The Real Little Mermaid

Anyone who know me know that I am HUGE Disney fan. My all time favorite Disney is The Little Mermaid.
A lot of people don't know the the real story of the Little Mermaid. 

The Disney Version:

A young beautiful mermaid princess saves a young prince from drowning and falls in love with him. Since there love is forbidden Ariel goes to the sea-witch, Ursula to become a human. In doing this Ariel gives up her voice and must marry the the prince within 3 days or she will belong to Ursula. Ariel makes headway in getting the prince to fall in love with her, but Ursala tricks the prince in to marring her instead. Ariel turns back into a mermaid. King Triton takes pity on his daughter and gives himself and his kingdom to the sea-witch in place for Ariel freedom. Ursula creates a storm in which Prince Eric is able to steer a sunken ship into Ursula's heart, killing her and restoring King Triton to his throne. King Triton then realizes that Ariel truly loves the princes and changes his daughter into a human and they all live happily ever after.

The Original Hans Christian Anderson Version:

A young beautiful mermaid princess saves a young prince from drowning and falls in love with him. Since there love is forbidden the Princess goes to the sea-witch to become a human. As payment for this spell the sea-witch cuts out the mermaid's tongue. As part of the deal, if the mermaid princess does not marry the prince, she will then die and turn into sea-foam as the day sets on the prince's wedding. Now as a human, every step that the mermaid princess takes will feel as if she is stabbed with 1,000 daggers. After some time the prince vows to marry the maiden who saved him from a ship-wreck. The prince assumes that this maiden is a young girl who found him on the beach after the mermaid princess had saved him. He then marries her. The mermaid princess is invited to partake in the prince's wedding. As the day is setting the mermaid princess's sisters swim up towards the wedding ship. They have traded their hair to the sea witch for a magic dagger. The mermaid princess must stab the prince to death and rub his blood on her legs and then they will transform back into a tail. The mermaid princess cannot do this because she loves the prince so much. In her distress she stabs herself with the dagger and jumps off the wedding ship to her death. She then turns into foam among the waves. But, since the mermaid did a bivalent act, she is granted a soul and goes to heaven.

I love both versions of the story. But, the original version is much more powerful because it showcases the concept of sacrifice for true love.

 I got the idea for this post fromof something I found on funnyjunk.com Link

Pineapple Upside-Down Birthday

My best friend's birthday is actually Valentine's Day, a day where we both have class, So I decided to take him out the day before for an early birthday-day. So, we went about a hour out of where we live to go to a bigger city. Our main goal was to go shopping, but we mostly just ate. Sine we are just used ti cheep college food, It was nice to have something different. We ended up eating a bagel on the way to the city, cold-stone ice-cream, candy at the movie theater (I took him to his first "double-feature", where you sneek into another movie before you leave) and then we had Olive Garden. We had salad and soup (with like 5 baskets of bread-sticks), a HUGE main pasta meal, and ended our meal with some taramasu. But, it didn't end there. My best friend really doesn't like his birthday because he doesn't like getting older, so I did my best to make his birthday special for him. I made him (by request) a pineapple upside-down cake.

Here's the recipe I used http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/pineapple-upside-down-cake-v/Detail.aspx
NOTE: The recipe calls for yellow cake mix, but a "golden butter" cake mix/recipe works much better.

First you need to spread the butter and brown sugar mixture evenly between the two pans. Place crushed pineapple in one pan and pineapple rings in the other. Make sure the pan containing the pineapple rings looks nice (you can also add cherries in the holes of the rings).

Then you simply cover your pineapple with half of your cake mixture. Be sure to remember which pan has the rings and which has the crushed pineapple.

I also added a thin layer of cream-cheese frosting between the two cakes to hold them together and to add some more rich flavor. 

Happy Birthday John!

Valentine's Day!

I realize that Valentine's day was last week, but now it's time to talk about it!
For valentine's day I spent over $30 in chocolate and treats. I tried to do something special for all of my friends. So, I made grab-bags filled with a bunch of a bunch of sweet treats. I wanted to try to give some of my closer friends a special valentine, So I printed off special cards to attach to their treat-bags. 

(Pokemon, Law and Order S.V.U, and Left4Dead Valentines!)

My best friend got a gift-bag filled with some of his favorite things (Cookies'n'Cream chocolates, Reeses hearts, York-mints and the Valentine's day classic, a box of conversation hearts). He LOVES Pokemon, so attached a Pokemon themed valentine's day card.

To spread even more love, I also baked up some red-velvet cupcakes for my Japanese class. I added some sparkly conversation hearts to make 'em a bit more festive. They seemed to go over pretty well. <3