Spring Break: By the Numbers

A summary of my spring break...by the numbers. Enjoy!

248. Miles between Louisville and Fulton. I drove all 248 on Friday after school, and this includes part of I-65, the entire Western Kentucky Parkway AND the entire Purchase Parkway.

1. Number of points Connecticut had over UK in the Final Four. It wasn't the kind of game you want your season to end on, but they had a great run in the big dance.

0: Fish that Morgan caught when we went to the pond on Saturday. Mom and I sat and read magazines while Morgan fished behind Gina and Jordan's house. What a great feeling knowing none of us had to think about school for a solid week!

24: How many of Dan's white tshirts I washed and folded while at home. It was a record load!

154: Tests I graded while it was raining on Monday morning. I knew if I put off grading my tests, I would be grading on Sunday night, and the rainy morning lent itself perfectly to the task.

6: Teenage boys that were treated to popsicles from the ice cream truck on Tuesday afternoon. Morgan had friends over and they were playing baseball in the yard when we all heard the familiar sound of the ice cream truck coming around the corner. We all ran to the front of the house just in time and Mom bought popsicles for them all, a treat Mom and aunt Cathy recalled from their childhood.

40: Hours it took me to break my new iPhone. Monday night Mom and I took a quick trip to Paducah and I finally upgraded to an iPhone. And exactly 40 hours later, it fell out of my purse onto the driveway and the glass completely shattered. Luckily Apple came to my rescue before I had to come clean to Dan.

31. Dollars I spent on a cover for my iPhone.

56. Dollars we spent on dry cleaning. I haven't figured up how much we actually saved getting our clothes dry cleaned in Fulton versus Louisville, but it was significant! We took 7 pairs of pants and 1 shirt, as well as 6 shirts to be pressed.

3. Nights we ate chicken and rice casserole baked by Karen that she sent back to Louisville with me. It's always a great feeling not having to worry about making dinner.

4: Toppings I got for my frozen yogurt from 32 Degrees Sunday afternoon. Yum!

2: Hours of freedom I have left before bedtime and the ending to a wonderfully relaxing spring break!

Spring Break: By the Pictures

Oh, Spring Break....where did you go?

It flew by so fast! Here are some pics from my week off of school.

I took home (Fulton) a few cupcakes from Louisville's Cupcake Shoppe. Yum!

Of course, Saturday night we were decked out in our blue and white for the game. Unfortunately UK lost, but it was a great season! It was fun to watch with family!

My first day back in Louisville was a beautiful spring day!

Friday night we ate dinner at Cheddar's. The weather was perfect, so we enjoyed being outside before dinner.

Saturday night we went to Williamstown to enjoy time with Dan's family. The day began with intense storms, but by the time the evening came around, we were enjoying another great evening.

Dan enjoyed the country sunset. We all enjoyed playing cornhole after dinner.

On our way back to Louisville, we stopped at The Summit so I could try out the new frozen yogurt bar, 32 Degrees. (I needed a little something to cheer me up...the realization that my spring break was coming to an end was upon me!) I got coconut and strawberry yogurt with strawberries, mangoes, blueberries, and granola toppings. Micah and Mallory, next time you're in town we can make a visit...is it better than Orange Leaf?

Birthday Weekend

Last weekend Mal and Micah came to Louisville Saturday night and we celebrated Mal's and I's birthdays. Mine was Sunday the 6th and her's is the 9th. We decided to eat dinner at our apartment and then go to the Melting Pot for dessert.

Happy Birthday to us!

For dinner we had salad first, then pork chops with apple and cranberry topping, glazed carrots, green bean bundles, and a roll.

Enjoying dinner!

At the Melting Pot. We got two chocolate fondue selections: The Original (milk chocolate with crunchy peanut butter) and Bananas Foster. This is the Bananas Foster being flambayed. Sooo yummy!!

It was pretty dark in the restaurant, but luckily we had birthday candles to give just enough light to take some pics with Micah's phone.

Micah and Mal at the Melting Pot. You can see the plate of all the yummy goodies we dipped in the chocolate: strawberries, rice krispie treats, pound cake, marshmallows, bananas. Loved going to the Melting Pot with the sisters!

Dan and I decided to celebrate on Sunday by going out to dinner at Proof on Main downtown. We have been there once before and love the food. Luckily we had a gift card, so we didn't have to feel guilty about eating out at nice places two nights in a row.

We didn't get a pic of us together, but I did take one of Dan.

I forgot to take a picture of our plates of food. Dan got fish and I got pork with grits. This was our dessert, sticky toffee pudding with buttermilk gelato. It was delicious!!

It's kind of hard to tell what this is, but Proof serves their guests cotton candy after they finish their meal. Very unique and yummy!

What Students Say

My students live in a unique world. I believe I was in 6th grade when my family got its first computer. I remember playing games on the computer, visiting chat rooms, and of course getting on ICQ with friends. Watching the world of technology and communication evolve right before my eyes makes me laugh sometimes....oh how things have changed.

Today during the last period of school we had our students clean out their lockers. Just about every single student had a cell phone in their locker. Kids walk out of school and immediately get out their phones and iPods. One student got an iPad for Christmas. Oh please...I got my first cell phone when I was a junior in high school...and all it did was make phone calls!

This week I was made aware of exactly how unique my students' thoughts are. (I guess they are unique to me, but this is just normal for them. They don't know any different.)

We were filling out a questionnaire and the last question was "favorite activity." The first student response I saw was "texting." Really?

This week my classes worked on creating their own Native American-inspired textile designs. We were collecting money for a Native American school in Montana, so I thought I could tie the schoolwide project to geometry through textile design. The students actually enjoyed the project and some of their designs are very good! But I asked each class if they had ever heard the word textile. A few hands shot up. "Do any of you know what the word textile means?" I just had to chuckle out loud when I heard the response, "I don't know, but it must have something to do with a cell phone."

Due to snow days my students had to take their final exams after Christmas break. I knew all the video games, tv-watching, sleeping, and TEXTING throughout break would turn their minds into Jell-O, so I spent the first day in January reviewing for the final. One student struggled to come up with an answer to a question and said with a frustrated tone, "If I had my brain from two weeks ago I would know the answer!"

I guess the most redeeming quality about middle school students is that no matter how immature, overly dramatic, or childish they are, (or how tired, frustrated, upset, hopeless I am) they can always say something that will make me laugh.

Let's Play Catch Up

My blog has been bare lately!! You'd think I have a new job keeping me busy or something!

All kidding aside, I have had people tell me that my blog hasn't been updated in a while. All I can say is "I know!!" But I even had an extra long Christmas break to get updated and still didn't make a new post. I have no excuses!

But alas, a snow day has come to the rescue! I have coffee that is warm, slippers that are cozy, and a laptop ready for some furious typing on this snowy Tuesday! This will be just a quick post with mostly pictures of what has been keeping us so "busy" the past couple of months. (Wow, it has been months since my last post!)

Taken from inside our apartment on 2nd Street after about 2 inches of snow this morning, January 11, 2011.

I will hate making up all of our snow days in June, but  I have coffee and Martha Stewart to keep me happy! I am ready to do some blogging!

Fresh Bread. Did you notice the toast in the picture above? That is not just any toast. It is toast made from bread that I made Sunday night with my new breadmaker I got for Christmas from Dan's grandparents. I have never made fresh bread before; I have always been very willing to try new things in the kitchen, but there is one ingredient that has always given me an excuse to skip over certain recipes: yeast. But I thought that now was the perfect time to "man up" and face my nemesis; after all, the breadmaker does all the work for you! I literally threw everything into the pan and pressed Start. 3 1/2 hours later we had warm fresh bread to eat with our bowls of Karen's Potato Soup.

The "Country White Bread" was perfect with our soup. I also had some for breakfast this morning. It was the perfect time to toast the bread and top it with some items I've been waiting to try. Item one: blackberry jam made by Dan's mother using blackberries from her garden. Item two: cranberry bourbon compote I got at a holiday gift exchange. Both were very good!

Christmas cookies. Each year I make decorated sugar cookies to take home to Flip for Christmas. I think I first did this 2-3 years ago and have enjoyed making it a part of my holiday baking checklist ever since. (And yes, we all know who loves these cookies the most. Karen Dean: fan of Christmas cookies.) And since 2010 was our year to spend Christmas with Dan's family, I got to make a huge batch of cookies early and ship some of them to Fulton and save the rest for our trip to Williamstown. For some reason this year's decorating experience was more frustrating than most (due to cheap plastic piping bags); caution: do not wear brand new pajama pants while icing 4 dozen Christmas cookies. Nonetheless, the cookies turned out looking great as usual.

My cookie decorating station.

A samping of the cookies. On the left are my personal favorites: the argyle and houndstooth patterns. :-)

And just to tease Milton and Micah a bit, their very own cookie-versions of the iPad and iPhone.

More holiday baking. Before Thanksgiving I decided that I wanted to do something for my fellow 6th grade teachers to say "thanks for helping out the brand new teacher-even as far as breaking into her car and rescuing her keys that she locked inside on her 2nd day of school." So the Sunday before Thanksgiving I made mini loaves of pumpkin bread for my team teachers. I adapted a recipe I found that uses white cake mix as the base, and they turned out very nicely. (The drizzle of pumpkin spice icing on top helped out some!) And I loved wrapping them up and making them look pretty just as much as I loved baking them. The teachers really loved them; one said that her entire loaf was gone before she got home that day!

Also for Thanksgiving I decided to try a dessert I'd never tried before: cheesecake from scratch. I found a recipe for a Pumpkin Cheesecake on one of my favorite blogs: Smitten Kitchen. I just had to try this recipe to take to Fulton for Thanksgiving. Sadly I didn't get a picture of the final product, but here are a couple of pics of the progress.

I was ready to go: taped the recipe to the cabinets for clear viewing and laid out all the ingredients.

The crust was made of graham cracker crumbs and crushed pecans. Yum!

In the oven it goes! Trust me, you need to try this recipe!!

P.S. If anyone wants to see what is going on at school and keep up with Mrs. Tepe's 6th grade, you can visit my school blog: Bernheim Middle School and click on Tepe on the blogroll on the left.

Recent Baking Endeavors...The Calm Before the Storm.

A couple of weeks ago I volunteered my baking services for a couple of special occasions. I was getting together with some college friends one night, and the next night was a Tepe birthday celebration. There were a couple of recipes I had been wanting to try and these opportunities presented themselves. (Little did I know that this very weekend would be the calm before the storm.)

I receive weekly emails from Pillsbury which include everything from recipes to coupons. A recent email included the recipe for Grand's Little Pies. They looked simple enough so I decided to give them a try. (My friend Alecia referred to these as "Barbie Cups.") They are simply biscuit dough placed inside a muffin tin, filled with a fruit filling, and topped with a pecan crumble.  I chose to fill mine with an apple filling; they were a big hit with my college buddies.

These little pies were quick and simple, and very tasty too. Would be great with ice cream!

My second baking endeavor came after I found a recipe for homemade Funfetti cake. I follow a few baking blogs and Sprinkle Bakes is one of my favorites. She posted a recipe for the cake several weeks ago and I was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to give it a try. My father- and sister-in-law were both having October birthdays and the family was getting together to have a dual celebration. And after finding out that Jess had a personal love of Funfetti, I knew that this cake was destined for the occasion.

The recipe was a simple white cake with lots of colorful sprinkles added right to the batter! These sprinkles are made to add to ice cream and worked perfectly in the cake.

See all those wonderful sprinkles??!!

I made the mistake of skipping the step where I was supposed to line my baking pans with parchment paper. Did I learn my lesson? I think so.

I was left with one cake that was salvageable, and one pile of cake pieces. So instead of a beautiful two layer cake, I had to settle for one and hope it would be enough to feed everyone. But those scraps were happily eaten by Dan and I throughout the next several days.

The final product turned out well, complete with homemade buttercream frosting and more sprinkles on top. It was a perfect birthday cake.

The very day that I spent baking, having a relaxing time in the kitchen, was the day that I received the call from a principal offering me a job teaching 6th grade math! So I now refer to this weekend as the calm before the storm. It was my last weekend before starting a full-time teaching job, which I knew would change my life dramatically. I was terribly excited and nervous at the same time, but knew that I was up for the challenge!



Welcome Fall

This weekend Dan and I had nothing special on our calendar. And what a great feeling it was! Cooler weather had finally arrived and it brought along with it those wonderful feelings we hadn't felt in months: raised windows letting in the crisp, fall air; wrapping up in a blanket watching a movie; actually wanting to drink a warm cup of coffee in the morning; wearing warm socks; drafts in our apartment; and lots of cold-weather eats!

Saturday morning I celebrated the coming of fall with baking my first loaf of pumpkin bread! I saw the canned pumpkin at the grocery and couldn't resist! Last year I took a recipe for banana bread and altered it, substituting pumpkin for the banana. But this year I decided to use a recipe from Alton Brown, a Food Network chef and host of one of my favorite shows, Good Eats. And while his recipe was good, it fell just short of spectacular, so I took it upon myself to take it to the next level by adding mini chocolate chips. The end result was just perfect!

The combination of pumpkin, cinnamon, all spice, and chocolate chips create the perfect seasonal aroma and flavor!

Every year during the first weekend of October, Louisville hosts the annual St. James Art Festival. Fortunately for us, it happened in our neighborhood of Old Louisville. UNfortunately for us, it happened in our neighborhood of Old Louisville. We are lucky that the show that hosts hundreds of artists from all across the country happens literally in our backyard. We got to see so many great pieces of art! However, it did create a minor headache for us and our parking situation, since we rely on the street for both of our cars. So we decided to hibernate inside most of the weekend, securing our highly valuable parking spaces. We spent a couple of hours Sunday walking around the art show. It was a picturesque fall day spent walking around historic Old Louisville and enjoying the art pieces-everything from jewelry and pottery to clothing, paintings, woodworking, metal sculpting, and photography. Unfortunately we couldn't afford the $1800 painting I fell in love with, so we got the next best thing: fresh kettle corn!

There were people everywhere, walking from booth to booth or sitting at a picnic table enjoying one of the many food vendors. We even spotted Lucy's long-lost twin! The fountain (above) is in the middle of St. James Court. The road is lined with historic homes and is only about two blocks from where we live, so we walk in this neighborhood pretty often. There is also a park, Central Park, right across the street from St. James that we walk through often.

 Nothing like fresh kettle corn!

Here are a few shots of our street and apartment, for those of you who haven't visited.

Our building on 2nd St. Our apartment is on the second floor.

To round off the fall-themed weekend just right, I decided to try a new dish for dinner: chicken pot pie. We thought it would really hit the spot on a cool evening. I used another Food Network chef recipe, one I found online by Emeril Lagasse. And despite the fact that it called for made-from-scratch pie crust for the top, I decided to be brave, face my fear of pastry dough, and give it a try. Dan and I were both pleased with the result. I'm also pleased that this meal will give us leftovers and keep me from having to cook one night this week. Ha ha!

I think I've earned my right to buy frozen pie crusts from now on. :-)

Another weekend in the record books! Welcome Fall!