my bday present from the rents

yes, you may be confused as to why i'm posting about my bday present in december, when my bday is in august (24th, for all you bums who forgot)! mom and dad had sent me the funds to buy a serger but with my new crazy teaching life, everything gets put on the backburner (except the teaching of course, hehe). at the end of november, i finally got it together, and ordered myself this baby on 50% off sale. the brother 1034d lay-in serger: sergio, meet the world. the world, meet sergio. i know he will become fast friends with sewphie. hehehehe

christmas hedgehogs! but only x4

oh bloggy, how i have neglected you!

as you can imagine, life's been CRAZY these past few weeks. at my school, the juniors disappear on internships for the month of january, so technically last friday was their last day of the quarter. testing-apalooza! which means, i have to prep them for tests, write the tests, corner all kids who avoid test day to take the tests. thankfully all kids have been cornered, except one elusive one. i'll let the school deal with him.

so finally, last week on thursday night, i started my christmas hedgehogs. my goal was to make 5 that evening: 4 for my friends in the math dept, 1 for pammy with whom i coached field hockey this year. but alas, only 4 were completed. no hedgehog for pammy this year, or for anyone else. i'm just too busy. in my haste to finish them, i also forgot to take pictures! emily sent me a picture of hers. they're from the matsutake blog post titled "if marie antoinette had been a hedgehog." they're supposed to have 3 or 4 tiers of ruffles, but em's only got 1. it looks like a ridiculous skirt. hehe. i'll have to make these again next year, and the math dept will get last year's christmas birdies! finally, all will be back on track! sorry, friends.

thanksgiving treats

i'm not really a fan of turkey, so the highlight of turkey day for me is the dessert (i think the highlight of every meal is dessert hehe). this year, jimmy's gf baked us an apple pie, so i couldn't bake yet another pie. therefore i made carrot nut bread.

unfortunately the 1st round of baking left the inside still wet. (i was lazy and forgot to test it with a toothpick since the outside looked browned already.) the 2nd round of baking couldn't bake through to the inside because then i started feeling sleepy and didn't want to forget to take the bread out of the oven so i quit halfway through. still underbaked. 3rd round, turkey morning, i rebaked the bread yet again and success! the inside was done! however, as a result, the bread ended up a bit hard. well, rock hard. oops. we still devoured it of course. i convinced the whole fam to come to philly this year, hehe, so to send my 'rents off on their trip home, i baked them pumpkin spice bread. this turned out a beauty. it was super moist inside! i added raisins, walnuts, and cranberries. it was delicious. i'm a fan of spiced things, i've learned!

chocolate oat bars

from "joy of cooking"! sooo ridiculously amazing! take a look at the inside:

nice soft layer of chocolate, while on top the chocolate layer is more firm. i must make them again, seeing as i still have half a can of condensed milk leftover. hmmm...