December 23, 2014 by Adrienne

Meeting Misha Collins

Burcon Photo Op in progress

I got yelled at for taking this photo

Burcon 2014 was my first Supernatural convention, so I kind of went all out. A gold pass was out of my reach this year, so instead I splurged and bought all the photo ops I wanted. I got photo ops for Jared, Jensen, Jared AND Jensen together, Tamoh Penikett, Rob Benedict, Rich and Matt together, and Misha Collins. The only one I didn’t get that I wanted was Mark Sheppard, but I will get him next time.

A lot of people only came to the con for Jared and Jensen. I suppose, theoretically, I should’ve been most excited to meet them. And, don’t get me wrong, meeting them was magical and surreal and definitely worth the absurd amount of money I spent to go to the con. But the most memorable experience I had was my photo op with Misha Collins.

The Real Misha
The first thing I realized when I saw Misha’s panel was that the “quirky” Misha Collins everyone sees on the internet is not the real Misha. That version of him is basically a character he plays. The real him is way more like a “regular” guy, except there’s something …magical about him that I can’t really put my finger on. He seemed comfortable and unguarded, with an honesty you don’t often see in a convention setting.

The pre-meeting
The morning before my photo op, I got dressed in my girl!Castiel costume. I originally hadn’t planned to make a Cas costume for this convention, because I figured there’d be a ton of Cas cosplayers already. I actually wanted a Gadreel outfit, but when I went thrift shopping to look for a jacket or hoodie, I couldn’t find one that I liked. I did, however, find the perfect Castiel trench coat (if Cas were a girl anyways). I used a skirt I already had, borrowed a white shirt from my mom, and bought a tie when I was out and about in Hollywood earlier that week. The fishnets were actually from my Impala costume, but I decided to wear them for Cas too because I thought they would be cuter than wearing plain black tights as I had originally planned. The shoes are a pair of super beat up heels that I usually use for work.

When I got in line to get my photo op, I was super nervous. I felt like I needed to express to Misha how much I loved him, and I was scared I wouldn’t have time. I hadn’t been able to splurge (even further) on an autograph or meet and greet ticket, and I was wondering now if I’d regret it. I was hoping he would like my costume, but then I thought maybe he’s sick of seeing Cas cosplayers and won’t care. I looked in my hand mirror a million times to make sure there was no lipstick on my teeth because I don’t usually wear lipstick so I have no idea what I’m doing when it’s on my face. I took a photo of him with someone else on my phone (above) and the Creation Entertainment staff yelled at me which made me more nervous. I started to get worried that if I tried to talk to Misha before my photo I would get yelled at again. I was having trouble keeping my eyes on him, because looking at him is sort of like trying to look at a really bright light.

The meeting
Finally it was my turn to get my photo taken. As I stepped closer to Misha, I could feel my vibration raising to match his.

I was not prepared mentally for the reaction Misha gave me when he saw my costume. As soon as he saw me, he gasped as if to say “Oh my god…” He seemed almost overwhelmed with appreciation. He acted like he thought I was the cutest thing on Earth. I expected him to not even notice my costume, but he loved it!

I quickly decided there was no way I was not going to at least try to talk to him for half a second. I didn’t have a special pose in mind for the photo so I decided I was going to pretend I was asking for a pose and just tell him how much I adore him.

He said hello and I got close to him as if I were going to ask him for a specific pose. Somehow I summoned the courage to speak.

“I don’t really have a pose I want to do,” I confessed, “but I just wanted to say that I love you, you’re my hero, and you changed my life.”

He smiled and said thank you and quickly grabbed me by the shoulder. Before I knew what was happening, he had spun me around and we were both facing the camera. He held me against him as the photographer, Chris, quickly snapped our photo.

After our photo was taken, he shook my hand and said “it was very nice to meet you” before I was ushered away by the creation staff.

As I left the photo op room, I all of a sudden realized that I was crying. I joke about it, but tears of joy aren’t usually something that happen to me. I was shocked at my body’s response to meeting him and quickly ran to the bathroom to fix my make up.

There were two more days of the con left at that point. And all my other photo ops and the panels I went to were amazing… but to be honest, everything else paled in comparison to meeting Misha Collins.

adrienne orpheus and misha collins

August 24, 2014 by Adrienne

What does a supernatural birthday party look like?

The road so far…

Happy birthday to me!

This year for my birthday I wanted to have a Supernatural birthday party so that’s what I did.

From the facebook event page:

On the 23rd of August 1986 in the year of our Lord AD, I descended from Heaven in order to occupy the vessel the world has come to know as ADRIENNE ORPHEUS. On the 16th of August 2014 we will celebrate this joyous occasion by participating in the traditional festivities associated with birth before getting into our 1967 impala and driving off into the sunset while “Carry on Wayward Son” plays in the background.

For the occasion, I decided to cosplay Dean’s car.

I made this dress the day before the party using a slightly tweaked version of the sewing pattern Simplicity 3833. For the “license plate”, I painted the sky and orange grass with acrylic paint, and used a white iron-on t-shirt transfer for the “KAZ 2Y5” part. I had go go boots on before these photos were taken, but my feet hurt so I took them off. When I wear this at Dragon Con this year, I’ll be sporting the boots again!

I made 2 vegan, no sugar added cakes: a chocolate gluten free one and a vanilla whole wheat one.

This Angel banishing cake was the gluten free one, I used this recipe for cupcakes, except I poured the batter into a cake pan. I made up a vanilla glaze recipe using coconut milk, and the angel banishing sigil was drawn using strawberry jam.

The “devil’s trap” whole wheat cake was made using the vanilla cake and chocolate frosting recipes from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch.

For both cakes, I just substituted a mixture of baking stevia and coconut sugar for the white sugar, since I can’t eat cane sugar.

I made some decorations for the party, including this devil’s trap on poster board for the table. Sidenote: Halloween decorations come in handy when you’re having a Supernatural party.

Near the end of the night we sat around the fire and sang songs, including such SPN classics as “Carry on Wayward Son”, “Eye of the Tiger”, and “Heat of the Moment”.

Today was my actual birthday and I spent it on the beach in the sun which is exactly what I wanted!

Since I had birthday cake at my party I decided to make a cheesecake on my actual birthday. I used this recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie for the cake and I made up my own recipe for the strawberry topping. It was ridiculously good!

I got lots of presents that I loved, but the absolute best thing I got was this baby:

If you follow me on any social network, you probably know that I’ve wanted the vitamix for like 6 years. I’ve put a picture of one on every vision board I’ve ever made. By some complete miracle, I happened to find one on sale at the store. So with a little help from my boyfriend, I finally bought myself one. Dreams do come true!

This was a difficult year for me for many reasons, but I believe there is a rainbow at the end of every storm… and I feel good about things that are on the way. My goal for this new year is to be more open, more authentic, and to share more, including with all of you!

Love and light,

adorpheus

January 5, 2014 by Adrienne

I made a Supernatural Devil’s Trap Pie! Can be gluten free, sugar free, vegan (recipe)

Bring me some pie.

So… I may or may not have recently started watching Supernatural (by that I mean I watched all 8.5 seasons over the course of what? A month?). I also may or may not be completely fucking obsessed with it. You probably already know this if you follow me on Tumblr or any other social media site. Blame Ell.

What can I say? I love it so much! I haven’t felt this inspired by a show since Deep Space 9. The characters, the stories, everything! Angels! Demons! ANGELS!

THIS GUY!:

This year for Ell’s birthday we had a pie party (we made 4 different kinds of pie!) and I’m not sure if I’ve just been practicing a ton, but I suddenly realized that I’ve got this pie-making thing down. After the pie party, Ell and I BOTH had the idea to make a pie with a Devil’s Trap on it, so that’s exactly what we did on New Year’s Eve.

I chose cherry pie for aesthetic reasons, since cherry pie filling looks scarily like bloody entrails or maybe the pit of hell (I know, I know…), though obviously you can fill it with whatever you want. The devil’s trap is chocolate sauce. A lot of people, including Ell and Vynni, say that they don’t like cherry pie – which is probably cuz y’all are used to eating that stuff that comes from a can. This is totally better than that. This is actually good. Ell and Vynni loved it. I loved it. I think even Dean would love this pie, despite it being sugar-free, gluten free, and vegan.

For the crust we used Namaste Foods Biscuits Pie Crust and More Mix. We followed the directions for pie crust, except we substituted the butter with Earth Balance (the stick kind) and the egg with a flax “egg”. You can use a pre-made pie crust if that behooves you.

Demon Proof Cherry Pie

(sugar free, gluten free, vegan)

I make it up as I go along for this pie, so the measurements are approximate. Use your own discretion, you culinary genius, you!

For the crust

see above note about the crust

For the filling

2 ten ounce bags of frozen pitted cherries, preferably organic (about 4-5 cups). Obviously you can use fresh cherries too, but do YOU wanna remove the seeds from 4 cups of cherries?
1 cup of water
1/2 tsp of sea salt
3 TBSP (or more to taste) of Stevia Baking Blend Powder, Coconut Sugar, or other dry sweetener
1 TBSP of organic cornstarch

For the Devil’s Trap
Again, I was winging it here. This also made way more chocolate than we needed (we ate the rest like fondue and dipped banana slices in it).

1/4 cup cocoa powder
2-3 TBSP coconut oil, melted
Stevia or other sweetener to taste

(You can also melt some vegan chocolate chips if you don’t want to make your own chocolate sauce from scratch).

Method

Preheat the oven to 350f/176c.

Make the pie crust according to the package directions if you’re not using a pre-made crust. Put the bottom crust into a greased 8-inch pie pan.

To make the filling, combine the first 4 filling ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook until the stevia or other sweetener is dissolved and the cherries are defrosted, and the water is boiling a little. Add more water if necessary. Once its boiling, add in the cornstarch and whisk until thickened.

Pour the cooked filling into the bottom crust and prepare the top crust while the mixture cools. Add the top crust when ready.

For the devil’s trap, I etched it into the top crust with a knife prior to baking (above). We used this image from Super-Wiki as a reference:

Anyways, after that we put it in the oven until it looked done. Probably about a half hour, but I wasn’t really paying attention. You bake it until the crust is browned a little and if you can see any of the filling, it should be bubbling.

Before decorating with chocolate, set the pie aside to cool for at least 45 minutes. Especially if you’re using coconut oil, you don’t want the pie to be warm at all because it’ll melt the chocolate.

After the pie is cooled off, assemble all the chocolate ingredients in a saucepan and heat over low until the coconut oil is melted. Whisk them together to form a chocolate sauce.

I used a knife to carefully (painfully) draw the design by dipping the tip of the knife in chocolate and drawing along the lines I had etched in the crust prior to baking. This was tricky and not that fun. If you have a better method for doing this, go ahead and try that. Let the chocolate cool.

Eat.

Wishing you a blessed new year!
– adorpheus

GIF credits: 1 2 3