an aMAZEing tale of how vampires are taking over

I am pretty certain everyone must have noticed how the likes of Twilight and True Blood are infiltrating , well everything, from the high street to the charts (yes Shakira I'm talking bout you and your lame She Wolf) but who knew it would take over mazes!
I present to you (thanks for the heads up Nickie) a Twilight inspired maize maze:

I know right, it's completely aMAZEing. I would totally get lost in TEAM EDWARDS hair!
I have been swept up by the high streets vamped up fashion, even Topshop is it at, I managed to purchase myself this riot boy stripe mixed with 90s fang logo tee form the H&M:

I noticed, on my Sunday browse around North City shopping centre that even cheap shop Select have cashed in on this, with black and white stripe tee with the word REBEL in red blood drip font on the front, the name of this hot and happening tee....HOXTON GIRL!!! I kid you not.
Now all I need is Claire's to pull their finger out and get loads of fangtastic jewelry I can waste my money on!

Kids need candy, this song is about drugs.

It's true, kids need candy, not Kandy the other half of Sugar Paper, but candy like sweets. On my bus journey home on Monday, a teenage boy sat opposite me, this boy is the kind that probably calls himself a gamer and, fancies only pixelated fictional characters and holds his money in his sweaty palms for too long. I know that the last statement is indeed correct because he used to visit my sweet shop every week and buy £5 worth of blue crystal (not meth, just good old fashioned sherbet). Now, on this bus journey he was rolling something very suspicious kids, grinding some shizzle up, I tell thee, I felt bad, this poor young boy has had to get his highs from another source since my shop shut, oh no.
On Tuesday night I became some sort of sadist and ventured into Fallowfield, during Freshers week (DIE DIE DIE) to watch Times New Viking, my review is this, Trof stop trying to take over and be venue kings, yeah you have a wardrobe door for the toilet door, but this venue is too long and the bar is inappropriately placed and those crazy bus seats you have acting as the walls stunk disgustingly fusty and I don't want that ingrained in my awesome £5 jersey biker jacket from H&M.
When did Manchester become so 'cool'? Are there two bands called Lovvers, because the Lovvers I saw a year and half ago looked and sounded not that much like Lovvers I saw that night. God aren't TNV good? yeah.

hey you! happy birthday, I'm gonna swoon for moon.

A brief round-up.
Last week I went to see AU, where I learnt two things, 1- my jeans may have shrunk, they don't really fit me anymore, Nickie says they bear an uncanny resemblance to jeggings, no good.

2-When someone does eventually make an indie film of my life I would quite like AU to do the score.

The week before this I attended a 50th birthday party of my mum's friend, I made the cake, it looked like this:

It was also Paul's birthday, I made him a case for his Mac Book that I cleverly called Big Mac:

I have also been making tutus and other such 'things' but that's another, dull story.

I am now going to continue to get overexcited watching the full New Moon trailer, good times! I will I wait til November though arrhghghgg!!!

Tell 'em what's gwan on blud!

Well the other day Kandy and I were wandering around the Arndale centre looking for somewhere to get a milkshake when we walked passed a small queue outside Smiths, SIGNING! We got closer and I did a big laugh and started saying excitedly 'Ha looks who is is! I rang my mum and told her to come back to ton quick, leave the cup of tea you have just made as there is a book signing and this man was doing the signing:

Yes Mr Levi Roots, the man behind Reggae Reggae sauce and now on BBC two cooking up a storm. My mum arrived in town to get a glimpse of him, but the signing was over. That night also happened to be the night I was to have my first attempt at making patties.I used a bit of Levi's recipe, some of the one from our Caribbean cookbook my mum stole from the library in 1984 and another what do we have.

I ended up making these:Beef, yam and calaloo patties. They tasted nice, not quite right, not enough of a kick and I still believe I should have opted for the cookbooks flaky pastry not Levi's shortcrust. The filling did seem to make a nicer pizza topping the next day, lord-a-mercy!

It's a fillum review pet!

So as you all know, I went to see this summers hottest indie flick the other day, it was alright, it's being promoted like it's the new Katie Price book or something, aiming for the this years Juno indie film award (but better, because even though I have never witnessed the annoyance that is Ellen Page in Juno I know it's a bag of lamb shank).
I got to thinking that if I was to swede* (500)**Days Of Summer, it would go something a little like this.....

(500) Dayes Of Seleena: (cue moans and eyes rolling from my friends)
So I'm in the lift at work (when I eventually get a job) with some hott face indie guy, swoon. He's listening to Kenickie on his Sony Walkmen, I'm nodding my head singing along, he notices.
"you like Kenickie" he says
"yes" I reply
"do you like The Smiths?" I ask
"not really no" he replies
"OH EM GEE, me either, we must be like 2 of 40 people in the world who don't, let's go and sing karaoke".
I sing Lisa Loeb, Stay (I missed you) he sings Lit's my own worst enemy. I let him cop a feel and give me a kiss.
We then go on dates to Ikea where I get barred for attacking screeching children with a balloon whisk. I'm sad as I wanted to be a kooky indie girl and kiss on the dalvseg bed. Instead we have to go home, watch late night Hollyoaks and have sex in the shower, he laughs at me wearing a shower cap, thinks I'm quirky, I tell him I'm a girl with an afro, I don't do wet hair.
We make sure our dates are only in 'cool' places like record shops. we have conversations like
"who's your favourite Beatle?"
I vom in my mouth and reply "I don't have one,I find them all equally yawnsville".
He draws on my arm, I get it tattooed on, he has a shit fit, I tell him to stop being such a flake, he says "yeah you're right I am a bit of a lame emo indie loser sometimes, but my face is hot".
We go to a bar, a guy comes on to me, I punch him, again we get barred.
We go to a cafe, I tell him I'm dumping him for someone else becasue my mix tapes are better than his, he does a big emo cry, I say NOT REALLY, but your tapes definitely have room for improvement.
We then go and do a song and a dance.
THE END!

*that thing they do in Be Kind Rewind
**ohh arty parentheses

everybody say CHEESEcake

CHEESEcake!
I call this one 'what's in the cupboard blueberry cheesecake'

made with left over mascarpone, a small tub of double cream, whipped, caster sugar, digestives crushed with melted Stork and then some blueberries I found in the back of the freezer made into a coulis type affair. YUM. I'm off to eat the last slice right now.
If I hear another thing about The s****y Beatles today I will stick one of those Ikea pencils in my eye.
The best I've heard on 9/9/09 is Nickie playing Oh Daughter/Disaster on her stylophone down the phone to me, pure class!

090909

My weekend with Ikea

So on Saturday I went to see 500 Days Of Summer (indie flick by numbers, boy meets girl because they OMG both like The Smiths, girl is a shitter who put a Belle & Sebastian quote under her yearbook picture, boy gets emo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a nice face) meh, indie girls are the bane of my life. Anyway the film featured a lot of dates at Ikea, so you can imagine my disappointment when I went to Ikea on Sunday, not hand in hand with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but dragging my dad around through screaming children and families who actually go there for a day trip, for fun?!?! MENTAL.

I hate Ikea.

It makes me want to stick those little pencil they give you in my eyes.

so since then I have been trying to make this into a shiny blue bed:

Vanilla slice slice baby

My mum made a pie the other day with cheat* puff pastry, some was left over so I made some custard and thick icing and made these, vanilla slices:* shop bought!

Cakes and Cakes

So I got bake-y with nature again yesterday. This time I went on a huge trek to my back yard to pick some lavender and made some cupcakes topped with a lavender and mascarpone topping, yumsville.

From this:

To this:

It wasn't just me who got my bake on, Claire made these awesome cakes using the recipe in Sugar Paper #1, ace!:

I sent myself post..(dull postal story)

Unintentionally of course. Why would I walk 3 minutes across the road, buy a stamp post a letter to get delivered back to me the next day!

What happened is I went to the post office, posted a load of zines, got served by the woman I really don't like, she didn't do anything that offense on this visit, I asked to buy one large and one normal first class stamp. In my hand I noticed I had a big stamp (that yes did have flowers on it) and one gold stamp. I stuck the large stamp on my large letter and posted it, then I licked the gold stamp and went to stick it to my small letter when I realised I'd only bloody posted the large letter with a normal first class, there was nothing I could do so I popped that in the box, imagine my surprise when I found this on my doormat this morning:

yes that's my post right there! what had happened is the crazy post machine or whatever it his couldn't understand my well fancy Lisa Petrucci stationary and so franked the back bit which has an image where a stamp would go and of course I'm a professional poster who always puts their return address on things, so back it came!

So now I have to re-post this, possibly in a dull white envelope, on the plus side I can peel of my large first class stamp and just buy a normal one now.
Oh my life is full of so many crazy stories. Apologies for the dullness of this post, I am trying to distract myself from the fact I am hungry but not wanting to eat because half my face feels like it's on the floor due to a dentist visit.

PS if Jennifer who ordered one zine, I apologise if your post never arrives or if you have to pay extra postage due to my lame stamp mix up, let us know!

Batleywood!

On Sunday i went to the Leeds carnival. It was something of a wash out. The parade is only feature on the bank holiday Monday so I didn't get to see that (this was my highlight when i went to the carnival two years previous.)It rianed as soon as we got there, but i got into the spirit of things drinking red stripe ad having my first try of West Indian food vegetarian style IE no chicken (which consisted of me only having a fried dumpling and a vegetable pattie).

My mum told me shaggy was supposed to be performing, so Katie and I waited patiently, but nope no Mr Boombastic. We used the portaloos and went home.On the train ride there however, I saw something I never knew existed, in Batley, the home of Batley Bob (Robert Palmer RIP) is a replica Hollywood sign! I did a cheeky laugh at the sight of this. It apparently is outside the bar Legends. It looks like this:

When I was actually in LA we only passed the Hollywood sign briefly as we tried not to get lost on the freeway. I was however, too slow at jumping from my seat to have a look, so the next day on my birthday in some run down part of LA in our motel we re created it.
Ours looked like this:

This genius idea from Nickie was made from white paper that we pinned to the astro turf on the stairs of the motel. Good times.