Moneyball

Brad Pitt. 'Nuff said.





But seriously, this film looks highly promising.


Video from YouTube - MoviesYahoo.com Channel.

High-fives, fist-bumps, and the 2012 Beetle

There's something about this ad that just makes me smile every time I see it.  Is it the music? The whole concept? Or that off-the-wall scene with the big, scary biker dude doing a fist-bump?


Whatever it is, happy feelings welcome!





Video from YouTube - Volkswagen Channel.

50/50

What are the odds that this movie will be good? Much more than its title, it looks like.





Video from YouTube - SummitScreeningRoom Channel.

I went to MoMA...

... via YouTube, and found all kinds of inspiration!

Voices are instruments too

A capella.  Awesome.





Video from YouTube - NBC Channel.

The Mighty Pen...

... has to be Sharpie.  A sweet TV ad from the pen brand.

Video from YouTube - SharpieUS's Channel.

Little Miss Library

Since graduating from university, I don't recall ever once going back to the library.  In my experience in the Philippines, the library is used mainly to conduct serious research (meaning, the information cannot be found online or the data has to come from a very reliable source), usually of the historical sort.  It wasn't a place people tended to visit for fun.

So when my husband took me to the Washington Township Public Library, I was shocked to find that it was actually, well, cool.

There was a whole wall of DVDs (regular and Blu-Ray), a room for children's books that doubled as a reading/play area, numerous displays of magazines, and rows and rows of books from teen fiction to adult fiction to cookbooks to design books to textbooks to graphic novels and so much more.  There were comfy sofas, tables, quiet nooks, computers, and wi-fi.  And their books and movies are as updated as they can get.  It's like going to Barnes & Noble (or Fully Booked), except you get to take home and read the book (or see the movie) for free! (Technically, it's paid for by taxes, but you know what I mean).

Thanks to the library, I can read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Before Ever After (Thanks for the rave, L!) before deciding if it's worthy of a spot in our little book nook.

However, I could not resist going to my current favorite place in the world and purchasing the one novel that I had long been waiting for -- it was love at first sight, and I had to have it.  Plus, I had a coupon for it -- thus, true love!

Images from Barnes & Noble.

Plastic in the wild

The prettiest plastic grows in the deepest part of the woods.

Images from Melissa Shoes.

Cookie Confessions

So last night -- just a little after midnight, we were watching TV when my husband had a craving for cookies -- specifically the ones we had a few days ago from Panera. He asked if I could find the recipe and bake some. Lo and behold, I actually found a thread about it in Yahoo! Answers. The "best answer" wasn't the exact recipe by Panera, but it was close enough.

Toffee Nut Cookies Recipe from allrecipes.com.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg yolk

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions:

1. Cream together butter or margarine and brown sugar, packed.
2. Add 1 egg yolk, sifted flour, and vanilla. Batter will be stiff.
3. Spread on a greased 13 x 9 inch cookie sheet. Bake at 375F (190C) for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.
4. While still warm, add 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips to top of cookie until melted. Spread with knife until top is covered. Add chopped nuts, if desired. Let cool, then cut into squares.

Sweet. Nice texture (simultaneously crunchy, soft, and smooth). Chewy-good. Delicious.

But a couple (or more) confessions:

1. I forgot to add the vanilla extract. But it still turned out quite sweet.
2. I used white chocolate chips.
3. By stiff, the recipe MEANS stiff. I had a hard time spreading the batter on the cookie sheet, and it might have ended up being too thick.  Hence, uneven baking.
4. I had to cut and take off the edges and put the sheet back in the oven because the dough in the middle was still a little raw.  I baked it for 8 more minutes.  Even then, I don't think the whole cookie was baked through enough.
5. Instead of squares, I cut them in circles... and made everyone eat the crumbly bits first.
6. Despite these mistakes, no one suspected I made any. They actually tasted pretty incredible.

A couple last confessions: I never used the cutesy measuring spoons seen in the photos during the baking process.  And not one person drank chocolate milk while consuming the cookies.


Recipe from Allrecipes.com.  Styling and photography by Anji Panganiban.

Books and shoes

I have a good number of books that I had to leave in the Philippines.  While I adore each of my reads, right now, I'm really missing my Laura Weisberger "shoe" series: Fun and fabulous both inside and out.

Image taken from Alpha Reader

Shoes are my mojo

I love shoes.  So much so that I even took a shoe design course at SoFA Manila a couple years ago in the hopes of one day becoming the next Manolo Blahnik.


Clearly, I am nowhere near being even an amateur shoe designer.  Instead, I have taken what I learned to become an even more passionate lover of shoes -- from the world's most famous brands to mass retail.


But the kind of shoes I love most are the ones from emerging designers who make me feel like I "discovered" them; like they're a closely guarded secret; like they existed especially for me.  In two words, Mojo Moxy.


Certainly this brand may not be new to many, but it is to me.  I "discovered" them the other day on a trip to DSW, and I have been completely smitten since.

Shoes.  Fashion.  Beauty.  They inspire me.

Images taken from mojomoxy.com

Cupcakes and Ribbons

There was a time when I was baking so many cupcakes I had to beg my husband to bring them to work.  I was just starting out, following recipes to a T, that I was yielding more cupcakes than we could consume in our household.

Anyway, here's one result of that period not-so-long-ago: Brown Sugar Pound Cupcakes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes.  Recipe yields 28 standard-sized cupcakes.

Ingredients:

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp

2 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar

4 large eggs, room temp

3/4 buttermilk

Procedure:

1. Prehead oven to 325F.  Line standard muffin tins with paper liners (I used mini muffin tins).  Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sids of bowl as needed.  Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full.  Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until golden brown and a cake tester (I used a toothpick) inserted in centers comes out clean, about 25 minutes.  Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 10 minutes; turn cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely.  Cupcakes can be stored up to 3 days at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers

The cupcakes came out a nice golden brown.  And like true baby pound cakes, they were not as fluffy as typical cupcakes.  They had a nice, "full" feel and had just enough sweetness in them.

While good ol' Martha recommended using Brown-Butter Glaze, I opted for ready-to-use rolled fondant from Wilton because at the time, I was dying to decorate with fondant.

Instead of tinting the fondant, I used a brush to paint the gel coloring.  The flowers were molded with a floral cookie cutter, sprinkled with sugar crystals in the middle.  The ribbon, "mini cupcake on a cupcake," and shell (which to others looked like a broken heart, for some reason) decorations were entirely handcrafted.  Confectioners' sugar adds a "pretty" touch.

Food, styling and photography by Anji Panganiban.