chocolate peanut butter oatmeal bars

with walnuts on top because i don't have peanuts! i was in a great mood 2 days ago because i finished grading my midterms, the results of which were really good! so i baked these for my fellow math teachers who had to proctor exams yesterday. they were very aesthetically pleasing, which is new for me, AND tasty. very tasty. too tasty. i saved 5 for me at home. shhhh... secret.

serging for the first time!!

i serged for the first time this sunday!! i'd been dreading this moment, to be honest, as the serger requires threading 4 spools! and using a cutting knife, eek! it was frustrating for sure. it didn't make sense how the cutting knife works. dad saved the day by reading the manual for me and informing me that trying to shove the material into the knife was improper and that sergio would feed the material to the knife for me. right. so that's why i kept jamming up the machine. oops. here's the finished result!

this is the inside of a pair of designer jeans that i got in a major sale that were far too long. i had been wearing them with 3.5 to 4 inch heels, but they still mopped the floor. thus, i rarely wore these jeans. however, my last pair of jeans got a massive hole in the buttocks, and although mom repaired them for me, reality set in and i realized i needed to make these ones more wearable. here's the outside! these are the 1st pair that i've hemmed since doing lori's for her. not bad, right? i think i have a backup career if i ever get tired of teaching, hehe

settling into philly

well, bunks has settled in to his new abode in philly. hehe. he's figured out the sound of the fridge, and tries to sneak in the veggie drawer when my back is turned!

he nests in the hay basket i got for his bday in august rather than chew it. and here's a pic of him grooming in the sun during my snow day last week!

merry christmas to me!

so mom has benefited from 3 pairs of pj pants already (this year's one will be posted once i load the pics off dad's camera), jimmy has gotten a pair of shorts, and his gf got shorts last year too, so whew, my turn came next! the flannel was scored during joann fabric's black friday crazy sale ($1.29/yd!!!) and features jungle exploring monkeys with palm trees, toucans, geckos, tropical snakes, and the word "explorer" all over! admittedly, i had already worn the pants for a couple days before i snapped a pic of it and threw it in the wash.

ignore the mushy look. hehe. i didn't feel like sewing buttonholes, so i made a faux drawstring.of course, when the elastic was a bit loose, there was no drawstring to help keep up the pants, so i had to unstitch the waistband and shorten the elastic! sigh. laziness didn't pay off this time. it rarely does i suppose. merry christmas to me!

mei-tai numbahhh 2!

my oldest friend in weston had her baby shower today. we were in the same 1st grade class and she was my first friend in town! danielle is a fantastic sewing enthusiast as well, so i figured i'd leave the baby clothes sewing to her, and made her my 2nd mei-tai! the inside is made of a khaki flannel that has turtles and hippos, which is super soft and cute. mom's christmas gift was made of the same flannel (pics to come later) and i made sure to save enough for the mei-tai, since blue is danielle's favorite color!

the meitai and pocket flaps aren't crooked, i swear. unfortunately i didn't adjust it before i snapped the pic. since baby showers are scenes of majorly cute decorations, clearly my forte, i had to step up my game. i used the last of my 1960's sparkly light blue ribbon (of course! and danielle is having a boy!!) which is tarnish-resistant, and included a card trimmed with pinking shears! on the card, i sewed cutouts of a turtle and a hippo. (sewing on paper feels so wrong but is so so cool!) i'll be doing it again for sure! at the baby shower, we all were told to pick a rubber duck and i won the prize! the barefoot contessa's "how easy is that?" cookbook! how perfect, considering i'm awful at cooking. maybe i'll be featuring pics soon of something i've cooked... maybe... i'm sure danielle will have birthed her baby before then! good luck, oldest buddy!

happy bday david p!

ah yes, a post from a million years ago. dec 11 to be exact. david p (we have 2 david's in our office and both are over 6 feet tall!) is a fellow teacher in my math dept and his bday is the day before jimmikins'! since emily's pumpkin chiffon cupcakes were oh so tasty, i wanted to go the chiffon cupcake route again for david. i had 2 gallons of oj and 2 oranges, so i made him orange chiffon cupcakes! chiffon cake has to be inverted while cooling so that it doesn't shrink down. i was lazy and didn't invert emily's cupcakes and they became teeny, so for david's, bottoms up!

i had a lot of work to do that night, and didn't feel like making cream cheese frosting again, so i made a quick orange icing to drizzle on top. naturally the drizzle drizzled all over the place, so his cupcakes were hideous (i'm noticing a hideous theme for all my baked goods) but tasty. happy birthday david!

from the ghost of christmas future

so of course i ran out of time to make the broski's christmas present.

i'm almost done with the first!

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...

happy bday emily!

yesterday, my fellow new math teacher, emily, turned a perfect square. not 16, not 36, but the one in between. hehe. emily, remember, has a serious sweet tooth, so i promised her a new type of cupcake for her bday (she's sampled a lot of my desserts by now). with 2/3 of the can of pumpkin leftover from the pumpkin bread, and seeing as we're deep in the heart of fall, i decided that pumpkin chiffon cupcakes would be perfect for the bday girl. that is, with cream cheese frosting of course. chiffon cakes involve a lot of egg whites, quite like angel food cake. doesn't it look so fluffy?

historically, i am not the greatest decorator of desserts. sure, they're tasty, but they usually look hideous. not this time! mom got me a frosting gun with 5 or 6 different tip options, so i decided to test it out. since emily loves flowers, i did a swirl of frosting on each cupcake, resembling a rose.

of course i ran out of cupcake wrappers, so i baked the rest of the batter in a loaf pan. hello massive cupcake loaf (in the bday girl's own words)!

i decided to frost that sucker too:

hehe. this one i saved for me!

fh mouth guard pouches!

so apparently i miscounted and really there are 24 girls on my jv fh team. 24!!! what did i get myself into? the girls are great though, despite the fact that they frequently lose their mouthguards. sigh. at the championship game of the jv tournament, one girl even ran off the field after the start of the match, hunting around for her mouthguard. we played down a girl for a minute! i almost had a heart attack. naturally, i took it upon myself to put an end to this nonsense. each girl is getting a mouth guard pouch with her name on it! (note: i used iphoto and blocked out the school's acronym before the " '10." no worries, i'm ocd enough to know not to print things off-center!)

the material is from jimmy's high school graduation gown. grad gowns are huge. thus, lots of mouth guards bags can be made! i freezer paper stenciled the logo on with fabric paint. the side stitching includes french seams, where the ends of the fabric are tucked into itself. these bags will not fray nor will they come apart. the girls have NO EXCUSES now! i made a double draw string for the top so they can close the pouches to keep out the dirt from their nasty sports bags. the material is real thin, thus allowing the mouthguards to dry too! after i made the first 6 (3 at a time), i decided to start a mass production line.

it was quite efficient. i popped out the 2nd 6 in no time! 12 more left. perhaps i'll finish them this weekend...

for the new baby mama. heart from bunks

when lan visited 2 weekends ago, she mentioned that lori's baby shower would be this past weekend. the fam had been trying to convince me to join them on a family biking trip in dc and my friend michelle had been trying to convince me to see her in her play (she plays the lead!), with 3 fantastic reasons, i was in. yet ANOTHER road trip to dc (did i ever really leave?)! now lori is my friend for whom i made the mei tai. however, bunks had yet to present his gift to the unborn babe, so he put his cage cleaning food provider to work. (sigh, he's such a slave driver.)

"weekend sewing" has this adorable baby boy shirt (kai's shirt) and pants (the huck finn pants) that i'd been dying to try out. for the shirt, i used the same light blue uber-wrinkly cotton blend that i used for the bodice of lan's heidi dress. i hate how wrinkly it is, but i figured boys can tolerate wrinkliness. hehe. the black actually has skinny white pinstripes and is of a stiffer 100% cotton fabric. i didn't want to make an all light blue shirt, as it would look like pj's, so i added the black for the collar and front pocket, and made the huck finn pants from it as well. i topstitched the light blue fabric with black thread and the black fabric with light blue thread. (yes, i'm meticulous. are you surprised?) the best feature of this shirt:

i learned how to make buttonholes with a sewing machine!!! eeee!!! sooo much easier than hand binding the raw edges when i do it by hand. usually it takes me an hr to make 3 buttonholes. think of how many men's shirts i can make now!!! here's a view of all of them. beauty, no? i know nothing about sizing for babies (remember how jeremy's son's fc ceviche jersey was way too big for him?), so i made an adjustable waistband for the pants. the elastic (hidden underneath the light blue basted x) has 4 buttonholes and a button, so that lori could expand the pants as her babe grows. i know, i'm brilliant! (ok, maybe the pattern called for this feature...) i have no normal wrapping paper, so i stuck with my usual brown paper packaging (tied up with string! yay sound of music reference!)! it was sooo good to see you lori!

bake-a-palooza

bunks hates when i bake. he smells goodies in the air, yet never benefits from the situation at all. first up was chocolate chip cookies that i overbaked for my jv field hockey girls for their trip to the jv tournament (which we won!!!). they were super duper crispy, yet still chocolatey.

lan and her fam came to visit halloween weekend, so i made red velvet cupcakes, their favorite! pretty aren't they?

lucky humans, but poor bunks! to add to his misery, he is currently shedding, which i imagine is fairly itchy for rabbits.

ROAR!

in full costume!

jv league tournament champs!

the jv field hockey girls that i coach won the league tournament today!!! undefeated, then we won the championship game! we didn't let a single goal go by us!! i am so unbelievably proud of them!

off to make 22, that's right TWENTY TWO, glam mouth guard pouches for them as an end of the year gift. T-W-E-N-T-Y-T-W-O!

happy halloween hannah!

friend becca has the most adorbs 2.5 yr old daughter, hannah. yay h's! for halloween, becca and hannah decided she'd be nala, lion princess.

so saturday morning, becca and the cutie hannah came over. We used 2 in wide elastic and made a headband, around which we sewed thick fuzzy felt. I made ears, stuffed them, and attached them onto the headband, while becca made tons of pompoms from fluffy chestnut colored yarn. then becca sewed the pompoms onto the headband as a mane, while i sewed a long tube for the tail and a simple skirt stuffed with tulle inside to make it fluffy. hannah insisted on the princess aspect of the costume so i sewed on some glittery tulle on top of the furry skirt to glam it up! then, i sewed the tail onto the elastic waist band of the skirt. hehe the tail is rather long on the little girl!! scary lion? nah, i think she's pretty adorbs!

apple cockaigne

mom and dad visited last weekend, as usual, and brought me tons of fresh apples for baking. so i baked an apple cockaigne. next time i plan to halve the sugar topping, as i found it to be way too sweet.

they call me dr. bunkins...

bday cookies and cake

for my 2 favorite boys! yup, october is coming up, and since i no longer live near long and ryan, i figured i'd shower them with gifts this past weekend when i hung out with their family at the beach. they had tried my gingersnaps during their visit to philly on labor day weekend and loved them, so i figured i'd make them their own batch of gingerthins, which are essentially just skinny gingersnaps. (i also wanted to try something new, since i make gingersnaps for the rents so often!) the dough looked like poo, although the cookies were tasty.

too tasty. i ate so many of them that the kids didn't end up with as many as i had hoped. oops. for their cake this year, i baked a marble ring cake and kept the chocolate icing on the side for everyone to add as they liked. long loves chocolate and ryan loves vanilla (but rather dislikes things that are too chocolatey), and since they were sharing their bday celebration with me this year, the timing was perfect for a combined cake. marble cakes are fun to prepare, as you alternate between spooning white cake and chocolate cake into the cake pan. happy birthday, boys!

the mei-tai

my dear sewing friend, erin, works for a patternmaker, meg of sewliberated.com, who published a fantastic pattern for a mei-tai, an asian baby carrier/baby sling that has become all the rage amongst babymamas these days. meg's is particularly strong in that inside the panel, the straps are crossed as an x, thus providing more support than standard mei-tais, whose straps end at the panel. i had been waiting for the perfect excuse to make one...

now lori, my former colleague for whom i hemmed those jeans, is preggers. (in fact, those were her preggers jeans i hemmed!) lori is the perfect recipient for the mei-tai for many reasons: 1) she's short, my height, and thus an adjustable baby carrier would be ideal for her. 2) she appreciates more natural organic things. and 3) she's asian! yippee! i selected this thick cream woven canvas with thin white stripes for its simplicity and sturdiness

and the penguin flannel because her kiddo will be a winter baby! you might remember the penguin flannel from mom's christmas pj pants last year. i had just enough for the main panel of the mei-tai. (i love when things work out perfectly like that!)

mei-tais have long shoulder and waist straps for securing the carrier onto the babymama's front, back, or even side! they're "one-size-fits-many," so babydaddys can partake in babywearing too. the front pocket was supposed to be a stuff sack for the entire thing but since i used such thick fabric, the pocket will be just a regular pocket.

here's my mini mannequin donning the mei-tai:

(i thought about trying it on for the post, but then when bunks turned out to be the only "baby" i could carry in the mei-tai, i figured you'd all think i was weird... so mannequin will have to do the honors. hehe. bunks, you're off the hook!)

blondies

no, i didn't dye my hair blonde (what a sight that would be!), but on saturday i did bake some butterscotch brownies, otherwise known as blondies. i added chocolate chips (of course!) and some shredded coconut. emily, a new math teacher hired with me, also has a sweet tooth, so she got half!

current mood:

in sewing denial. feeling swamped. tired of mathing.

sigh.

i'll be back, tim gunn, i'll be back.

i'll make it work... (until tomorrow night!)