Movie Mondays: Sleepy Hollow

Happy Halloween, my lovelies!! We're not much for the Halloween-ing in Australia, but I remember all too well those wonderful days in the dim dark past when I lived in Canada and stuffed myself with all the candy on the planet. * reminiscent sigh*

Ahem. Given that we don't do much in the way of Halloween celebrations down here, I figured I'd take the opportunity to watch one of my favourite Halloween-y movies. 

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Sleepy Hollow. Okay, so it's not Halloween or even Nightmare Before Christmas, but it's brilliant. And brilliantly stupid. And more than a little ridiculous. I love it.

Reasons why Sleepy Hollow is awesome:

1. Johnny Depp.

2. Tim Burton.

3. Johnny Depp AND Tim Burton.

4. Tim Burton says in the commentary that he took pretty much every opportunity to cover Johnny Depp in fake blood. Just because he could.

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5. Johnny Depp says in the commentary that he stole the iron maiden from the set and has it in his living room as a conversation starter.

6. All the typical little Tim Burton touches that you don't really notice until you think about it.

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 7. Evil Christopher Walken.

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8. The score. Danny Elfman is a genius.

9. The way Johnny Depp enunciates "decapitated".

10. The scene at the end in the windmill. Flour dust goes boom.

11. Michael Gambon's ridiculous hat. Even he looks surprised by its ridiculousness. Just sayin'...

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12. The supporting cast includes Dumbledore, Vernon Dudley, Rita Skeeter, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine,  and Saruman. Seriously.

Not to mention, the following lines:

- "The heads are.........gone?"

- "Good horsey!"

- "You must NEVER move the body!" "Why not?" "...Because!"

- "We thought you'd shot your boat." (translation: "We thought you'd gone bonkers and run away")

- "We did not know it was a murdering plot!"

- (regarding a spider) "Kill it! Kill it! NO - stun it." (I always want someone to pull out a wand and yell 'Stupefy!')

- "Watch your head." <-- punny, no?

- "Where are we going?" "Anywhere but here!"

So there you have it. 

At the risk of sounding like Ghostface from Scream, what's your favourite scary (or Halloween-y/spooky) movie? Also, does anyone other than me love Sleepy Hollow??

K xx

Halloween!

So my brother, C, and his girlfriend are visiting me at the moment. So I don't really have the time to write a proper post. Instead, I'll leave you with these photos from last night:

Yeah. We're all kinds of classy...

K xx

Melbourne shenanigans

Well, I started writing a post about all the things I did with my weekend in Melbourne about two hours ago. But it came out REALLY boring. And stupidly, even though I carted TWO cameras with me, I barely took any photos, so I can't rely on those to illustrate my point... *sigh* So I'm going with the bullet pointed version instead...

• I navigated from the Hume to my parents' house without getting lost. Go me! A vast improvement on last time when I got us lost in the back blocks of Greensborough at 11pm. In the rain...
• We saw Hairspray live on stage. It was awesome. I'm pretty sure I had a smile on my face for the whole two and a half hours. And that's damned rare for me...
• The sets of Hairspray were intriguing - instead of the traditional wooden painted sets, they used big digital screens. It meant the pace of the show was much faster because you didn't have to wait for sets to change and props to be taken on and off the stage
• Because Hairspray was a preview showing (the premiere was on Saturday night), the program was only $10. Bargain!
• The Tim Burton exhibition is awesome. And features many many things touched/worn by Johnny Depp. Mmmmmm, Johnny Depp........... ;)
• I do have to say though, Tim Burton is one epically weird dude. Throughout the whole exhibition, I was reminded of that Stephen King quote about having the heart of a small boy. In a jar on his desk...
• I *may* have been to Salsa's twice *looks guilty* Mmmmmmm, burritos and Mexe-crinkle fries.......
• I discovered that I still classify as a Melbournian - I can stand up on a tram in 10cm heels without holding onto anything and not fall over. WIN!
• I went to a roof top bar that required walking up three thousand stairs (in 10cm heels - not fun) and featured a taxidermied ostrich wearing pearls. Weird...
• The time at said roof top bar was spent consuming cider by the pint and catching up with old friends. Good times...
• I got to see my BFF from kindergarten Char's new apartment, and cackle hysterically at the book she showed me - 101 Uses for a Bridesmaid's Dress. My personal favourite read "Wear it to jury duty. You'll be back at your desk in 10 minutes."
• I had dinner at one of my all time favourite restaurants - Jazz Ria. And I ordered exactly the same thing I do every time I go there. And it was AWESOME...
• I discovered that my dog now eats cat food (On the vet's advice, apparently). And that as a result, my dad has decided "The Dog Who Ate Cat Food" would be an excellent title for a childrens' book...

Basically, it was a great weekend. And I can't believe I don't get to do it all again until Christmas time. *sigh*

K xx

PS. A reality show's just started on TV following parking inspectors around. Who the hell would watch that crap??????????

I love lists

As some of you may know, I'm a sucker for lists. I can't pack for a holiday without making a list of things I need to pack, things I need to buy and books I can't possible go without. I make a list of everything I'm going to cook for the week, and all the ingredients that go into those things, and then make my shopping list from THAT list. And my shopping list is broken into separate lists for fruit and veg, meat and dairy, cleaning products, and everything else. Lists make me happy.

I'm also a sucker for movies. My collection goes from All About Eve to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (And I know this because I have a list of all my DVDs...) Speaking of movies, I saw Alice in Wonderland today. In 3D. Did anyone else think that EVERY tree in Underland looked like the Tree of the Dead from Sleepy Hollow?? And was anyone else expecting Professor Snape to be standing there whenever Absalon spoke??? Aaanyway, while the movie was good, the 3D element made my head hurt - mostly because the glasses at Dendy weigh about a metric ton...

But back to my point. On Friday afternoon, I discovered this: http://www.empireonline.com/500

Empire magazine put together a list of what they think are the top 500 movies of all time, which was voted on by critics, professionals, and readers. My first thought when I found it was "Ooooooh, a list of movies????? AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!" My second thought was "Hmm, I wonder how many I've seen??" Frankly, the list is a little surprising - especially the top 50. My biggest surprise was that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull even made the list. Ack. That movie was TERRIBLE.

How many have you seen?

K :) xx

PS. For the record, I've seen 149...

Chocolate fudge cupcakes

When I found out on Saturday morning that my cousin's baby had been born, I felt the need to bake something in celebration. I checked the cupboard, and realised I had everything I needed to make chocolate fudge cake with vienna cream frosting. So I figured I'd make cupcakes with blue icing. Course, it wasn't until I went to make the icing that I realised I didn't have any food colouring. But that's a different kettle of fish...

This recipe is ridiculously easy and incredibly flexible. You can stick the whole lot in a cake pan and bake it for forty minutes, or you can make it into cupcakes. You can also replace the vanilla with mint/coconut/orange/raspberry/coffee/whatever the hell you want. Although I've only tried the first two. So if you try one of the others and it goes horribly wrong, I apologise...

Here's the cast of characters. That's water in the measuring cup, by the way:

Start with a muffin tray:

Line it with patty pans:

And turn the oven on. I'm sorry the oven is covered in crud. I cleaned it yesterday. Does that count???:
Dump the brown sugar into a mixing bowl:

Add the egg:

Sift in the self raising flour and make yet *another* note to move stuff out of the way before taking photos:

Then add the vanilla extract. You can use essence if you want, but extract is ALWAYS the better option:
I love having an SLR:

Then add the boiling water:

It looks a bit gross, but it'll taste good in the end:

Then add the milk:
And the cocoa:

The salt:

The baking soda:

And the oil:

Then get out your trusty electric mixer:

And beat the mixture...

...until it's...

...smooth!

Now, you can do this with a spoon if you want. But I've recently discovered (courtesy of Pioneer Woman) that it's waaaaay easier to use a quarter cup measure:

Just scoop up some batter, and dump it in the patty pan:

Sooooo much quicker and easier!!:

Then stick them in the oven for about 15 minutes. Hello, my pretties...

All done in the oven!:

This one's my favourite. It looks like it escaped from a Tim Burton movie. I shall call him 'Jack Skellington, the Cupcake King". If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go and watch Nightmare Before Christmas IMMEDIATELY...

After letting them sit for five minutes in the tin, set them on a cooling rack:

Aren't they purdy?

When the cupcakes have cooled, you can start on the icing. Here's the cast:

Stick the butter in a mixing bowl:

And beat it until it's as white as possible:

Okay, so this still looks pretty darn yellow. I'll blame the artificial light in my kitchen... Yeeees. That was it...

Then take the icing sugar:

And gradually beat half of it into the butter:

After adding half the icing sugar, add the milk and pretend you remembered to take a photo of it before beating it in:

Mmm, goopy:

Then gradually beat in the rest of the icing sugar:

It was at about this point that I realised I didn't have any food colouring. So I dumped in some of this instead, just for the hell of it:

Mmmmm, icing... Why hello, palette knife. How on earth did you get from my mother's kitchen in Melbourne to my kitchen in Canberra? *looks innocent*

So I iced one cupcake, and it looked like this:

Blurgh. Possibly the most boring looking cupcake in the history of cupcakes. So I searched through the cupboard for something to decorate it with. And I found this:

And remembered that I had this languishing in a drawer:

Put the two together...

...and you have instant decoration!! Huzzah!

Boring cupcake:

Faaaar more interesting cupcake:

Sooooo much better:

Okay, so I got carried away with the chocolate as time went on, but I'd grated too much and I didn't want it to go to waste. Plus, can you REALLY have too much grated chocolate on top of a cupcake???? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Mmmm, chocolatey goodness:

Hello, my pretty... That's Buffy playing in the background, by the way. I should really learn to pay attention to what's in the background of my photos...

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuum. I'm sorry. I should have used a fork. But that would have required finding one. And the cupcake was sitting right in front of me... ;)

Enjoy!!

K :) xx