... this blogger gave to thee...
... seven shoes to choose from...
... six party dresses...
... five gold rings!..
... four favoured films...
... three rosy bubbles...
... two iterations...
... and a tale for tugging heart strings.
Ever so late, it's Day 8 and a list of some things that I've loved, liked or have made me happy in 2019...
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of things I loved in 2019 is a simple and silly one, Bob's Burgers.
It's an animated series that centres around Bob Belcher, the owner and chef at the eponymously named Bob's Burgers, his with Linda and three children, Tina (who is obsessed with butts and enjoys writing erotic friend fiction), Gene (who will make anything and everything into a musical) and Louise (the bunny ear hat wearing maniacal genius of the family). The show focuses on their daily lives and trials and tribulations of owning their own business, which is under constant threat of closure from the health inspector, who wants to ruin Bob because he used to be engaged to Linda, competition from the Italian restaurant across the street, and their landlord, Mr. Fischoeder, who they always owe rent too. Luckily Bob has a loving, if somewhat insane and chaotic family, and stalwart customers such as Teddy and Mort to help/hinder him through.
My sisters have spoken fondly of the show for years and at some point in 2019, Amazon Prime picked it up, uploading season's one to nine. Okay, I thought, let's see what all the fuss is about and why this show is so well loved by it's fans... by the end of the first episode I was not only hooked, but I was obsessed. Particularly with the musical numbers which appear throughout the show.
Some of the musical numbers are intentionally irritating, in the way the best earworms are, others are more elaborate and integral to the plot of the episode. My favourite is almost certainly "Bad Stuff Happens in the Bathroom" however "Electric Love", a duet written by Gene for his school musical., about the electrocution of Topsy, an Asian Elephant in 1903 and Thomas Edison, whose movie company filmed the execution... Bob's Burgers took this is a much lighter direction than the historical facts...
I get this song stuck in my head every time I hear it, but having just read about Topsy's death - for being a "bad" elephant! - as much as I enjoy the song, I'm truly disgusted. Not by the song or the episode, but by the fact that it genuinely happened.
In 1875 Topsy was taken from South East Asia to America. She spent twenty five years performing with a circus, gaining the reputation as a "bad" elephant after killing a spectator in 1902. A drunken spectator who went into the elephants enclosure, teased and taunted the elephants one by one, offering them whiskey, before throwing sand in Topsy's face and burning the tip of her trunk with a cigar. She threw him to the ground and crushed him in defence.
Topsy was then sold to an amusement park in Coney Island. While there she was involved in more "bad" behaviour at the hands of her drunken handler, including being allowed to run free in the street after her handler stabbed her with a pitchfork, trying to get her to do as he commanded, and also riding her down the streets of Coney Island, attempting to have her batter her way into the local police station. While this lead to the handler being fired, it also lead to Topsy's owners sentencing her to death in January of 1903. A public execution by hanging.
While it was deemed animal cruelty for the public to see Topsy's execution, it was instead made a limited invite affair, allowing only select guests and the press. They also decided instead of hanging Topsy, they would not only strangle her using steam-powered winches, but also poison and electrocute her! The electrocution being her ultimate end. All of which was captured on film by a crew from Edison Manufacturing Movie Company (Edison Studios), which was most likely the first death of an animal captured on film.
When I first watched the episode ("Topsy" Season 3 Episode 13) with Electric Love, I didn't realise it was based on fact. The episode centres around Louise's substitute science teacher and Edison fanatic/impersonator who bans volcano science fair projects, which happen to be Louise's speciality. To spite him, she decides to do her project about Edison and uncovers the film of Topsy. In the episode Louise attributes Topsy's death to Edison, who had no part in it other than his company filming it, and decides to recreate the execution with the help of Tina and Gene.
Cartoons and animation get a bad wrap. They're labelled silly and juvenile, which yes, they can be. There's always silliness, fart jokes and buffoonery, but they also touch upon really deep and dark themes. Just because animation surrounds itself with silliness, doesn't mean they're necessarily stupid or childish.
Some are. Some thrive on it. Bad ones treat adding "adult" content as an excuse to make sex jokes, be sexist, racist, xenophobic or homophobic. But a good animation can put depth in amongst the childishness without you knowing, and I think Bob's Burgers is on of these.
I absolutely adore the show and it was probably my favourite watch of the year.
Link || Bob's Burgers (2011 - present) || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Tumblr || YouTube || Amazon Prime || iTunes
Link || Topsy (elephant) || Wikipedia
Seeing I'm mentioning one TV series, I may as well mention another.
I've said in the past that one of my favourite films is Labyrinth (1986). The last memory I have of living in Aberdeen, was watching Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) on VHS, as we all sat on a mattress in my parents room the night before we moved. And I've always loved the Muppets and Christmas isn't Christmas without A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), though 2019, failed me on that front. The Jim Henson classic is just part of the seasons traditions, and the music has sound tracked Christmas for me since I was seven, to the point where if someone in my family says "'tis the season to be jolly and joyous" at least one of us will instantly parrot back "fa la la!".
I have loved and appreciated anything Jim Henson as long as I can remember and when I was a kid, as much as I loved it, The Dark Crystal (1982) scared the shit out of me! Those opening moments when the Skeksis Emperor dies and disintegrates, still makes me shiver. It was the stuff of childhood nightmares and I wasn't even alive when the film came out, neither were either of my sisters, which means my parents actively encouraged us watch it!
I'm not now questioning my entire childhood because of that fact.
Anyway, when The Jim Henson Company and Netflix announced that they were creating a series resurrecting The Dark Crystal as a prequel, I was both incredibly excited and scared. But oh my god, it was so good!
Where the original puppets were strangely emotionless, the new Gelflings are far more intricate and emotive, the Skeksis are... if it's possible... more grotesque and intimidating and the podlings... they apparently don't like baths.
Fans, such as I, initially feared that the show would be full of CGI and the traditional puppetry would be limited, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Instead CGI has been used sympathetically to extend the world of Thra past the edges of sets, giving a vastness to the landscapes that just couldn't be achieved in the film. And it's so worth it, even to the point where parts you expect to be computer generate, such as the blossoms on the Sanctuary Tree, were real, and individually made in their hundreds.
Hope catches the light. #DarkCrystal pic.twitter.com/pH6HZDvrqF— The Dark Crystal (@darkcrystal) August 14, 2019
They also made it an incredibly compelling story, taking us back to Thra when the Gelfling finally begin to realise that the Skeksis aren't the good and benevolent keepers of the crystal that they believe and the beginning of the ultimately ill-fated revolution.
I spent the entire ten episodes completely enthralled by the detail of the whole affair. Which is why I was also really happy that Netflix released The Crystal Calls Making the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a documentary about the creation of the series. I love seeing the process of how the costumes, puppets and basically everything was made and listening to the creative people behind it talk. They're really passionate and interesting, and if you've watched the series, or plan too, watch the making of afterwards, because it's insightful.
If you love Dark Crystal, Muppets, or fantasy, I would recommend Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and I'm keeping my fingers crossed there will be second season, because while I know how the show must ultimately end, I want to know how they get there.
Link || The Dark Crystal (1982) || Website || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes
Link || The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - Season 1 (2019) || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes
Link || The Crystal Calls Making the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019) || Netflix || IMDb || Wikipedia
Link || Barnaby Dixon || YouTube || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook
I love makeup. I remember going to Boots with my mum and buying my first pieces of makeup (a tinted lip balm I would still be buying if they hadn't discontinued it, clear mascara and a pale green/cream eyeshadow called "Primrose") and feeling like a grown up. You could barely see anything I had on, but as I got older, my love of makeup grew and my collection got bigger and my adventurousness has swung from bright colours, to tonnes of glitter, to every day neutrals and back again.
Though I'm determined to wear more colour and not give in to the "you're over thirty! You're too old!" mentality that a lot of us succumb to as we get older.
My love of makeup isn't helped by the fact that I enjoy watching makeup tutorials on YouTube and Beautubers who review every single palette they're given, because the magpie in me instantly starts to covet some of them. But I rarely, if ever, buy myself expensive makeup, even though I know for a fact that pan for pan, you're actually getting a pretty good deal, I just can't justify the money... which is why it's always nice when someone lovely buys you one of the ones you've been coveting the longest.
In this case, my parents bought me the Urban Decay Naked Honey Palette.
And I've used the palette every day since I was given it, I've done grungy deep brown eye looks with Sting and Drip, soft neutral ones with Sweet, Swarm and Keeper and full blown gold metallic eyes with Amber, Golden, Honey, Queen and HBIC. Though almost every time I used the palette I ended up with one of the metallic shades on my eyes, because they're just too pretty and I can never resist glitter. But I love it, it quickly turned into one of my favourite pieces of makeup and it brings me joy every time I get to play with it.
Do I wish I was the kind of person who still felt comfortable enough to only wear a lick of mascara, a dab of BB Cream and a little tinted lip balm? Yes, I would kill for that. I'd like to roll out of bed and do the bare minimum but still have the confidence to get on with my day. But I'm not like that. I love makeup, I love playing with colour and sparkle, putting on lots of blusher or a pretty lipstick, but it's not why I put it on every day. I put it on every day because I don't like how I look. I was told point black by a guy I liked in school that I was "unfanciable", I got teased because of how I looked, and even though I'm really too old to hold that stuff in my heart and my head, it left a big scar.
I wear makeup because I enjoy it. I wear makeup because it's fun and I find it interesting. I wear makeup to make myself feel better in myself. I wear makeup to hide my insecurities. And I wear makeup so I can leave the house in the morning.
This palette brings me joy and I'm only a little sad to have put it away, in exchange for a different one, for a different month.
(Incidentally, the bee print behind the palette in my photos is by Creature Candy, and I love, love, love it. It's just a beautiful illustration of a bumble bee, with a description of the species, and it's a favourite amongst the prints I own. Plus it seemed like an appropriate backdrop.)
Link || Urban Decay Naked Honey Palette
Link || Bee Print by Creature Candy || Website || Not of the High Street || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook
I'm including being a curl girl as one of my favourites for the year because while I failed to make it a full year following the Curly Girl Method (CGM), in an attempt to regain my natural curls, I did enjoy going natural and experimenting with how to achieve that.
For the first half of 2019, I committed. I did research. I gave up heated hair tools and changed all of my products, I squished to condish, I gel cast, and changed how I washed my hair entirely! All to see if after years of doing most of the things that potentially damaged my curl pattern, could I have actually fully formed curls that I would happily wear more often, or be left with a head full of frizz?
Answer:
(God I hate taking, let alone posting pictures of myself, even when you can't see much more than my hair, but it seems silly not to put one up when I'm talking about my having curly hair.)
By the end of month four, I had curls, they were still random, some areas forming better than others and I had no idea how to style it, but they were curls and all the research I'd done said if I gave it more time hopefully the results and the formation of my curls would improve. Even for the limited amount of time I did this, I'm still kind of shocked looking back at how curly my hair actually was. Which only encourages me to try it again now.
The photo above was taken on a good day. On a wash day, when frizz was minimal and I hadn't slept on or attempted to revive my curls, and that was the part I was finding frustrating. I loved my curls on day one, but I couldn't work out how to make them last, no matter how many suggestions I followed.
If you read or watch anything about trying to bring back your natural curl pattern, almost everyone talks about going through a transition phase where your you're learning what works and what doesn't for your hair, but also it's usually the point where nothing seems to be working. This is where I got to just after I took this photo. Nothing was working and under the guise of wanting to cut my hair, before my birthday, I blew it dry, chopped it off and used a hot tool, and I didn't try leaving my hair curly again. Not because I didn't want too or didn't like my natural hair, I think about it every time I wash it, but here I am with blown dry hair and curling wand curls.
Link || Curly Girl Method via Wikipedia
Link || Curly Girl Method via Naturally Curly
Now, whenever I'm in a particular British hardware store, I gravitate towards the paint section. In particular I gravitate towards the colour charts you use to help you pick the colour you'd like to have mixed by the staff at the counter. Every time I end up at the wall of paint charts, I leave with a handful of colour swatches to add to my collection and there is a little bit of me that wants to one day have every single one of them.
My kleptomania aside, this collection of colour charts is my equivalent of the hugely expensive colour charts from Pantone that I have always coveted. They're just books of colours, but they're useful for designers and artists, they're creative tools... and I'm a child, I have no specific use for them right now, but they're colourful, and pretty, and I love them. So, instead I collect Valspar colour charts from the hardware store. There are worst things I could collect.
For my birthday in May, I was given a box of one hundred Pantone Postcards. Each is a six by four inch representation of a single colour in the iconic Pantone layout, and I'm obsessed. I'm a nerd and I don't care. They make me happy. And while they currently just sit on the shelf next to my bed, I'd really like to do something with them that's at least a little bit creative.
So I've also been looking for inspiration and there are a few Instagram accounts I follow, which specialise in collecting colours...
... and even more that use the Pantone Postcards as inspiration, prompts and props for their posts...
... I just love collections of colour, (maybe it's why I like eyeshadow palettes so much!?) and one day I'll probably end up having an obnoxiously rainbow coloured home with a wall of paint charts all carefully colour blocked. But for now, apart from my type-case full of nail polishes arranged by hue, I will be content collecting colourful cards, collected in a little box and trying to find a way to use them.
Link || Pantone Postcard Box: 100 Postcards || Chronical Books || Amazon
Link || Pantone || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Pinterest
Link || Philippa Stanton (5ftinf) || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook
Link || Martha Roberts (the_colour_files) || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Pinterest
Link || Sendhues || Instagram
Link || Supannada (kikoro) || Instagram
Link || AngieKR || Instagram
Link || Lauren Elizabeth Salgado (lauren.salgado) || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Etsy
Instagram has definitely been a source of aesthetic enjoyment throughout 2019, and a constant favourite and source of reassurance and positivity is from The Sad Ghost Club.
The Sad Ghost Club started life as an online comic from illustrator Lize Medding's and her need to be creative after leaving university. Medding's used it as a way to express herself when she was unemployed, lacking in self confidence, sad and low, which she felt so many others were also in the same boat, that having an online community with a shared experience would be beneficial. The Sad Ghost character emerged after being asked to take part in a comic book bootcamp at the university she'd attended, and the comic she created while she taught allowed her to elaborate on the ghost character she based on the first meeting she had with her partner, while he was dressed as a ghost for a Halloween party. It stuck and became the mascot of the club.
Medding's, and the small team she now works with, took the character and began using it as a way to spark conversation about mental health of all different levels, and bring people together when they're feeling misunderstood, lonely and unable to express how they're feeling, in a lovely approachable manner.
My little sister introduced me to The Sad Ghost Club, and their posts are often all too familiar. But that often a nice, reassuring feeling.
"The Sad Ghost Club is a club for anyone who's ever felt sad or lost. It's the club for those who don't feel like they're part of any other club."
Link || The Sad Ghost Club || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Tumblr
Where The Sad Ghost Club brings positivity in one way, The Tiny Chef Show just brings pure and utter joy.
No one really knows where Tiny Chef came from, but he loves nothing more than creating the world's tiniest dishes, in his tiny kitchen, in his tree stump home for the world's tiniest cooking show.
As soon as Tiny Chef says "Blell hello ewyblody!", in a mix of his native tongue and broken English, his wonderful accent making it all that much harder to understand, it instantly makes me smile.
Every Wednesday we're treated to "wushin mah ktchichen wenshdayshtt" when Chef teaches us about different ingredients...
And there's nothing more adorable than seeing him freak out when he got his new kitchen...
There's really nothing more to say, other than this is something that makes me happy and instantly cheers me up. He's never anything but hilarious, hyper and incomprehensible.
Link || The Tiny Chef Show || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube
Hopefully Tiny Chef would approve of my final favourite for 2019, which is Christmas Cake*.
Every year on Stir Up Sunday (the last Sunday in November), I make a Christmas cake, a Christmas pudding and help my dad make Swamp Vodka. Thus named because while it tastes like all those wonderfully traditional flavours of Christmas, it looks like very muddy water, that if it came out of your tap, you'd call a plumber, or possibly an exorcist.
Normally it takes me the full weekend, between pre-soaking fruit, commandeering the kitchen, the oven and the slow cooker for an entire day, it's better to split the time, but by then end of Sunday, everything is cooled, soaked, wrapped and stored until Christmas Day. And I do this every year because I enjoy it, even when dad's making a mess as he helps with the tipple.
Then, weeks later, comes the fun bit. Decorating the cake.
Most years I do one of three things, polka dot snow, cut out stars or piped snowflakes with a liberal application of food grade glitter, but this year I wanted to do something a little more adventurous, and was inspired by the Almond Ginger Cookies from Tara Teaspoon which featured beautifully piped fir trees.
I will freely admit, this was over ambitious. My piping skills aren't bad, but they're not that good, least of all on a vertical rounded surface, so after a failed attempt, instead I started piping green Iced Gem style blobs all over its surface to look like a little wooded landscape.
Initially I hated it, but I was committed. Scraping off green icing from white fondant wasn't going to be pretty and this was already plan B, there was no plan C, so I kept adding tree after tree, building up the coverage until I got this...
... some of them with the glitter even looked like proper little bauble covered Christmas trees, and I really, really liked it.
But as I was taking pictures, my sisters said I should add a little house, a polar bear, an igloo...
It was in jest, but I decide to play around and make one out of the left over fondant...
... needless to say, with a little more glitter, this is what the cake turned out like. It is now my favourite of the ones I've made, and I'm going to have to top it in 2020 and I'm not sure how. How easy to do you think it would be to make a polar bear out of fondant icing?
And for anyone who's interested, this is how the vodka looks...
After straining it's a cloudy brown, and while I don't have a strict recipe written down, I'll give a basic run down.
Into a really big jar (1.5 to 2 litre) add:
- 250g soft light brown sugar
- 500g mixed fruit and peel (100g mixed peel, 200g sultanas, 150g raisins and 50g currants)
- 1/2 the zest of a lemon and orange
- 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
- 1 tsp mixed spice
- 1/2 tsp vanilla paste (you can use a split vanilla pod or extract, but not very much)
- 70cl-1 litre cheap vodka (you don't need expensive, flavourful vodka, it would be a waste of money since you're adding your own flavourings)
We based the recipe off a few we found online (I'll link some below), but generally the ingredients are the same as for Christmas cake, but in slightly different quantities. Seal up your jar, put it in a cool dark place for a minimum of two weeks (though some recipes say less and we've left batches until the following Christmas), then strain through a sieve to get rid of the bulk of the ingredients and again through muslin to get rid of smaller particles. You'll never get the vodka completely clear, if you do I want to know how, because I've never managed.
And I have honestly strained and restrained it multiple times to no avail. So just embrace its swampy appearance if you make it.
* I use Delia Smith's Classic Christmas Cake and Traditional Christmas Pudding recipes. They're really simple, reliable and tasty, and the only year I had a slight fail was when I used branded dried fruit (I couldn't get the generic supermarket versions) and they had so much sunflower on them that my cake wouldn't set and I ended up over baking it. So, don't trust shiny dried fruit and those recipes are both great.
Link || Classic Christmas Cake Recipe via Delia Smith
Link || Traditional Christmas Pudding Recipe via Delia Smith
Link || Almond Ginger Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting via Tara Teaspoon
Link || Christmas Pudding Vodka Recipes || Not Quite Nigella || Delicious Everyday || The Hairy Bikers - BBC Food || Jamie Oliver
So finally that's Day 8 finished. It's only taken me the best part of a month and a little stress (a lot). You'd think a list of things that have made me happy or smile over the past twelve months would have been easier to write. Or that I could at least say I didn't edit and re-edit it three or four times and still leave in all the rambling and wittering, in the general style of Emily can't explain things without writing an opus, when really just going "oooh, I loved this!" would probably have been enough.
I don't think that'll ever change no matter how many times I edit a post. But it's here now and there's only four more to go...
... wish me luck and congratulations if you've held on this long for a much extended Christmas.
Happy February**! Part nine who knows when...
** Oh My Fucking God, how is it February already?
..................................................................................
Listening: Wait - The Beatles
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