Mission Accomplished

If you're reading this post, that mean I've officially posted all 30 days in November and I've completed NaBloPoMo. I'm awfully impressed with myself, considering I wasn't planning on entering since I didn't think I could do it. But then November 1, I figured "why not." And here we are!

It actually wound up being not as hard as I had expected. The main thing was that I learned early on that I need to plan what I'm posting early on. Hopefully that planning sticks around for a while because it makes things quite a bit easier. (As it is I have the rest of this week's posts planned out in my head.)

There was at least one post that probably wouldn't have gotten posted if I wasn't involved in NaBloPoMo, i.e. this post from Thanksgiving. But I knew I needed to post something that day, and I wasn't sure I'd have a chance later on, so that quick note went up.

While part of me did enjoy posting everyday this month, I can tell you I won't go crazy and try to complete some 365 day of posting challenge. I do think the biggest thing I learned was how hopeful it can be when you know exactly what you want to write about before you start. And while there will probably be a day or two without a post in the next month, I do still plan on posting regularly (say 5 or 6 times a week). And next year I might be crazy enough to try to complete NaBloPoMo for the second straight year!

Anyone else there try to make NaBloPoMo? Is so, did you make your goal and what did you learn from the attempt? If not, do you think its something that you'd ever want to try?

~Shoshanah

Show us Your... Christmas Traditions

Yesterday I posted about Thanksgiving, so it only makes sense that I'm participating in this week's Show Us Your Life at Kelly's Korner but sharing my Christmas traditions. You might think its a little weird that myself, a Jewish girl, is posting about Christmas traditions. Except my mom converted to Judaism which means her side of the family is Christian and we would celebrate Christmas with them. I used to think this was really the best of both world growing up, and used to say I wanted to marry someone who was Christian so someday my own children could celebrate all the Jewish holidays and Christmas.

Growing up, every year for Christmas we'd drove out to my grandparent's house for a few nights. Christmas Eve we'd normally watch a movie, my brother would usually insist on watching A Christmas Story, but my vote would normally be fore It's a Wonderful Life

When we were little we were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve to tide us over till the next day. Or if Hanukkah overlapped with Christmas we'd open a Hanukkah present from our parents the night before. Since my parents were giving us Hanukkah presents, they didn't give us any actual presents Christmas morning. Instead on Christmas the presents we opened were all from our extended family.

Once Christmas morning came my brother and I were able to open up our stockings as soon as we got out of bed. And then once everyone had gotten out of bed we could open presents. My preferred way of opening presents is taking turns that way you can see whatever one else is opening. More importantly for me, this means every one's undivided attention is on me when I open my presents. I always would try to save all my presents to the end, that way I could keep the suspense as long as possible.

Later on in the afternoon my mom's brother and his family would arrive, or there were a few years when my family and my grandparents would drive to my aunt and uncle's house in San Diego instead. Once we were all together, a new round of present opening begin.

Later one in the day we'd have our holiday dinner. It wasn't the exact same every year, but every year it would be delicious.

Then of course there was dessert. There were a few years where my brother, cousin, and I would open our dessert palace. We'd find out what was being made for dessert, make menus for everyone, and then act as waiters serving dessert plates. This was always a lot of fun for us, and provided some great memories. I know I'll never forget the time the menus I made advertised chocolate mouse instead of chocolate mousse!

I've actually spend Christmas the last two years in Louisiana with the boy's family. But this year we'll both be heading out to California for Christmas. I'm so excited and really looking forward to being able to spend the holiday with my family in about a month!

If you're here from Kelly's Korner, thanks for stopping by! Please leave me a note, and let me know you were here. Or if your looking to read about more Christmas traditions, head of to Kelly's Korner

~Shoshanah

Thanksgiving Leftovers

First I wanted to thank everyone for the vote of confidence regarding my pumpkin pie. You were all right, the pie still tasted really good. The only issue there was really only cosmetic.
As you can tell from the picture, there were a few spots where something didn't get mixed in completely. At least I know for next year to mix a little better before I pour it into a pie crust.

My other contribution to the meal was bacon-wrapped, Parmesan-stuffed dates. My mom made them the past two years, and they're so addicted I needed to make them as well. And the best part, they're so easy to make.

1. Start but pitting a few dates.
I bought to large packages of dates as Whole Foods, because I knew these would go quickly. Which was about 40 dates overall.

2. Stuff with slices of parmesan.
I went with a thin rectangle of cheese, which made the slicing part far easier than it would have been with an actual wedge.

3. Wrap with bacon and secure with a toothpick.
I hadn't actually bought enough bacon to wrap all 40 dates. So I had to make a quick run to the grocery store Thursday morning. I made it there just in time.

4. Cook dates in the oven until the bacon gets crispy.
This was by far the hardest part of the recipe for us. I had found a recipe to use, that involved prosciutto instead. And that recipe said to cook at 450 degrees for 6 minutes. While that would have probably been a perfect temperature and length for prosciutto, not to much for actual bacon. At the end of 6 minutes the bacon was nowhere near cooked, and the cheese was starting to ooze out of the date. Looking back it would have been better to cook them at a lower temperature for less time. But since the cheese was starting to ooze out, we took them out of the oven and fry them up on the stove to get to bacon crispy.

I know these look good in the picture, but even that doesn't do justice to how amazingly addictive they are. They're a bit sweet from the date, yet savory from the cheese and bacon. They're crunchy from the bacon, yet gooey from the date and cheese. Pretty much an amazing package, that taste a bit like candy to me. They turned out to be quite a hit with the boy's family.

And if you remember this post on my Thanksgiving tradition, you know this post wouldn't be complete without a picture of my plate.
That's gumbo on the right, and the plate on the left has turkey, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and potato salad. And there were definitely two plates of this that were consumed by me.

It was a good Thanksgiving overall, but still isn't anywhere near the same as having Thanksgiving at home with my family. But it was great spending Thanksgiving with the boy and his family, and having the chance to experience a holiday so different, yet somehow the same as normal.

I hope everyone else had a fabulous Thanksgiving as well!

~Shoshanah

The Tea Rose Trilogy: Book 2

The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
A few month ago I read The Tea Rose, and knew I would have to read the next book in the trilogy The Winter Rose. While I loved the first, I had no idea how much more I would fall for the second. I literally haven't been able to stop reading the book since I started earlier this week.

Like the first, this books starts in London in the early 1900s includes the same cast of characters from the first book with one new addition. That is India Jones, a female doctor who dreams of opening a free clinic for the poor mothers and children of London's slums. India winds up getting mixed up with Sid Malone a notorious criminal, and something of a romance starts to develop.

Like the first the book is a tale of star-crossed lovers who would be together if not for complications or misunderstandings. As much as I loved the book, this was the one thing that aggravated me. So often I character thinks, "Maybe I should say something," without knowing how much good could come from that one piece of information. And every time they second guess themselves. You almost want to throw the book out of frustration, just thinking how close everyone came to being happy. Except the book would be quite a bit shorter that way.

I easily loved this book far more than the first, which I wasn't expecting heading into it. This is a trilogy, but unfortunately the third book hasn't been released yet. I can't wait until it is published, and hope it lives up to my lofty expectations!

~Shoshanah

Happy Thanksgiving

I cooked my first pumpkin pie ever last night. I'm a little worried about how it turned out since I don't think I mixed everything together quite enough. But hopefully it still turns out good.

We're about to head over to the boy's parents house, but I wanted to wish everyone one a happy thanksgiving first (and of course make sure to keep my NaBloPoMo streak alive.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

~Shoshanah

An English Thanksgiving

(a Where in the World Wednesday post)
Classy in Philadelphia is hosting yet another Where in the World Wednesday. Come on and join the fun!
Today's picture was taken in London after the Sheffield Wednesday/Queen's Park Rangers "football" game. It was actually taken almost exactly 6 years ago, when I was in England for Thanksgiving. And yes, I realize England isn't somewhere you'd normally go to celebrate and American holiday like Thanksgiving. But I was visiting my best friend who was studying abroad in London, and going over Thanksgiving gave me a week to celebrate her.

For our actual Thanksgiving dinner we all went out to a nice restaurant. We all went around the table and said what we were thankful for before we started eating. And what did we have to eat for our English Thanksgiving? Italian food of course!

Have you ever had a slightly non-traditional Thanksgiving as well?

~Shoshanah

Jon & Kate Plus 8: The End

Last March I wrote this point on the end of season 4 on J&K+8. At the time no one was sure whether there would be a 5th season of the show. We know now that the show continued for one more season, but the marriage didn't. And last night was the series finale.

Part of me wishes I could say I was the first Jon & Kate fan or the biggest fan, but I know that's not true. I do know that I was watching their 1 hour specials on Discovery Health before there was an actual tv show back in my first year of grad school in 2006. And I remember being excited when I found out there would be an actual weekly TV show on the Gosselins. I remember when Discovery Health, randomly stopped aired the episodes in the middle of the 2nd season. Only so they could start showing the episodes on TLC instead. There's definitely a few early episodes that I've watched so many times, not only do I have them memorized but the boy does as well.

Part of me feels a little bit like the way you feel as a fan of an indie band that gets big. You are excited that they will finally get to make it big. But in a way it was almost better when you seemed to be their only fan, and no one else had ever heard of the band. Part of me thinks that if they only kept showing the episodes on Discovery Health, they probably wound how wound up with a fate similar to the Dilleys, Americas first set of sextuplets. Haven't heard of the Dilleys? Don't worry, you're probably not alone. But the Gosselins are not the Dilleys, and they wound up becoming world famous only to suffer the consequences.

Overall, it was a little sad watching last night's episodes. I do think Jon came off looking like the bad guy last night. Especially when he punished Cara and Mady and didn't let them sell lemonade to raise money for the firefighters, only because Mady said, "I like it better when mom's here." Although I have a pretty good feeling there was more to the story and a lot of it was editing on TLC's part, probably based on the fact they're currently involved in several lawsuits with Jon.

I do think its possible, the Gosselins might be back. Its quite plausible that after all the lawsuits are tied up they could be back with "Kate Plus 8," but I don't think that will be anytime soon. And if that happened, I can tell you I'd be watching.

I might be the only one whose still a fan of the show, but if you are one as well, please let me know I'm not the only one. Or if you're not a fan, what's your reasoning behind that? I do think that we could all probably agree, that no matter your feeling towards the show, the situation as a whole is awfully sad.

~Shoshanah

Team Edward vs. Team Jacob

Twilight: New Moon
To start with I did like this movie more than the first. Normally, I'd give a basic plot summary, but I'm pretty sure if you're reading this you have a good idea about the whole Bell-Edward-Jacob love triangle. Instead I figured I'd go over a few non-plot details.

First I think the special effects were better than the first. The was a big plus, since the in the first it was pretty evident little if no money went towards them. However it wasn't perfect, there was at least one werewolf that looked a little fake and over the top. But mainly they looked fairly believable, especially Jacob's wolf which is the one that really matters.

Secondly, while I do think that overall the acting was better than the first, there were still a feel cheesy moments. At least that was the general opinion. There was one moment in the movie when Edward told Bella he loved her, and the how theater started cracking up of the cheesiness. Although for me personally it worked.

The next bit could be considered to be a bit of a spoiler, at least for those who read the books. Overall, the movie was fairly true to the books. At least in the scene that I hadn't read the books in over a year, and couldn't find anything glaringly different. Except there's the fact that the movie's directed by Chris Weitz, and if you've both read the book and seen the movie of The Golden Compass you then know he had no problem ending the movie at a different place than the book. In New Moon's case, the end of the movie was a few chapters into Eclipse. While I'm sure there are a few purists out there who hate this, in general I think it helped bring Jacob back into the last scenes.

Then there's the fact they tried to make the ending a cliffhanger. If you've read the books, its in now way a cliffhanger, but if you haven't its pretty big. And based on the reaction in the theater most people hadn't read the books, and seemed pretty unhappy that the movie left a pretty big question unanswered. Luckily, for them they won't have to wait too long to hear how it turns out since Eclipse is going to be in theaters next June.

I do think being a fan of the book, it was pretty easy for me to be a fan of the movie as well. But I'd love to her someones opinion who saw the movie, but hasn't read the book. Or if you did read the books, did the movie live up to your expectations as well?

~Shoshanah

About the Anniversary

I do feel a bit like our anniversary snuck up on my this year, and have a feeling the holidays are going to wind up doing the same thing. I didn't really plan a lot, except I knew that I wanted to see New Moon since it came out on our anniversary. But other than that I didn't make any real plans. Friday came and after work, we got ready to head out. I did actually manage a pretty nice picture, there were a few outtakes and I would have shared a shot or two, but accidentally deleted them when my camera was filling up with pictures at the end of the night.
I've been playing around with Picasa lately, and decided this picture worked best in black and white, but overall am pretty bad at editing photos. I normally just use Picassa's "I'm feeling lucky" bottom, which in general lightens up most of my pictures.

Leaving the apartment around 5:30 we headed over to the theater I wanted to go to. I hadn't bought tickets before hand, but in Baton Rouge its pretty rare that movies completely sell out, so I figured I was safe. Except we showed up at the theater and every showing of New Moon was sold out for the rest of the night. Even the other movies I would have agreed to see. (The Blind Side and Precious were sold out till after 10pm.) The restaurant I had wanted to go to was next door to this theater, but I decided I'd rather sacrifice my preferred dinner location for a chance to see Twilight so we left to had to a second theater.

The second theater luckily still had tickets for 3 showings of New Moon, the first of which was a 10:30pm. So at 6:30 we bought our tickets and had four hours to kill before the movie started.
Since my first choice restaurant wasn't an option now, we made a last minute decision and went to Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro for dinner. The service was a little slow there, but we had 4 hours to kill so I didn't really matter. I started off my meal off with a French Onion soup
and for my main course had a bowl of angel hair pasta.
It was a pretty simple dish, with just tomatoes, garlic, and oil olive, but it was just what I was looking for.

For dessert instead of ordering something at the restaurant we headed over to get frozen yogurt at Menchie's, or at least I had frozen yogurt (him not so much).
I went with mango frozen yogurt topped with white chocolate chips, pineapple, and kiwi.

After wasting another hour in the bookstore, we headed over to the theater about an hour before the movie. Not to long before the movie started some employees came in the theater for a round of Twilight trivia. But with them were a bunch of employees dressed up as characters from the movie. Most of them were hard to match up with their counterparts, but the guy who played Edward was a dead ringer. When I first saw him I had to do a double take, since I really thought Robert Pattinson might have been there. Once trivia ended the movie did start, I did enjoy it, but you'll have to wait till tomorrow to hear my full thoughts on the movie.

Overall, I thought the night worked out quite nicely, even with the lack of planning on my part. Although next year a little more planning might make the night run a little smoother overall.

Are you one to put a lot of planning into big events? Or would you rather just cross your fingers and hope it all works out the way you're hoping?

~Shoshanah

Take 2 (Or 3 or 4)

First I wanted to thank everyone for your thoughts and kind words yesterday. For everyone who liked the second picture the best, me too! That's actually one of the first pictures we ever took together, and its still my favorite one of us.

Today I thought it'd be fun to follow-up yesterday's post with a few of the so-called outtakes. You might recognize a few scenes from yesterday's post, except yesterday I showed you the final picture. Today its the first shot, or sometimes the 7th or 8th. I think one of the boy's proudest moments is from our anniversary last year when he filled up my camera with 20 or so of these types of pictures. I did have a much wider selection this time, and had a little trouble narrowing it down completely. But I hope you all enjoy!















I hope everyone's having a great weekend so far!

~Shoshanah

3 Years and Counting

Today's mine and the boy's third year anniversary. Its a little hard to believe its gone by so quickly. I thought it'd be fun to share a few pictures, except it wound up being a little difficult since most of our pictures together looks like this.
I have managed to find a few photos with smiling faces to share with you all. Although someday an outtake montage might be pretty amusing!













And yes, I do find it a little amusing that I'm on the left in almost every picture, but there really wasn't a whole lot else to choose from. I believe he thinks its almost a game to see how many pictures in a row he attempt to destroy. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to accomplish taking at least one my preferred type of photos!

~Shoshanah

My Little Library

Remember when the boy bought me a bookshelf for my birthday? (No? Go here to catch up!) I've finally made a point to start using it!

And no, this isn't close to all the books in our apartment. Its more like books that have been read in the past year.

When I was filling up the shelves I knew I wanted it to be organized, but I wasn't sure how. Should I go by book size? Or alphabetical by author? Or by genre? Such a hard decision, at least for me. In the end I decided to go by genre first and then by author's last name within genre. Of course this presented a problem in its own. For example, when I put The Last Summer (of You and Me) on the shelf, does it go before The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants alphabetically or after since its was published later? I decided for after the series, would you have done the same?

One thing I found a little assuming is how you can tell almost instantly by looking what type of books are on each shelf. The top shelf is all chick lit, which instantly jumps out at you because the whole shelf is pastel colored. The left hand side of the second shelf is historical fiction, and the right hand is science fiction/fantasy. It isn't as obvious here, but its pretty easy to notice when the books start being all blue and black that you've changed genres. Finally the 3rd shelf is non-fiction, made of mainly of memoirs but a few historical non-fiction books as well. Also on the 3rd shelf are some of the boy's books which needed a to go.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my little organization. I do still have one shelf left on the very bottom, but I have a feeling it'll be full awfully quickly and then I'll be needing a new shelf! I'm hoping there's at least someone else out there who likes to see their books organized as much as I do, after all its like my own mini-library! If so, how do you organize your books? Or even if you don't know, what would make sense to you in regards to organizing your books?

~Shoshanah

What's in a Name

(a Where in the World Wednesday post)
I think I might be one of the only ones doing a Where in the World Wednesday today, but that's fine with me because I still want to share this picture with everyone.
This is me in Jerusalem on Ben Yehuda street. And in case you can't read Hebrew, the sign at the very top says "Shoshanah's Bar." I was so excited to see this, because as you might imagine, in America its awfully hard to find my name in print. All of those gift shop's that have personalized keychains for tons of names, will NEVER have Shoshanah. Except things are a little different in Israel where Shoshanah is a pretty popular name. In fact, I've heard there's an Israeli song where the only word is my name repeating.

I know there's other names out there where its hard to find it already in print. Or if you have a common name, you might spell it an uncommon way so you can't find it either. Have you always been able to find your name in print, or it is almost impossible for you to find it like me? (And if anyone else is participating in Where in the World Wednesday, let me know!)

~Shoshanah

Graduating From the Pants

The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashers
I picked this book up mainly because its written by the author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I loved those books (and the movies) so I figured I'd give her first adult fiction book a try.

The book is about two sisters Riley and Alice. Riley is the older, athletic sister who you'd call a free spirit. Alice is the younger, somewhat shy sister who seems to absolutely idolize who older sister. Then there is Paul, Riley's best friend. The three of them spent ever summer together throughout their childhood at New York's Fire Island. This books tell the story of their last summer, the one before everything changes.

It did take me quite a while to get into the book. The first half just seemed really slow and I couldn't seem to really connect with it. Then halfway through everything changes, and at that point I couldn't seem to put the book down. The book is definitely a tear-jerker and I was holding back tears by the end.

Even though after the 2nd half I wound up enjoying the book immensely, it still wasn't perfect. The characters, while I liked them, didn't seem very fleshed out and developed. Which I wouldn't necessarily expect from Ann Brashers considering how distinctly you're able to identify with each girl from the pants series.

Like the pants books, this is also being developed into a movie. Although I'm not too sure how that will wind up as movie. A lot of times I'll read a book and think I would love to see someone turn this into a movie, but I didn't have that feeling reading The Last Summer (of You & Me). But it could wind up being an interesting movie, I guess we'll have to wait until 2011 to find out if it works as a movie.

Has anyone else read this book? If so, what did you think? If not have you read or seen the movie of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants instead?

~Shoshanah

Cheeseburgers in Paradise

Over the weekend before we went shopping at the grocery store I took out my favorite cookbook, The Little Black Apron. Since almost all of the recipes in there sound appealing to me, I told him to go through and pick out something and I'd make it for dinner. Well, being the male that he is, he decided on their recipe "Classic American Burger." Every time we've had hamburgers in the past he's made them, but I made a promise, so that meant I was making burgers for dinner.

Overall the recipe was pretty easy to follow and the burger's turned out pretty tasty. Although, one of my favorite things about the cookbook lead to a little confusion. See the cookbook is geared to the single girl living on her own, which means most of the recipes are for a single serving. Which I think is great since so often when you're cooking for just yourself it hard to make the recipe suit just one. Except in this case the boy decided we needed to buy over 2 lbs of meat, that way he could eat leftover for the next few days. Which mean I needed to eight-tuple most of the ingredients. Not that hard in theory, and overall it wasn't a problem, but in general the burgers did taste a little salty.

The boy had wanted a cheeseburger from himself, but I was planning on just having a hamburger. I don't really like cheeseburger since people normally make then using cheeses I don't like, things like American or Provolone cheese. But the boy had bought Gouda cheese for the burgers, and Gouda is a cheese I really do like, so I figured I'd give it a try.
And really wound up liking it! I won't go so far as to say I love cheeseburgers now. And I'm not planning on ordering a cheeseburger the next time I'm at a restaurant. But at least I do know, if made with the right type of cheese, I can enjoy a cheeseburger.

And for dessert? Well I needed something to go with my Classic American Burger, and what's more American than apple pie?
So, I had an apple pie larabar. I don't buy these very often, which means every time I have one I forget how amazing they taste. There are a little hard for me to find, and when I do find them they tend to always have the same flavors. But I am definitely thankful I can find they few that I do.

Overall, I would say it turned out to be quite the successful meal! Good thing because there's still a good amount of food leftover! Do you normally make a point to cook just enough to eat that night? Or would you rather cook a lot more to make sure you have food left over for the next night?

~Shoshanah

Jedi and Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats
To start off with this movie has both Ewan McGreggor and George Clooney in it. Which means even if its awful there's still a good amount of eye candy to look at throughout the movie. The basic plot of the movie is that Ewan McGreggor plays a journalist looking for a story. He finds a pretty good story when he winds up with George Clooney's character, Lyn Cassady, in the middle of Iraq. Lyn Cassidy is part of a super secret branch of the military government that goes by the code name of Jedi. So here is Ewan McGreggor, aka Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, with an actual American who calls himself a Jedi and believes he has Jedi like powers. According the the producers casting Ewan was a complete coincidence, and only Ewan thought about it after the fact. But really these two things, the good looks of the actors and the Star Wars irony, were the only good parts of the movie for me.

Throughout most of the movie I was sitting there tired waiting for it to be over. There were a few off-the-wall funny moments, but overall I wasn't really feeling it. Actually, if you look at my past few movie reviews its been a while since I've really enjoyed a movie we've seen. But I can promise you that will change next weekend with my pick!

~Shoshanah

Horsesitting

The boy and I are housesitting for his parents this weekend. For most people that would entail staying at the house, bringing the mail in, maybe feeding an animal or two. Well, I can tell you that we will be feeding an animal or two, but it won't necessarily be the animals you're thinking off. Here's a picture of me from the first time we housesat.
Yes, there are 3 horses in the picture with me. We're taking care of 5 this weekend, 3 "mom" horses and 2 "baby" horses. Have I mentioned before that I'm not really an animal person? I guess it shows just what I'm willing to do for the boy. Hope everyone else is having a great horse-free weekend! (Or horse-filled weekend if that's what you'd prefer.)
~Shoshanah

Say Hello To Your Friends

I'm just finding out that My Friend Amy has been having a Baby-Sitter's Club week on her blog. When I found out I absolutely had to join in on the fun. These books were such a huge part of childhood, as I'm sure they were to a lot of people. I remember in 3rd through 5th grade on library day the girls would all race to the table of BSC books so we could each pick up the book we wanted before anyone else. We also had to write creative writing stories for class, and we all chose to write a series together about the daughter's of the BSC. So I thought it would be fun to share a few of my favorite Baby-sitter's Club books.

#6 Kristy's Big Day
This is one of the first books that captured me into the whole series. I mean its a wedding, who doesn't love that. A basic recap (from memory of course) is that Kristy's mom is marrying Watson Brewer, and is planning the wedding in about a week. Since all of Kristy's family is coming in to help plan Kristy & the BSC save the day by watching all the kids. There's actually a line that still sticks with me from this book. After Kristy's brother David Michael finds out about the marriage at dinner he says, "Ick Ick Ick. Pew Pew Pew. One sister's enough. Now I'll have two." Such a classic poem.

#15 Little Miss Stoneybrook... and Dawn
Now this book is centered around the Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant. Dawn starts off agreeing to train Claire and Margot Pike for the pagent. Then the rest of the BSC winds up training a girl of their own. They all think the winner should be Mary Anne's charge Charlotte whose talent was singing "The Good Ship Lollipop," but instead its unfairly won by a typical pageant girl.

#30 Mary Ann and the Great Romance
Again, another book about a wedding (clearly I'm a fan of the books centered around big events). This time its Mary Anne's dad and Dawn's mom that are getting married. The best part of the book is the cliffhanger at the end, which at the time I thought was amazing. The end of the book has Mary Anne and Dawn both jumping to catch the bouquet, but you don't find out who catches it until #31 Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

Then there were the Super Specials. I loved them all and wasn't sure I could pick a favorite of these. But first some of the Super Special runner-ups for me are Baby-sitters' Island Adventure where Dawn & Claudia are shipwrecked on a deserted island, Snowbound where a snowstorm hits Stoneybrook trapping Stacey & her mom in a car and a boy at Kristy's house, and Starring the Baby-sitters Club where all of the BSC get to act in a production of Peter Pan where Kristy gets to be Peter Pan and Jessi is the crocodile. But my favorite Super Special is #11 Baby-Sitters Remember where the BSC recall their most vivid memory. Kristy's was of course her first time baby-sitting.

I even read the California Diaries stories, which were kind of like a more grown-up series to graduate onto. These books were about Dawn and her friends in California. The best part about these books at least for me was that they took place in California, and I was living in California.

I can even tell you the last BSC book I ever bought. It was the summer after 8th grade and I was a little embarrassed to be see reading a Baby-Sitter's Club book at the time. But the book was Super Special #15 Baby-Sitter's European Adventure were they traveled to London & France. Since I was heading to London in a few weeks it was only fitting that I read the book where the baby-sitter's head to England as well, right?

I hope you've all enjoyed this flashback as much as I have. Hopefully you were a BSC fan as well, if so what were you favorites? If not, what book series were you a fan of growing up? And if you want to see more BSC fun you can head over to My Friend Amy to see what everyone else is posting. (And yes the title of the post is the start of the theme song from the Baby-Sitter's Club tv show)

~Shoshanah

Cinnamon Surprise

The other night after dinner the boy said he was planning on making some biscuits from the refrigerated dough we already had. He then asked me if I was going to have any. I had already eaten dinner, and although I really wanted something sweet for dessert I had decided I wasn't going to have anything. I figured it wouldn't really be fair if I decided to have biscuits, so I told him I didn't want any.

He headed off into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later, "What if I make a special kind of biscuit?" I wasn't sure what he meant and asked him what he was talking about. To which he replied, "I want to make something special, but I don't think I'll eat all of it. So will you have some?" I knew at this time I wasn't going to get anyone information out of him, I let him know I trusted him, and we try whatever he decided to make.

He went back into the kitchen and told me I was banned from entering so I wouldn't ruin the surprise. After 15 or so minutes he came out presenting my surprise.

A cinnamon biscuit. He'd taken the biscuit dough and but honey, cinnamon, and sugar on top and it was pretty amazingly good. After I had my first one I went back into the kitchen for seconds. Out of the can of biscuits he made 3 of them cinnamon biscuits. He took a bite of one, and said I was welcome to have the rest of the cinnamon biscuits since he's not a big dessert fan. "But why did you make them if you didn't actually want to eat them?" I asked him. His response, "I was bored." As long as I'm able to benefit from this boredom I'm a fan!

Are you a big fan of baking when you're bored? Or if you do enjoy baking when do you enjoy doing so?

~Shoshanah

Where in the World Wednesday

Today, I'm participating in Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday. If you want to play along, you can post a picture of you in someplace in the world...it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. Today I'm sharing one of my favorite pictures of myself with everyone.
I wish I could say the reason I love this picture is because of the Eiffel Tower in the background. But really its because I'm eating a cloud of cotton candy that's about 3 times the size of my head! Be sure to head over to Classy in Philadelphia if you want to play along!

~Shoshanah