Finished: If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?

I think this book deserves to win longest title of the year....I liked this book though; it was cute, light, and a good inbetween series books book.

The Second Half: For some reason unknown, the author randomly starts using the twin stepsisters' names....I had to read that section a few times to register just exactly who "Emma" and "Amy" were. I made a 1 paragraph appearance! A girl named Andrea talks on her phone and is "annoying." She is never mentioned again and it is odd why she was even thrown in there but hey at least I was in a book! Lucy's dad tries to make things right with their family and Lucy decides to accept her stepmother. Lucy goes to prom with Mr. Popular but FINALLY realizes she should be with the mysterious artist, Sam. Sam and Lucy kiss and they live happily ever after. The end.

Book as a Whole: First off, I am really pissed Lucy accepts her stepmother. The woman is a bitch and is not going to change, but every fairytale just has to have an all-around happy ending. This book was a little short for my taste. Everything happens so fast and a lot more detail could have been added to just about everything. It would have been nice to have gotten to know Sam better or even Connor for that matter. I noticed a few typos; come on proof readers...do your job. I would recommend this book for anyone in high school still. It reminded me a lot of high school and how glad I am those 4 years are done with.

Every girl wishes she were a princess

Next Book: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Halfway: If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?

I know....it's been what, a day, and I'm already halfway through my next book??? Knew this would be that easy of a read.

Brief Summary: A high school sophomore named Lucy is your typical new girl. She keeps to herself and hides during each lunch. She also thinks she's Cinderella because she has a bitchy stepmother and twin, just as bitchy, stepsisters. Her mom died when she was young and she lives in the basement. After saying 2 sentences on basketball to the hottest senior guy at school, Mr. Prince Charming decides he likes Lucy. After one unofficial date they share their first kisses. Then they go on an official romantic 1st date and Lucy gets the guts to out-bitch her bitchy stepmother.

My Views So Far: It all seems far too typical. Loner girl suddenly catches the attention of Mr. Popular and thus she becomes very popular. There are a lot of ideas that are scattered. We don't really know what's up with Lucy's dad. He lives in San Francisco, but he flies to New York every weekend, but he lives in a hotel....I am so confused. Also, what are the two stepsisters names??? Those are yet to be mentioned. However, there was a very hilarious scene with a ball of rice and a piece of sushi. I laughed so hard I had to read the passage out loud 3 times to my friends.

What I'm Hoping For/Expecting: There is something just too mysterious about this Sam Wolff guy...I think something big is going to happen with him. I also expect Lucy to end up with the happily ever after that goes along with the rest of the Cinderella storyline. And hopefully something will be resolved with wicked stepmother...because she's starting to piss the hell out of me. I can always tell how much I like a book by how fast I read it. The more I like a book the slower I read it so I can savor its amazingness. I started reading this book 24 hours ago....you do the math :P

The cover is pretty cute though...ain't gonna lie...

Finished: Wizard and Glass

I finished Wizard and Glass and was sad it ended. I knew the end was going to make me cry....However, I did not expect to bawl my eyes out more than any girly movie has ever made me cry.....

The Second Half: I was correct that we were not done with the characters Rhea and Coral Thorin. There was still a lot of romance but there was also a lot of action and adventure. There were lots of fight scenes which made up for the lack of fight scenes in the beginning. Many people die....Susan of course is burned to death (we learned this in book 1, I am spoiling nothing.) and her death was what caused the tears to flood. Young Roland also learns he must go on a quest to find the Dark Tower for it is his ka. We do not learn what later happens to Cuthbert and Alain, only that they will die.

Book as a Whole: I love, love, looooved this book. So far it is my favorite in the Dark Tower Series. Being that I am a girl in love this book really opened my eyes to a lot of things. When in love we are stupid and we want to believe that our love will overpower everything, but it won't. Love is just an emotion; that's like saying a person's happiness or a person's anger will overpower everything. Perhaps emotions do overpower other things, but not purely because we will them to. My favorite quote was "Bird and bear and hare and fish. Give my love her fondest wish." I also like the passage of Ka that tells of Susan losing her virginity to Roland. Beautifully/tastely written and very steamy at the same time. I think the main point is that true love is a drug and also dangerous. No matter how many times your love promises to return for you, something inevitably may change and you find yourself burning to death instead of living happily ever after.

Picture of me with my fondest wish :)

Next Book: If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince? by Melissa Kantor. This should be a fairly easy and fast read.

Glazy Days

Today I baked cupcakes and instead of frosting made my first glaze. I, of course, used a recipe from Cupcake Project. I tried Stef's Strawberry Cupcakes with Champagne Glaze and was very happy that they were both easy to make and tasted amaaaazing!

N00bie Status Tips: The cake part of these cupcakes are very easy to make. They're n00b friendly if you will :P The glaze is also fairly easy. However, the glaze is very messy. Not much of a surprise, but be careful handling the sticky delicious gloop. I dipped mine two times per cupcake into the glaze. Also, these cupcakes need to be kept in the fridge!

For my serial readers: I'm very close to finishing Wizard and Glass! I'm kind of putting it off because it's gotten sad and I don't want Mr. King to cause me to cry! Also I've already won the reading race, my competition decided to read Starship Troopers.

Leftovers Question: The only leftovers I had were champagne and strawberries....so I drank the champagne and ate the strawberries lol. I guess my question this time is what do you do with imaginary leftovers?

Halfway: Wizard and Glass

I'm officially at the halfway point of Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. Halfway was again at the end of a chapter and I was very very happy :)

Brief Summary: This is the 4th book in King's Dark Tower Series. In the beginning Roland of Gilead, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake, and Oy are on Blaine the mono and are faced with a challenge. They have to tell Blaine a riddle he cannot solve in order to be able to get off the monorail alive. Naturally they succeed and find themselves in some form of Kansas and near a Thinny. Before they make their way through the Thinny Roland finally decides to tell the tale of his childhood and how he has become the man he is today. In this tale we learn of Susan Delgado and Roland's love for her.

My Views So Far: King is by far a genius and one of the greatest writers there is. This book contains all the elements of adventure and fantasy that the first 3 books contained with a new element of romance. I've read quite a few love stories and girly books in my serial reading days, however, so far the tale of Roland and Susan is greatly surpassing those stories. Yes, there is love at first site which most don't believe in, but the tale of how the two fall in love is expressed in a very real way. Whenever there's a scene with the two of them my heart skips a beat and I get excited for them to be together....Most of this has to do with the fact that I miss my boyfriend like crazy right now. He's currently very far away from me and will be for a while :( (This is also his favorite book in the series.) One thing that I haven't liked is how long King drawed out Rhea's secret. I got rather annoyed with having to keep waiting to learn what it was she wanted Susan to do when Susan lost her virginity.

What I'm Hoping For/Expecting: The most obvious thing is to hear the rest of the tale of Roland's childhood. To find out what happened to Susan, Cuthbert, and Alain and why they aren't currently with Roland, helping him in his quest. I think Rhea and Coral Thorin still have ways they'll play into the story, so it'll be interesting to find out more about them. I would also like to find out if Susannah is pregnant, there has been some hints but nothing definite. I'm really enjoying this book but I fear my more girly instincts will kick in and something tragics going to make me cry. Yes, I will let you all know if Stephen King makes me cry :P

Reading Race: I am still winning this race! I think that mainly has to do with the fact that I'm racing a guy, and this turned into a fairly girly book. I don't think he's as motivated to finish as I am haha.

Birthday Cupcakes *<|:)

I love the part-time job I have on my college campus. I sit in an office for 4 hours and basically just get to hang out with my amazing boss. Yes, not only do I love my job, but I think my boss is amazing. I'm weird, I know. So in honor of it being my awesome boss's birthday this week I made cupcakes for her. I got both recipes from All Recipes which is a great site for any recipe needed. My boss said her favorite cupcakes would be yellow cake with chocolate frosting so that's what I made for her.


N00bie Status Tips: For me these made 36 cupcakes. Do not use the full amount of powdered sugar and cocoa powder for the frosting....I didn't even use the full amount and I was left with a HUGE ass bowl of frosting. The frosting is a lot like chocolate mousse though, so if you want you could just store it in the fridge and eat it with a spoon.
*Warning* These cupcakes are delicious! I ate 3 today, all before 2 pm....So make sure you've got lots of people to give them to!

For my serial readers: Wizard and Glass is amaaaaaaaazing! Anyone who is a hopeless romantic (like me!) will LOVE this book! But I'll talk about that more when I'm at the halfway mark (almost there I swear) You may be happy to know I am currently in the lead in my reading race. I'm leading by 50 pages and plan on winning this thing!

Leftovers Question: What do you do with leftover buttermilk? What else can it be added to?

Margarita Cupcakes

I am a huge fan of Stef over at Cupcake Project. Her crazy creations have inspired me to start baking cupcakes more often. I used to only make muffins from a pouch where you just had to add water...those days are now long behind me! I make all my cupcakes from scratch and am baking my way through Stef's recipes.

This week I tried making Stef's Margarita Cupcakes. These are my first "dangerous" cupcakes to make. They do contain tequila, but never fear people because the alcohol gets baked out of course. No, you cannot get drunk off the cupcakes, but after tasting the batter...you might be able to get drunk off of that. The frosting has kick too, with pretty "rims" lined with salt and sugar :P

N00bie Status Tips: This recipe calls for the zest of a lime. I had no idea what part of the lime the zest was.... The zest is the thin top layer of the peel. You can get the "zest" by being fancy and zesty and using a pairing knife to thinly slice it. OR you can just use the smallest holes on a grater and grate the zest off the lime. I opted for the grater which worked great. My cupcakes also didn't rise a whole lot so fill the liners pretty full.

For my serial readers: Wizard and Glass is really sad so far. But I'm loving it as well! I'm also losing in that reading race against my friend....looks like a few hours spent at Borders are necessary this weekend!!!
I don't like soy milk....but I now have a bunch leftover... Any ideas as to what I should do with it?

Finished: Shoe Addicts Anonymous

I have officially finished Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison. I can't say that I am sad it's over....
The Second Half: In the second half there were even more editorial errors! Being a slow reader who reads each word in a book, this highly irritates me. As expected we find out the secret behind each woman character and each woman finds love. There were no surprise twists or unexpected turns. Anything that happens unexpectedly for a character the reader could guess and expect coming from many chapters in advance. However, the ending severely disappointed me. As most fiction novels do now a days, there was an Epilogue to recap how the characters now are a certain time period after the story has ended. Most Epilogues are to answer any questions the reader may have and to completely put a close the the story as a whole. However, the Epilogue for this book merely brushed the surface of these questions and made them go even more unanswered. It also brought up more questions that will go even further unanswered.

Book as a Whole: My take on this book as a whole is that it was a typical girly romantic comedy. I would recommend this book for anyone who likes a good light beach read. I also recommend this book for anyone whose not a serious reader but occasionally likes to read a book or two. If there was an underlying moral to this story I didn't pick up on what it was. Unless the moral is that your addictions can make you filthy rich....And while I am immensely addicted to reading, I don't think it's possible to get rich off of serial reading. There was one quote that I really liked from this book. "We're just all trying to live, love, laugh, and get laid every once in a while. It's the only way to get through this life." This quote explains life really really well. I can't speak for anyone else, but personally for me living, loving, laughing, and (of course) getting laid are definitely high up on my to do lists in life! Here's two pictures of my favorite shoes I own. Sadly, I can't join the "Shoe Addicts Anonymous" group as my feet are a size 5 1/2 and the group wears a 7 1/2 :(


Next Book: Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower IV) by Stephen King. I'm hoping to breeze through this book because my friend and I are having a race to see who can finish first. However, I'm a slow reader...so we'll see what happens!

Halfway: Shoe Addicts Anonymous

I am now at the halfway point of Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison. First off I'd like to say that I love that the halfway point of this book is exactly at the end of a chapter. It was perfect.

Brief Summary: This book is about three women who come together once a week to swap shoes. They are all very different women who are each dealing with very different hardships in life. One is dealing with credit card debt, another with being a politician's wife, and the third is a call girl who has a fear of leaving her apartment. But they all are obsessed with shoes and together will help each other make it through.

My views so far: There are quite a few grammar and punctuation errors in this book, which is a little irritating. The first few chapters focus on each of the three women individually. This is nice because we become attached to each woman and not just the group as a whole. Then the story leads up to how they all meet and form their group. However, then there is a chapter randomly thrown in with a 4th woman and after that chapter she is yet to be mentioned again....Reviewing the back cover again, I guess the 4th woman is mentioned. But I find it odd that her character wasn't established as well as the other 3. All 4 women have skeletons hiding in the closet and we are yet to find out what they are.

What I'm hoping for/expecting: Obviously we'll hopefully find out what each woman is hiding in her past. I except each woman to end up with a happy ending and the man of her dreams. This is your typical girly beach read, so almost everything that happens is predictable. Everything is also spelled out for the reader but the characters don't pick up on anything obvious. This causes me to yell at my book a lot and get weird looks from people in Borders....I'm not holding out for any "meaning of life" philosophical outcomes from this book. Especially not from the sex operator character. Although that does seem like a fun job that pays rather well....hahah