge a bit this year on some pretty neat tools. Whenever I've carved pumpkins in the past, I've always used those somewhat crappy, cheap sets that always break about halfway through. Not Hannah; she had these really nice scoopers that meant that I barely had to touch the gross pumpkin pulp at all (incidentally, that was one of the best parts about having Matt as one of our roommates in college - he would do all the gross pumpkin work and let us decorate it). Hannah also got a hot knife, which is apparently a thing. It's basically just a crafting scalpel that you plug in, but it makes the carving process much easier. Academy Award Winner Sandra Bullock** commented that it was very convenient, because when he inevitably cut himself, it would automatically cauterize the wound. 

Hannah carved out Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare Before Christmas.



Academy Award Winner Sandra Bullock carved the Planet Express logo from Futurama.



I decided to carve out The Monarch from the Venture Bros. He's probably my favorite character on the show.


Now all three...





I had mentioned to Hannah that by carving them so early, they'd all be rotten come Halloween. Hannah pointed out that that was her plan all along, because she wants to have multiple carving nights. Hooray!

WHILE WE CRAFTED: We watched The Little Shop of Horrors and Underworld (well, I may have fallen asleep during Underworld, but that's neither here nor there).

**Actual name has been changed to protect the identity of my friend


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

To Boldly Go Where No Cupcake Has Gone Before

I'd just like to preface this by saying that yes, I am kind of a nerd. Good. I'm glad we have
that out of the way.

So last Friday, a few of my friends got together to watch some of our favorite episodes from Star Trek: Voyager. We had planned on it being more of a drinking game (where we'd drink whenever Captain Janeway ordered her standard "coffee, black" or whenever Tuvok tried mind-melding with something, for example), but it turns out that we didn't have nearly enough rules and somehow chose the only episodes where none of their recurring antics took place. Whatever.

Anyway, after planning the event, we realized that it also happened to be our friend Matthew's birthday! So, at the insistence of Academy Award Winner Sandra Bullock*, I made Star Trek cupcakes!

Red for Command, yellow for Engineering, and Green for Science/Medical

I was just really happy with how they turned out and wanted to show everyone.

WHILE I BAKED: I watched Grimm, actually, but am now super upset because they took season 1 off of Hulu+.

*Some actual names have been changed to protect the identity of a friend of mine.