challah french toast

and homemade blueberry sauce!

michelle, a good friend from my brown univ. days, and i treated ourselves to a lavish breakfast when she visited a couple weekends ago. we actually made it 2 mornings in a row; it was that good!

happy 4th!

2 more rounds of cupcakes!

for easter, i made the math dept cupcakes! white cake with lemon icing! this was the last one left. oops.

and now, summer school has started. it's more intense than the regular school year because we meet for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week (even more than my teaching load during school!!). so, don't be surprised if my attention to this blog continues to be limited. i will be done july 22 though! i'm teaching algebra 1, which is a nice change from the intense calculus teaching load that i had during the school year. the kids are HILARIOUS. naturally i had to bake them a treat since i had to subject them to the torture of a quiz on thursday. cocoa devil's food cupcakes with raspberry frosting!

mommy's bday present!

mom's bday is actually in august, 4 days after mine. i've been so so swamped this year that although i started this shirt for her last august, i never got around to finishing it until mother's day this year. sigh.

m.a.t.h...i.s...t.a.k.i.n.g...o.v.e.r...m.y...l.i.f.e.

anyhoo, so around front, the shirt has a mandarin collar and 3 rows of ruffles on both sides of the button placket.

here's a view of the back.

the pattern is for the jj blouse over at burdastyle.com.

happy very belated birthday, mommy! thanks for being so patient! i should probably get started on her bday present now for this year, seeing as i work soooooo slowly.

lan and robert's xmas presents

well, i finally met up with lan and robert over the memorial day weekend at their beach house in delaware. their christmas presents were held hostage in my evil clutches, but after 6 months, i decided that flannel pj pants were totally appropriate for the summer. hehe. robert's had a tesselation of cars!

here's a closeup of the faux-drawstring ties.lan's had sweet peas all over. here are her faux drawstring ties:unfortunately it didn't fit her, so mom gets another pair of flannel pj pants! she currently owns the most helen-made pj pants out of anyone! hehe. i'll make lan another pair after the major black friday flannel sale at joann's this november. maybe i'll get them to her in 2 years, if she's lucky...

black bottom cupcakes

think hostess cupcakes. center is a cream cheese filling with chocolate chips. so amazing!!

i swear i'm still alive. just swamped with finals and other end of the year nonsense!!!

sunny bunny

the bunks, sunning himself. love!

2 more rounds of cakes

for the office, due to bummy days. devil's food cake with coconut pecan topping:

and chocolate mayonnaise cake with butterscotch icing. yes, mayonnaise. makes it real moist. and this was my first attempt at butterscotch icing. it was decadent. i will be making it again!

organization gone wild!

matt, a math teacher colleague, introduced me to his label-maker... hehehehehe. you may consider me ocd. however, i just keep my baking supplies REALLY organized. hey, you have my particular ways to thank for making sure you don't end up eating cake made from cornstarch instead of flour!

new skirt from an old skirt

my friend kate, who is a colleague at my school and a college roomie of an old friend from high school, organized a clothing swap amongst her friends back in november. at my height, of course i'd never find anything that'd actually fit me. however, fabric sources abounded! i ended up snagging one of kate's skirts: a navy pleated a-line skirt with really cute floral embroidery and eyelets throughout the fabric. using the marie skirt pattern from burdastyle.com

and the fabric from kate's skirt, i made myself a tulip shaped high-waisted skirt! i love it! there are sewed down pleats in the front and back and an invisible zipper to the left. the the skirt slightly flares out at the hips and then curves back in at the knees (hence tulip-shaped). the pictures unfortunately don't really show off the flared shape of the skirt, but rather make it look more a-lined. however, when on, the flaring is more noticeable. i made the waistband a little wider and more substantial than in the pattern so that it'd be more high-waisted. i love it! yippee! oh, and might i note: this is my first project from scratch where i used the serger! success!

bunny invasion

yes, you heard that correctly. bunnies have invaded the school at which i work. i may or may not have had something to do with that. every day, i drive emily to my apt and she rides my building's shuttle toward her apt. sometimes we just miss the shuttle, so we spend an hour making origami bunnies until she can catch the next shuttle. we make big bunnies and baby bunnies.

eventually, the bunnies took over my apt, so, we strung up the baby ones and made a bunny garland for the office. eventually we'll make a big bunny garland for the foyer of the 2nd floor of the math building. hehehe

the 50 lb hay bale

ever wonder what 50 lbs of hay looks like? bunks has a 50 lb bale all to himself. that makes 16.7 lbs of hay per pound of bunny! of course, i couldn't carry it up to the apt so i had to use a bellhop's cart. the front desk guy who retrieved the package for me in the mail room thought i was nuts.

next problem: where does one store 50 lbs of hay? FINE, bunks, i guess i'll let you share my shoe and fabric closet. sigh... he's so demanding.

baking as the result of frustration

many frustrating days have abounded at work. kids are getting irritable because we're only 2.5 weeks from spring break. pickmeups were needed in the office. stat.

so, in the past 2 months, i have made chocolate chews,

brown velvet cupcakes prior to frosting

and with cream cheese frosting (for colleague kristin's bday),

new orleans bread pudding (not for colleagues, but for dinner with a friend),

chinese new year bunny cookies pre-icing,

first round of bunny cookies,

2nd round of bunny cookies (for grand total of 93!!),

and finally cocoa devil's food cupcakes for today with cream cheese frosting (less sweet, but more chocolatey than regular devil's food).

i don't think i'll ever tire of baking! whee!

tu nian

today marks the start of the year of the bunny (or tu nian, as we say in mandarin)!!! get ready for a year of bunny pics galore!!! look at these cute massive hind feet!!!

whenever bunks misbehaves, dad's folds him in half and keeps him hostage. hehe. he's my teeny pocket-sized ball of furry mischief! belly full, post meal. look at that cute face.this is your year, bunks!! we're celebrating you!!!

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