Baking: Halloween Themed Candy Bark (No Heat)

After browsing Pintrest this week I came across possibly the easiest sweet treat to make ever which can easily be themed to suit any occassion. As Halloween is just around the corner - how depressing is it that the clocks go back tonight, cold dark evenings? no thanks! - and the shops are stocked full of pumpkins, bats and anything else slightly scary I thought it would be good to embrace the coming season and create some 'candy bark'.
If you have tried any of the new Cadbury's marvellous creation bars I find these very similar to them, melted chocolate poured into a baking tray and different chocolate and jellies put in to create anything to your own taste! It can then be shared by being smashed or cut up once stored in the fridge to harden :)

♡

Baking: Simple Cupcakes

With the weather turning, coupled with a lot of free time recently I have been trying and experimenting with my baking. I'm probably most experienced with the standard fairy cake as they never seem to stay around long in my house! but inspired by programmes such as the great british bake off, cake boss and various pin boards on Pintrest I'm really enjoying testing different types of decorating at the moment :)
For these cakes I was planning on using a standard cupcake recipe from the BBC food website but at the time I could not find the weighing scales anywhere in the kitchen and no one was going to be home for a while so I just guessed the amount which is probably not recommended but fortunately it gave an even better result than usual so maybe all wasn't lost!
Whilst browsing the cake decorating aisle in Asda I picked up piping bags and tips and some Betty Crocker icing which happened to be on offer, perfect. After watching a couple of demonstrations online about how to use piping bags properly (it's actually so much simpler than what I thought!) I was off and away and here are the results :)

I'm looking forward to making some more seasonal baking treats in the next week, Pintrest is becoming a slight obsession......send help

♡

Makeup: Everyday eye look with the Urban Decay Naked palette ♡

After owning this palette for about a year I've no word of a lie used it probably every single day. It just has every neutral colour you could ever want to use and is versatile enough to use for both day & night occasions. Recently I've been loving using just two colours to enhance the size of my eyes using a shadowing technique. Firstly I use Virgin all over and up to my brow bone, focusing a lot on the inner corner to help with the 'wide awake' look, then using a blending brush (Sigma E25 is a current favourite!) I concentrate half-baked across the top of my crease, intense blending is essential in creating a natural look. Then as usual I just add my usual line of liquid eyeliner, then my holy grail bright eye pencil from Benefit on the water line - with added lashings of mascara, my eyes appear more wide awake than usual, no matter the amount of sleep.

What's your favourite eyeshadow from Urban Decay? Do you think all the hype is worth it?

♡

Fashion: Bindis

Love them or hate them, right now bindis are a thing. No longer a symbol of Indian religion and tradition they are becoming a must have fashion accessory and makeup enhancer. This summer i spotted them firstly in the club scene in ibiza, reminiscent of the little star and heart gems you would stick on the side of your face at primary school discos but a more stylish version for the 2013 early twenty year olds. The teen pop princess Selena Gomez has even been spotted wearing one in her recent performances of her new single 'Come and Get It' despite reports and complaints of disrespecting the Hindi religion.
Some may say they look like silly sparkly dots in the middle of your forehead and they aren't doing you any favours but personally I don't see anything wrong with something that adds a little sparkle to your face on a night out :-)

x x x

Thoughts: You want a job in media? what..

'You'll never get a job' 'You're going to have to work hard' 'Good luck with that' 'Media doesn't count as a degree'

In the last two years I have honestly lost count of the amount of times I have been told this by so many different people. When I first applied for university I tried to find a completely different degree a more 'intellectual' & respected one, 'American Studies' I liked the description of it, I liked the route it could take me in but in the end I decided it was just plain boring, & I just wouldn't enjoy studying it at all. I think it's so important to choose something you like especially if you're going to be spending three years of your life on it &  paying £9,000 a year.

I'd like to say I'm quite a well rounded person, I try to surround myself with as many different people as possible. I have friends studying a variety of different subjects at university including medicine, english & sciences. I also have friends who decided to completely ditch the education route to work in retail positions & work there way up in different companies and there's nothing wrong with that.

No matter what people are always going to be interested in the 'media' alhough the way we recieve it may be constantly changing with the constant technology innovations, it's always going to be of interest to people no matter what & I don't believe people should put it down so much. Fair enough after walking out with a media related degree no matter on your grades you are defiantly not guaranteed a job like other careers such as medicine but I think it's one of those subjects that proves that if you work hard then you can succeed. Personally I like the versality of it, I could never ever picture myself sitting in an office all day staring at numbers like some people I know, I want to be out learning new things, meeting different people & seeing new things everyday..

It is annoying when I tell someone what I plan to study at university as I constantly feel like I need to defend myself, but what I've been thinking if recently is why should I? Why is a law degree ranked any higher than one in a media related subject when there both equally just as important in society! You may need higher grades to get on one but that is no measurement on what kind of person you are which leads me onto another subject I feel strongly about which is that your school grades are not the be all end all & that exams are not a true measurement of ability.
I'm not 100% sure where I want to end up but I'd rather be studying something that has different avenues to go down rather than just one. 

Just a rant.

♡

Music: Have I heard this before? ...Yes probably

Ever heard a song that you feel as if you've heard before? Think Flo-Rida's 'Good Feeling', 'I Cry', 'Right Round', 'Sugar' ...actually the majority of his songs have echoes of releases in times gone by. Turning semi-well known songs into Top Ten chart hits is not a new thing but is this really a good thing for the music industry though? Effectively it's just stealing and copying someone elses song and building on the previous artists success, a lot of the time, without permisson, is this really fair?

Will.i.Am has got himself in a lot of trouble recently. This week he released on his YouTube account a song from his new album 'Let's go', which some could say is a instant rip off of a song by lesser well known house/dance DJ's Matt Zo & Arty's 'Rebound'.  There was a statement released saying he was interested in the song but they denied working with him, and he still used it without the labels permission. Although this is not the first time 'Steal.I.Am' has been accused of stealing songs some say that his latest number one with Britney Spears 'Scream & Shout' has elements of Avicii's Levels. This is bad press for the star who was also recently accused of using some of Tulisa's lyrics in the same duet, where there is still an ongoing battle pursuing. 

Personally I'm torn on the whole idea of 'stealing' songs, I love how something can be updated and shown in a different way to appeal to a different type of audience but if this is done without permission from the original artist, then the artist and the management seem to be covering it up in any way possible it all looks very suspicious to me and as a result the artist loses respect from their fans and critics alike.

♡

Entertainment: Springbreakers

Take two ex disney actresses, cast them in a film focused on sex, drugs, crime and gun violence and you have one of the most eagerly anticipacted films of 2013, Spring breakers.

Directed by Harmony Korine, starring well known actors such as James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, and new on the scene Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine and rap star Gucci Mane. The film follows four college-aged girls who decide to rebel against the norm and rob a chicken restaurant in order to pay for their 'american tradition' of spring break, but in reality it's much more than that. It was actually intended to be only released on DVD but because of the publicity it got - most likely due to the actresses and subjects covered, they decided to release it on the big screens.

After seeing it myself on the opening day most of the people that I have personally spoken to about Spring Breakers have gone on and on about how terrible they thought it was, how it 'didn't make sense' but i believe that they fail to see what the movie is actually portraying it can get frustrating to hear the same review from the same people over and over who refuse to take it as anything more than a first glance. Yes the story seems unbelievable (what films are?) and it may mainly be focused on partying, drugs and violence BUT if you look a little deeper, don't look at it so literally it really does have a good message encoded in it.

spoiler alert

The Complaints - “The girls and nudity were unnecessary” "Selena Gomez was only in it for like a half hour” “Those parties are unrealistic” “The James Franco gun barrel scene was disturbing” “What was the point of Brit and Candy talking to their mums about wanting to be good right before they went and killed everyone” “They should have been punished in the end” "It repeated itself so much" 

Explanations - Why is any nudity shown in any film ever? This film like any other, is a form of art and the opening scene introduction which includes raging teenagers drinking, kissing, flashing usually covered body parts, and essentially just partying is Harmony Korine’s interpretation of what he believes a spring break vacation actually entails. The introduction is actually very reminiscent of the live spring break specials filmed and sponsored by MTV several years ago (seelink here). Also it may serve as a warning for those who had other expectations for the movie to stop watching the film i.e. Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens fans. Keep in mind the movie is rated 18, and that is for a reason. Korine’s first scene in his 1995 film Kids is supposedly just as bad. I think having such a graphic opening scene cuts straight to the point, if you don't like what you see or are offended then you aren't ready for what's coming at all.

If you are only going to see this film because Selena Gomez or Vanessa Hudgens are in it then you need to go to your bedroom and rip down your Wizards of Waverley Place poster, burn your High School Musical DVD's and start looking at your life. Also the fact that some people have lost respect for the main actresses because of this movie is incredibly narrow minded because just like the director, they are artists. Actresses aren't supposed to play the same character over & over again, that's the point. Maybe they don’t want to be seen as the innocent TV star that they have been type cast as and maybe it’s time for there fans to grow up too.

Even I found the James Franco scene a little hard to watch but it was the moment in the film where you saw the connection made between Brit, Candy and Alien. You saw that he would be willing to do anything for them at that point which would in the end lead to his death, you could see how the status of the characters changed, instead of the girls being in awe of Alien and his so called power, it changed so quickly to where they were calling the shots, quite literally.

The scenes near the end where Brit and Candy called their mums urging them that they wanted to be better, happy and wanted to do good in school and that they had finally realized that "in order to be happy they had to be good people" is actually a very important scene concerning the film as a whole and more importantly answers another problem people found with the movie, regarding punishment. Korine made this scene particularly long in the film and I believe it was so that his last point would be made clear. Some argue that the last two girls had gone unpunished. The first to leave, Faith, punished her self in the guilt she felt for having committed such "unchristian" behaviour  and the second girl to leave, Cotty, was shot in the arm so she was definitely psychically punished. The girls each told their mums that “the secret to being happy is being a good person” and after the roughly 15 murders they both commit they are inarguably NOT good people. Essentially they become evil and by their own definitions they shall never be happy. They are punished by being fated to live unhappy lives. Lives thats may mirror Alien’s who after all was plotting to kill his ex best friend. Will Candy and Brit follow in their foot steps?

I was left with questions though, so why did Alien want to kill his best friend? What made Brit & Candy so Destructive? Did they kill Alien so he didn't get a chance to kill himself. I believe a good film should leave you with questions and wanting more...

The cinematography was stunning with the luminous visuals, so different to any film I’ve seen recently. The repetition of the dialogue and time jumping made the film edgy and constantly stimulating, I will never be able to listen to 'Everytime' by Britney Spears the same way ever again. Personally I just loved the thought process behind each character and their traits, the whole ideology behind their trip and what they wanted to gain from it; turning into something much more sinister but at the same time liberating and free.  The whole technique used throughout of cross cutting the narrative, blurring audio from one scene over another and voice-overs, heightens that candy dream exaggeration of reality that Korine claims he was after, it works really well and makes you feel as if it's all in your own head it's refreshing to have something different for a change. The music was also another thing I was impressed with, featuring Skrillex, Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears and Ellie Goulding. They also incorporated a lullaby-like songs to the more mellow scenes which worked incredibly well for the atmosphere.

I can see why people go in and come out hating it, if you want to see a movie that is structured and based on form than dont. if you want to watch this film because your looking for something funny and you think it's not going to be serious like Hangover, Project X, American Pie. then don’t because you will be disappointed.

I hope that whoever reads this can find it in themselves to give Spring Breakers another chance because it really was quite a spectacular film, you probably won't be able to see that from the beginning as it's not what you expect it to be at all, but surprises can sometimes be good.