LydMc

The Serenade of Water If you've ever glanced at my profile on the right, you already know I'm a writer, artist, nerd and then some. If the blog hasn't proven the nerd part yet, this post will do it. Case in point:  one Halloween I dressed up as Link,  the Hero of Time  from The Legend of Zelda video game series, and then proceeded to do it again for a comic convention.   Yup, that's me, sitting on a rock, jamming on an ocarina. And if that weren't enough, I won a prize. While  I was originally planning to save this post for Halloween, in honor of Comic-Con 2013 I figured it was time to let my nerd flag fly. It's a shirt! ...It's a dress! ...It's LINK'S TUNIC! Since I enjoy crafting and geekery of all sorts, sewing costumes is right up my alley. I'm usually a fan of making things from scratch, but when it comes to costuming and clothing in general, I enjoy being resourceful, finding starter pieces and making it work Tim Gun...

Glamorous  Cake Shots courtesy of  Frank ! Another birthday, another baking adventure. This time the lucky birthday gal was my wonderful great aunt Linda, one of the sweetest, craftiest people I know. I wanted to make a cake as lovely inside and out as her, so decided on an angel food piñata cake with fun surprises inside. My great grandmothers' bundt pan. First things first - baking. To make things extra special, I used a bundt pan my grandmother, great grandmother and great aunt all used to bake dating as far back as the 1930s. I guess they had bigger ovens back then, as I actually had to supplement my creation with a bit of store-bought cake when I lost the top after it exceeded the capacity of my toaster oven. What can I say,  I'm adding memories! Every day I'm tunnelin'. Moving right along, construction of the cake was surprisingly simple thanks to how cleanly angel food cake carves. Just cut off the top of the cake and dig a nice little...

In the presence of octopus royalty. While I enjoy creating tasty, fun and often nerdy treats for any occasion, I find birthday cakes to be especially entertaining. I've made a lot of cakes in my time, but the product of one of my more recent birthdays is one of my all-time favorites:  Ultros! Look at me! I'm a birthday cake! In case you're not familiar, Ultros is a giant, mischievous purple octopus from the video game Final Fantasy VI ( FFVI ). If you like playing video games and you haven't tried it yet, this game is worth checking out. As a testament to its awesomeness, it's been released for SNES, Playstation and Gameboy Advance (& I may or may not own all three...).  The Legend of Zelda is my favorite video game series by far, but in terms of single best game, FFVI takes the cake.  Speaking of which... I have more lives than I do arms! Creating an octopus birthday cake is surprisingly simple. For the body, I baked one layer in a typica...

RAWR! Once upon a time, I had a wonderful, little drawing tablet. It was so wonderful in fact, that it made digital art not just a possibility, but a joy. But then one day, it died. Fortuitously enough, Yurika (a.k.a. Squid), my wonderful roommate at the time,  fellow blogger and awesome artist ,  decided to upgrade her own drawing tablet around then and passed her older one on to me. Hooray for hand-me-downs! Happiness and gratitude abounding, thrilled by having a functional tablet once again, I offered in thanks to draw my roomie any picture she'd like. Her choice: all of us roomies (plus one honorary addition) in the wardrobal stylings of Lady Gaga a la Glee.  Huzzah! Challenge accepted. And the lobster goes to... the Marine Biologist!!! As I love drawing people, especially people in interesting clothes, testing my mettle with Lady Gaga's innovative wardrobe proved to be an absolute blast. Yurika, the generous, beautiful, tablet-donating ro...

Alright everybody, thanks to all the wonderful folk who voted in the poll a few weeks ago, it's time for a proper Firefly Shindig! (And just in case Firefly wasn't your chosen geekery, I've added a new poll with more options for future nerd parties - cast your vote!) Pretty cunning, don't you think? I admit, I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon's show Firefly (and the subsequent film Serenity). Such a fan in fact, that I've actually thrown a Firefly themed shindig before. In order to be as comprehensively nerdy as possible, I went ahead and included some of the throwbacks along with the new creations I cooked up just for this. Girl's a mind reading genius,  can't even figure out how to eat a rice planet! To start things off, I wanted to pay homage to River's problematic food, the Ice Planet (from the Firefly episode The Message). I didn't want to run the risk of getting my guests all melty though, so instead of ice cream or the...