I know it's been about three months or so, BUT! that's still less than three years, so 'posting more frequently' still stands! :D
If you know BTS, you surely know BT21.
If you know BT21, you surely know SHOOKY.
If you know SHOOKY, do you also know the other 362 members of the Crunchy Squad?
No? Neither do I! (Yet, that is.)
Earlier this month, ARMY were asked to come up with their very own Crunchy Squad members to join SHOOKY on his adventures.
362 members of the Crunchy Squad, brought to life alongside SHOOKY inside a bakery.
How do they look like? What are their names? Candy, fruits, pencils, flour..(?) Anything is possible!
The Crunchy Squad needs you and your creative juice
to complete the squad as they go on an amazing adventure with SHOOKY :)
Of course I had to participate! :D
(And of course I left it to the very last day, an hour or so before the deadline)
[STEP 01] Draw & Name your Crunchy Squad!
- Sketch, photo, etc. Any form of expression is possible! - From 1 to 362. The number of Crunchy Squad characters you can submit is infinite!- Please name your character(s) only in English and in numbers.
I immediately thought of Linzer Augen (or Jammy Dodgers, as they might be called in your corner of the world), with the 'Augen' (German for 'eyes') as either the...well, eyes, or as their chubby, blushing cheeks.
I made a little sketch with three different cookies (all rather cute, if you ask me), but instead of submitting a pencil drawing, I decided on actually baking them! :D
The names I came up with were rather unoriginal (JAMMY, DODGER and LINZY), but I thought they were cute and fit well, so who cares.
The numbers I gave them were #43, #44 and #45, simply because 4 is my favourite number :D (and because I think Jammy Dodgers are rather basic cookies which would be some of the first cookies so be baked, while the later cookies may be a bit more unusual)
On the day I decided to bake my cookies...the lower floor of our house had no electricity.
Awesome.
Although, no, I lied, the fridge and the oven both DID have electricity. A sign maybe~~~~~~~?
Well, I ignored that sign until 1AM, when I grabbed a flashlight, went to the kitchen and made some dough in the dark.
[I didn't have enough flour to make a large batch, and I technically only needed 6 cookies anyway, so I made a third of the recipe (1/3 of an egg yolk and all)]
The next day, I baked and filled them (still in the dark) and then tried decorating them.
Yeah, chocolate won't really hold on a sugar dusted surface, who knew.
So I took a picture and added the faces and limbs in paint. (Yes, paint. The king of all art programs.)
Sadly, the cookie who was supposed to be DODGER looked absolutely terrifying! No matter what I did with the eyes, he looked both murderous and creepy. So LINZY became DODGER, and my dad ate the evil cookie (before it tried eating one of us)
[STEP 02] Upload your work on Twitter!
- To prevent plagiarism, please write your Twitter ID (e.g: @BT21_) on your work. - Please include the following hashtags on your Twitter: #Draw_BT21 #CrunchySquad #BT21_UNIVERSE
[STEP 03] Watch your ideas come to life through the official BT21 account.
- LINE FRIENDS Creators who design and illustrate BT21 will build on, develop, and expand upon your ideas which will be reflected on the final Crunchy Squad. - The Crunchy Squad, built upon your ideas, will be unveiled through the official BT21 Account.
I hope my two cuties (or a variation of them) will make it into the Crunchy Squad! :D
Wish me luck!
Yes!
And it's even about the same concert! Although this time from Seoul! Now you're probably wondering if I made a quick trip to South Korea.
Sadly, the answer to that is no :( BUT the Love Yourself concert in Seoul was released in cinemas, so my sister and I went, of course (and maybe regretted it a tiny bit).
This was actually our second time watching something Bangtan related in a cinema (the other one being Burn The Stage), which I'm really not used to, because usually we never get anything in Austria!
Now to the 'regret' part: I have never had to sit in the middle of such an absolutely annoying audience before. I don't mind the occasional screaming. You want to do the fanchants? Fine by me! It's a concert, after all. But people constantly screaming, convulsing in their seats while wildly pointing at the screen, shouting the boys' names every.single.time they appeared on screen, insulting K-ARMY simply for being at the concert (what the actual fudge?), etc.
The girl in front of me filmed the whole thing and took pictures, which she then sent to her friends, the girl left to me had apparently been forced to come, complaining that she was bored, checking her phone the entire time, and then trying to go to sleep sometime in the middle.
All in all, I once again got a confirmation for my dislike of people :/
And silly me had even taken my ARMY Bomb with me, because I had read of other people's experiences, where they'd pretty much had turned their screenings into little concerts, Bombs and fanchants and all. But those people didn't deserve to bask in the beautiful light of my ARMY Bomb.
(Yes, I'm sulking, let me)
The actual concert I liked, of course, but my sister and I were both a bit disappointed by the quality of the picture. But at least my sister doesn't feel bad about the quality of the videos she took during the Berlin concert now :D
My sister apparently couldn't remember the clothes Bangtan had worn during the concert, because while watching, she once leaned over to tell me that she'd inherited that exact shirt Jeongguk had on from our grandma. And later she asked me if their outfits had really been that tragic at our concert.
(Sorry, boys, I love you, but those clothes are...something.)
Anyway, next time we'll hopefully get to watch them live again, and not on a screen :) (And I'll even try to post before that!)
IT'S ALIVE~~~~!
Or at least in the middle of being revived.
Hello, I am back and hopefully staying!
Now, seeing how my last post was in...2015, it comes to nobody's surprise that even posts about amazing events will take some time for me to actually write (and post...). So am I two months late with this? Yes. Do I have an excuse? Yes! Laziness :)
The 'amazing event' in question was *drum roll* BTS' Love Yourself World Tour!
Now, you may not know this (yes, you do, because the only person who reads this blog is my sister, but let me pretend I have an audience), but I have been into Kpop for ten years now. First fell in love with Super Junior (let's just...kind of ignore that) and SHINee (my special bbs) and then, at the beginning of 2015 I gave Bangtan a listen and I do not regret it one bit.
I have always regretted not being able to go to one of the (very, very few) European concerts either SHINee or Bangtan appeared at, so when the LY tour in Europe was announced, I decided I'd go, no matter what.
When I first joined the fandom, we were ecstatic when we reached 1 million views on INU. Now Bangtan is the group with the most views on a music video in the first 24 hours on Youtube. So I knew getting tickets to their concert would be nearly impossible, and let me tell you, I do not want to go through it again. (Who am I kidding, as soon as Bangtan announce their next tour, I'll be sitting in front of my laptop, waiting for battle.)
It was actually my sister who kept refreshing and trying to buy the tickets (mostly because my laptop is a descendant of a potato) and because of the stupid ticketing site not working correctly (once you manage to put a ticket into your shopping cart, you're supposed to have three minutes to buy it, our ticket was gone after less than one), my dad actually ended up buying tickets from some third party site. Cue me almost having a mental breakdown because I was suddenly paying the price of the best tickets available...for the cheapest tickets of the venue. (To be fair, as of now, I still haven't actually paid for the ticket, because I have an amazing sister, but I still hope to pay her back in the near future)
Anyway, here we are, with stupidly expensive tickets-- wait. No, we didn't actually have any tickets yet. Do you know when we got them? On the day of the concert, in our hotel room, in Berlin! But I'll come back to that later.
Now, our journey to Berlin started...at a mobile phone shop down the street. Wait, what?
Well, you know how you need a passport to travel between countries? Yes, well, mine had expired in 2013. But hey, I'm just going to Germany, so that's okay, right? Wrong! Five years is actually the limit, and mine was just over. And of course we realized that bit a week before the concert, meaning I had to choose the express option, making everything even more expensive.
So, where does the mobile phone shop come in, you ask? Because I also had to have my picture taken! And for whatever reason, if you don't want to shell out all that money for a professional to take pictures of you, you go to a mobile phone shop.
Now, you may not know this, but my laptop isn't the only potato descendant. I have never seen a more potato-looking passport photo in my life. And not just any potato. A felon potato. Just...the pictures are horrible. Absolutely horrible.
isn't my passport cover the cutest?
The actual journey started in the middle of the night on the 15th of October. A ten (?) hour bus journey from Vienna to Berlin. Now, most people would use this time to sleep, but not me. I tried to master the art of silent-potato-chip-eating. About five hours in came my biggest dilemma: I had to pee.
I have this thing, where I just absolutely hate using public toilets. That's just how it is. Now, a bus toilet doesn't sound all that more appealing to me. I held out to about eight or nine hours in, but it was no use. So I begrudgingly made myway down the stairs (no, the bus did not have a cellar, if you're wondering, it was a double decker)...and promptly turned around because I had no idea where the toilet was. My second time going downstairs, I figured out that, what I'd thought to be a closet, was actually the toilet. Joy. So I squeezed my body into that tiny cubicle, wondering how that giant of a guy who'd used the toilet before me had even fit in there, seeing how my head had almost brushed the ceiling.
Pulling my pants back up was an event. Do you know the scene in The Princess Diaries where Mia tries to put on a pantyhose in the backseat of a moving car? That's what it was like, only with less space, and a toilet behind me.
And then the next challenge: how to flush. There were at least ten different buttons, and the only one labelled was the emergency one. Now, after pushing a few buttons, the bus did not self destruct, and I think I may have heard the sound of flushing, but I can't be sure. But seeing how gross the toilet had been before, I don't think it would have made much of a difference.
Arriving in Berlin, I was already...underwhelmed, to put it nicely, by what I was seeing through the bus window, but my sister told me, it's probably just the part we're in right now, and the rest was going to be nicer.
It wasn't.
Now, if you're reading this, and you're from Berlin, I apologize in advance. Because oh wow, have I never hated a city more than I've hated Berlin. Stuck in the wrong era, filthy, with too much mustard yellow and orange.
We didn't spend all that much time looking around Berlin on our first day, mostly because my sister knew how much I didn't like it. Although I was happy about there being a Käthe Wohlfahrt (an all year round Christmas store). Last time I went in one was years ago in Rothenburg. Of course, I can't afford anything from them, but looking at the store's decorations is enough for me anyway.
Finding our hotel was another adventure. I have never seen such weirdly numbered streets. Some numbers suddenly changed directions, some were left out, some didn't fit in anywhere, it was rather strange.
When we got to our hotel, I decided to take a quick nap before the concert, since I hadn't slept on the bus, while my sister went out looking for a pharmacy to get something for her headache. (Where she also once again realized that German german is rather different to our German.)
Now, I was lying in bed, apparently already asleep, when suddenly...the
concierge was standing at the foot of my bed, telling me that our
tickets had arrived. O...kay. Thanks, lady, but could you not just
unlock my room and come inside while I am sleeping? That would be super!
My sister used my version 1 ARMY bomb :)
Do you remember when I talked about the expensive tickets for the cheapest seats? Well, apparently the third party couldn't get those seats. Instead we got *drum roll* Entertainment Suite tickets! Which means we paid the actual price (maybe a few euros more) for our tickets, which was rather great.
Plus, Entertainment Suite tickets meant we could enter through the Premium entrance instead of waiting in line with thousands of other people. I mean, yes, we still had to wait in line, but it really didn't take long. And they sold merchandise right inside the venue, with no people waiting in line, so my sister quickly got me my ARMY bomb while I was still waiting at the metal detectors.
Behold, our suite! (And our toilet! Woohoo!)
We were second (and third :P) to arrive at our suite, so we immediately grabbed two seats in the front row (there were three rows with four seats each). We even had our own bathroom, which, as you now already know, was amazing to me, since I only had to share with 16 or so other people instead of the entire venue.
I couldn't get my ARMY Bomb to work properly, so my sister, nice as she is, went to the designated helpers and voilá, working lightstick! (Now the only problem is that my phone doesn't actually support the app, meaning I had to use someone else's. No random colour changing at home for me T-T)
When the concert started...I have to be honest, I barely remember anything! I have videos as proof that something happened, but my mind is mostly blank.
I definitely remember Bangtan talking in German though, which was super cute! And Taetae actually had a really great pronunciation!
At first I thought I'd 'save' my battery for the ments, but at one point I simply started filming everything. I only wish I had done so from the beginning, since now I don't have Hobis solo stage, and some other bits.
Most of my videos came out rather...wobbly, because I was filming with my phone in my left hand, while wildly shaking my ARMY Bomb with my right hand. I apologize for that.
At least I remembered not to screech into the microphone! The only time you can hear me is at the end of Outro: Tear, because...come on, they killed it.
ARMY time was also rather interesting, trying to film while also holding the slogan and the lightstick...
Now, like I said, I can't really remember all that much, but judging from my fancams, it was awesome! :D
When the concert was done and we were somewhere in front of the Arena, I'm pretty sure a car with Hobi and somebody else passed us, but I really can't be sure...
Our suite!
Yoongi and the missing A
💜
💜💜💜
I would have been fine with going home right then and there, but we had extended our stay by one day beforehand, because we thought we'd go sight seeing in Berlin...I can really understand my grandma's incredulous 'Why?' now, when we told her we'd be going on a short holiday to Berlin.
OUF-pa-sen! Since the trip had already been expensive enough, my sister looked up free museums to visit.
One thing that's really popular in Berlin is Checkpoint Charlie, so we went to the (free) associated museum, which was okay. I'm just really not one for war and military stuff, so it wasn't really my thing. I did enjoy the American pronunciation for German words book though :D
Is my sister tiny or is the lamp giant? Both! :D
The rest of the time we spent simply just walking around and looking at everything (and going to Primark!). At one point I'd had enough, the surroundings made me uncomfortable, my back was killing me, so my sister walked around on her own, while I was waiting on a bench. (And freezing my butt off since it was made of stone.)
We also made a little trip to the Brandenburger Tor (I looked at it from afar, once again from a bench, this time made of wood, while my sister took a closer look at the Tor) where we finally ate the food we had brought as snacks for the bus trip to Germany.
And well...that was it! I know, the part about the actual event is super short, but since my brain decided to apparently have selective amnesia, it can't be helped.
And now, have a playlist of all my wobbly fancams! :D
I am no professional baker and I am also owner of a very confused oven. So it comes to no surprise that some of my creations come out as...not quite perfect.
My oven, never minding what temperature I put it on, decided to be way too hot, making my meringues crack left and right. I was pretty down, because I had imagined this really great looking cake with great looking meringues on top, but no, my oven hates me.
But when my sister saw the cracked meringues, she immediately suggested I put eyes on them, so they would look like delicious little monsters!
Which, as she repeatedly told me, suited me much better anyway.
It doesn't happen often, but sometimes little accidents make everything even better! :D
I only recently bought a cake decorating stand, so this was the first time I was using it, plus the first time I tried making a gradient frosting. Isn't it pretty? :DDD
I might have overdone the ganache a bit though...
Say Aaaah~~!
The cake was a chocolate cake, with vanilla frosting, fresh raspberries and meringue crumbs in between the layers. De.li.cious.
One of the
best things ever invented by humans is definitely chocolate. Don’t you agree?
Of course there’s lots of bad chocolate out there (I’m looking at you, Hershey’s),
but there is equally as much absolutely delicious chocolate! Much of it is, of
course, made by Milka.
Now, if you’re from America, you may have never had the pleasure of eating
Milka chocolate, but let me tell you, it’s heaven. With lots and lots of
calories.
I always
enter Milka giveaways and competitions, and so far I’ve been extremely lucky,
if you ask me.
Four boxes of chocolate for the entire family here, even more chocolate over there,
chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.
But then I
won my biggest Milka prize yet: a trip to the Milka chocolate factory!
Just call me Annabel Bucket. (Although, looking at myself, it should probably
be Annabel Gloop…)
The prize
was actually intended for two parents and their small children, but with Milka
being awesome as they are, they told us it was absolutely fine if four adults
went instead. And then they also added an extra day at the hotel, because why
not.
So all in all, the prize included:
-- The
transportation (plane and train)
-- The
Hotel (4 stars)
-- Meals
at the Hotel (5 courses)
-- A
tour through the chocolate factory (which usually, of course, isn’t open to the
public)
-- 20€
to spend at the Milka shop
-- VIP
passes for the chocolate festival
Now,
Austria, as you may know, isn’t very big, but getting from one end (Vienna) to
the other (Bludenz), still takes a few hours, so our day started stupidly early
with a trip to the airport. There, my mum had a tiny freak-out about the size of
the plane, which really wasn’t THAT small. For reasons I am not going to go
into, I did not really enjoy the plane ride, which I could still kick myself
for, because I should have taken pictures! I swear there was a nicer view (and
more mountains) than when we were flying back.
A bit of Innsbruck from above
Innsbruck airport is definitely the smallest airport I’ve ever been to, and I
was also rather surprised when we got off the plane and pretty much just walked
across the runway to the airport building. (Of course my sister and I were
quoting Cabin Pressure along the way. Thankfully we were not charged for not
wearing safety vests ;) )
People got off the plane and just kind of wandered around
Such a nice looking plane :D
Then, taking a bus to the city centre, we got on a train and after two hours, arrived
in Bludenz, where an Italian guy, who always looked in a hurry, picked us up
and dropped us off at the hotel.
During the flight, the train ride and...pretty much at all times, I was reminded why our national anthem says we're the country of mountains...so true!
My sister and I were sharing the hotel room, and for once I didn't accidentally try to kick her out of the bed during the night! :)))
There were two Milka bags waiting for us...
...filled to the brim with deliciousness!
Our spacious balcony...
...with a nice view of the surrounding mountains.
Early next
morning, our group got picked up and brought to the factory. My sister and I
got to drive in a Mini Cooper Cabrio, because there wasn’t any space left in
the bigger cars :D
The entrance to the Lädele chocolate shop, at the front of the factory.
Inside the
factory, we first had to walk all the way up to the topmost floor, where we got
a little safety lecture and were told about the history this particular factory
(whichwas built in 1890…ish…I really
can’t remember the exact date).
And then came the fun moment where all of us donned our new chic outfits, complete
with a beard net for the men, and a red hair net so our guide could always find
us in the mass of white, blue and yellow hair nets.
Fabulous!
Our first
stop was at a table, laid out with the different stages of chocolate, and a
small chocolate fountain, where we could dip in as many Oreos and wafers as we
wanted.
If you ever wanted to know what the Oreos in the big Oreo chocolate bars look like. I actually didn't think that they'd have the Oreo design on top, because it's not like you get to see it, when it's covered in chocolate...
Cameras were sadly not allowed beyond that point, but the machines were
amaaaazing! And we got even more chocolate to eat during the tour. Someone
asked our guide if the workers were allowed to eat chocolate, and the answer
was: yes, as long as you eat it inside the factory, you may eat as much
chocolate (or cookies, nuts, etc.) as you want! Of course, if you’re around
that much chocolate the entire day, I guess you’ll soon lose your appetite for
it, but still, just imagining it…*-*
The tour
ended at the Milka Lädele, the shop at the front of the factory, which also has a walk through in the back, with a life sized Milka cow!
After
waiting for everyone to complete their purchases, our guide took us through the
chocolate festival, to the VIP area. I have to admit, it wasn’t really my cup
of hot chocolate, mostly because I’m not a huge fan of sand (it had a beach
theme) and definitely not a fan of so.much.SUN. Who thought having a chocolate
festival in the middle of summer was a good idea?
Purple, everywhere~!
THIS is how it's supposed to be done. Not tiny, little bites, but entire bars! :D
Such a nice purple, really~
We returned
to our hotel not long after, where I just lazed about for the rest of the day,
and enjoyed the absolutely amazing shower (which I really wanted to take with
me D: ).
We flew back
home on the next day, and this time, I actually took some pictures!
Just so you can imagine the size of the Innsbruck airport: here we are waiting at our gate, looking in one direction...where you can see the street in front of the airport.And if you turn the other way...
...you can see the runway! :D
Our on board food! Isn't it adorable?
I also realised that I should study Austria's geography a bit, maybe...because I have absolutely no idea which lakes those are...
Nearly there!
Aaaand touchdown Vienna!
All in all, it was kind of awesome! (Even though I didn't see a single Oompa Loompa, although I guess only Willy Wonka has those. Also, I behaved and didn't inherit the factory :( Oh well.)
This will just be a post about my most recent cakes (I didn't get a slice of a single one of them ;A;), so enjoy!
Simpsons 30 donut cake
One of my mum's friends requested the cake, a 30 made out of donuts, with Homer Simpson somewhere on it.
I don't think they meant a passed out Homer, surrounded by dozens of Duff Beer cans, but hey, artistic freedom and all that.
Please ignore the tablet the cake is on (which I stole from my grandma) and the unpretty edges of the pink icing D:
But looky here, I even made the middle layer of the cake purple to look like filling!
I know, it doesn't really look purple, but that's just because I had already slathered it with apricot jam. (Although slathered might be the wrong word, seeing how I ran out of jam in the middle of it...)
All in all, I'm quite happy with how the cake turned out!
Robin Hood cake
Another one of my mum's friends requested this one for her son's (grandson?) birthday! At first they actually wanted a tractor cake, but then, realising that the theme of the birthday party was Robin Hood, they changed their request accordingly. (Although I wouldn't have minded making a Robin Hood tractor cake...would have been interesting!)
I wasn't really sure what to make at first, but Robin Hood makes you think of Sherwood forest, so trees are kind of fitting, right?
It would have helped, if someone had told me that Disney's Robin Hood was completely ok, before, you know, I was already almost finished with the cake. Oh well.
Making the cake was actually kinda soothing. Roll a fondant snake, stick it onto the cake...roll a fondant snake, stick it onto the cake...roll a fondant snake...I think you got it.
On the left you can see what the tree looked like before I painted it~
I wish more people wanted tree cakes D:
Halo cake (with the help of a friend)
One of my own friends for once!
I baked the cake (chocolate cake, with cheesecake in the middle) and then she came over to help with the decorating. The little guy on top of the cake was made by me, and my friend had actually made another character, but stupid as she is, she wasn't happy with how hers turned out, so she ate it. Oh well.
We did not have any black fondant, so we just painted black all over the cake and then splattered blue, pink and white on top...yeah, it was a disaster, and we got more paint on ourselves than the cake, but it was fun!
No idea why all the pictures came out so blurry D: I swear I only painted with the vodka, nothing else!
Southpark Cartman cake
My most recent cake, made only two days ago, for our neighbour's son's 25th birthday!
At first she also wanted a Simpsons cake (which I wasn't all that thrilled about, because I had just made one), but then her other son came up with the Southpark idea, and while I personally do not like Southpark, I was super happy when I saw the picture!
I had a few problems with the hat (including the rim breaking off and my dad accidentally throwing something at it and squashing it...), but in the end, everything turned out okay(ish...I still think the hat could have looked better)
Anyway: Taa-daaaa~~~~
I have to admit, I'm actually really proud of this cake >w<
