Beauty go to

There is a lot in life that I am still trying to figure out and maneuver around, but when it comes to the beauty and skincare products I use, I have a few items that are here to stay. In no particular order, these items have been tried, tested and found to meet my needs (images courtesy of product websites):

• Aveeno skin brightening daily scrub

• The Body Shop refining bath lily

• Dove advanced care colour repair therapy shampoo and conditioner

• Jurlique rosewater balancing mist (Lush eau roma water is a close second)

• Jurlique rose hand cream 

• Fresh sugar lip treatment (Bath & Body Works - C.O. Bigelow vanilla mint mentha lip shine is a close second)

• Bath & Body Works pocket size hand sanitizer

I think this is quite a list of affordable, value for money products that definitely do the job I need them to do!

Marbled chocolate frosted cupcakes

Cupcakes were the subject of my latest baking attempt, which I was happy to make because it had been a while. Once again I had a reason to whip up a batch; my friend's birthday celebrations last week as mentioned here. In the days prior, I had a few ideas running through my head of what variety I would like to make. I decided on a marbled chocolate frosted cupcake, but I also now have another idea that I would like to try out at a later date. As I was looking online for a suitable recipe, I came across further inspiration and was reminded of how, as a child, I used to make marble cake with my grandma. We would separate the cake batter into thirds, leaving one third as is, using pink food colouring to change the colour of another third and adding cocoa powder to the remaining mixture. Wanting to recreate this in a cupcake, I decided on the recipe found here. I must admit I was a bit hesitant about mixing the ingredients all at once as the recipe called for, but it wasn't too bad. When the batter was ready I poured the vanilla portion into the cupcake liners then spilt the remaining mixture. I added a few drops of pink food colouring to one portion and the cocoa powder to the other. I put the pink cake batter into the liners before the chocolate, but in hindsight I think it would have made a better marbled effect if I had done it in reverse. As you can see below, I still need to work on my technique to get the effect right, but that is okay because I enjoy practicing.

For the chocolate frosting I went with my own measurement of ingredients, which is what I seem to prefer at the moment:

• 1 & 1/4 cups butter, softened
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 2 cups icing sugar
• 2-3 drops of vanilla essence

I chopped up the butter and put it into a bowl with the icing sugar. I must have been a little bit distracted, as usually I would whip the butter by itself first. I whipped the butter and icing sugar together until it was combined. Next I added the few drops of vanilla essence and the cocoa powder, which I did not sift this time around. I mixed the ingredients together on low speed at first to avoid the powder going everywhere. Once it was all combined, I turned the electric beaters up to medium speed and whipped the frosting for about a minute. As per usual, I used my Wilton 1M decorating tip to apply the frosting to the cupcakes and give them a nice polished finish. The final step was a sprinkling of pearlized jewel jimmies. The photos below don't quite showoff the marbled effect, but that just means I really should work on my photography as well!

Way too long

This work week seemed quite long for some reason, which definitely wasn't helped by the constant rain. However, there were a few bright spots throughout it that kept me going until the weekend was here once more. Last night there were some lovely early birthday celebrations for my really awesome friend Corinne, a fellow Aussie living in Vancouver. Tonight was the other positive part of my week as I got to indulge in my favourite pastime of going to the movies. It has been a while since I last went, which I am pretty sure was when I last blogged about it here. I was really craving a cinema trip and so it was decided that Snow White and the Huntsman would be the movie of choice. However, it was only released today and the most convenient session time was sold out. This actually worked out for the best because the replacement movie choice of The Avengers was fantastic. It is such a well made movie with great special effects, action scenes and even some perfectly timed humour. We walked out of the cinema incredibly satisfied and happy that a sold out session led us to a great, maybe even better, movie option. If you go to see it you must stay until the end of the credits, which will take a while; there are a lot of people involved in this movie, but it will be worth it. Just like last time I wrote about going to the movies, I will also be going on Sunday to see The Five-Year Engagement, which should be a nice light-hearted movie. I think if my life got made into a movie, which there is no reason for it to, then Emily Blunt could play me at my current age. As you can see I dream big sometimes!

The Avengers movie poster (image courtesy of IMDb)