Super Easy Bunny Ear cupcakes!

 Hippity Hoppity Easter's on it's way...

  

So despite the snow fall here this morning, Easter is in less than a week! Sometime last week it "officially" became Spring, but has yet to feel like it here in DC. In fact, I think it's been colder this past week than it has been most of the winter - it actually took me all weekend to warm up from my long run on Friday morning in the chilly temperature and wind. BRRRR!


Snowman from our first March snow (sadly did not have time to play out in it today)

The winter weather did not stop us from preparing for Spring and Easter though - we finally put up all of our Easter decorations (nothing like the last minute) and pulled out Spring clothes - in hopes that someday soon we will be able to wear them. I do have my concerns about our current Easter outfits as they involve cute plaid shorts for K and a sweet sleeveless dress for A, but we have back-ups ready - as it looks like the chilly weather may hold.

Another potential sign of Spring is that finally - both kids are feeling better (yes I am knocking wood as I say this!) The tough winter continued into early Spring as K ended up with a tough (4+ days) stomach bug that undermined my plans to make Minnie Mouse birthday cupcakes for a first birthday party and VT cupcakes for my co-workers birthday. I was bummed to cancel on the cucpcakes at the last minute but decided it was better safe than sorry on sharing the bug. For my co-worker I had even already made the cupcake toppers. I thought about buying Harris Teeter cupcakes and putting them on top, but the cupcakes at HT did not look so great and the giant donuts they have are awesome and an office favorite (this is a good tip if like me you do not have a Dunkin Donuts near you but have a HT on your way to work - the donuts are a really good deal and really amazing!) so we did donuts.


The VT Cupcake Topper Flags (without any cupcakes to go on)

All that said, I took advantage of everyone finally being healthy to do a little baking! Nothing fancy as we are still short on time (that does not seem to change!) and spent most of the day doing fun Spring like things (egg hunt, Easter Bunny, bouncy, etc). K does like to help me bake now - so that was fun. Not only is he my icing taster, he is now my egg, oil, and milk pourer and "starts" the stirring - he seems to get bored pretty quickly with that, but either way I enjoyed the company and him wanting to help! I wanted to do something for Easter, but wanted it super simple. I was thinking about making bunny cupcakes like I have in the past, however did not want to deal with coconut as the kids don't really like it and it makes it messy and more complicated. After a few quick googles on bunny cupcakes I saw a few that just did bunny ears although most of them uses white chocolate or similar and I wanted to stay with the marshmallow ears as I had them on hand and knew they would be easy, so decided to give it a try and was pleasantly surprised how they turned out.


Hanging out with the Easter Bunny at the Spring Fling!

Pretty much five steps overall: 1) Bake cupcakes, 2) make icing, 3) pipe on icing (or you could just spread with a knife, I find the bag/tip combo much faster anymore) and then 4) cut the marshmallow with kitchen scissors and dip the "exposed inner (sticky) part of the marshmallow in pink sanding sugar  to make the bunny ears and finally 5) stick the finished ears on top.


Toppings made of two ingredients - just cut than dip - super easy!

In the past I have cut the marshmallows in half for the ears, but wanted a thinner, more ear like feel/appearance so I actually cut them into 4 pieces. This did make two of the pieces stickier as they had the "exposed" marshmallow on front and back but still very workable and worth it in the end, I think. :) And with that Happy Spring!


All finished and ready for Easter!

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No new cupcakes...but a sweet pr :)

Sooo...first let me say, I have not made any cupcakes lately. NONE. In fact, I actually cheated for Valentine's Day and grabbed a half dozen at Harris Teeter. I know, I know. I couldn't believe it either. I think it's the first time I've bought cupcakes in like 5+ years, maybe. I take that back - I did buy Kellan's "actual birthday" cupcake this year after making the ones for his party - as I only wanted one for him and I was VERY pregnant with Addie (ie she came like 6 hours later). In any case, the Valentine's cupcakes were SUPER cute, had both chocolate for Jer and vanilla for me and actually pretty good. Plus they had fun re-usable valentine's day rings that the kids loved and I can use if I am so motivated to make Valentine's Day cupcakes next and I do love the little 6-pack containers they come in - I will also re-use that filled with my own cupcakes - it's all about being resourceful, right?

That said - there was actually a good reason I did not bake Valentine's week this year - I was trying to be good and get some rest (between haircuts, and well-check doctors appts, car appointments, valentine's day parties, and other last minute stuff before going on a trip :) before my half marathon in Myrtle. Thus, the last thing I wanted to do was to stay up late baking or cleaning up from baking - so I resisted the temptation and stuck to my light running and baking taper :) and I have to say it paid off, as for the first time in four years, I finally pr'd again in the half marathon! If you can't tell, I was(am) pretty excited! I was honestly starting to wonder if I had completely forgotten how to race and push myself. So pulling off a PR of about a minute was pretty big in my world right now. I know life has been busy and trust me my kids mean way more than any PR to me, so I am A-OK with the four year cycle it has taken, but I have to admit it was really nice to finally see the early long runs and track workouts finally pay off :) And as a bonus all the super-duper fast girls (ie 1:25 and faster half marathoners!) who showed up last year did not all come again this year, so I snuck in third place in my age group, too. Woohoo - thank you fast girls!

The race was definitely more of a mental battle for me than a physical one. My legs actually felt pretty good - despite driving down the day before and being up late with a pre-sick Addie. (she is home now with an ear-infection, but we just thought she was out of sorts not sleeping at home). My cadre of "coaches" :) have given me some great advice over the past few weeks such as: 1)only thinking positive thoughts the whole second half, 2) making sure to take gatorade at the last few water stops for the extra fuel, 3) keep your arms down and shake them out as needed among others and these little tid-bits made all the difference. The gatorade sip - and seriously only a sip as I am TERRIBLE at drinking during races, some day I will figure it out - was huge, as I definitely got a second wind that carried me through the end of the race. The positive thinking was big, too as I definitely usually start to doubt myself around miles 8-9 which seems to make/break my race. This time though, anytime I wanted to slow down I made myself go faster - even if only for a few steps and thought about how I can do this. It was also around mile 9/10 where I realized this might actually finally be my year to do this and I thought about how much I wanted to get to the finish line fast so I could send a text with a new PR time to my running buddies (especially Coach Kathy ;) SO SILLY I know, but whatever works and they are such amazing friends and running partners, I knew they would all be excited to get such a message as well! Thankfully everything fell into place, it was a perfect day for racing and I felt good, and although I definitely did still slow-up my last few miles as is typical for my racing, I had a solid enough first ten and was able to hang on to the PR and immediately grabbed my phone from my husband after a quick hug and sent my long awaited messages :) before enjoying the post-race party with my family!

Krispy Kreme with Sprinkles - one of the highlights of the MB Marathon Post-Race Party!

A 9AM Beer with G&G :)

3rd Place Age Group Award - with one of my number one fans!

The whole gang!

The rest of the weekend was a blast - as much as I love the Myrtle half - it really is a perfect, flat fast, and fun course - the real reason we go is to visit my Grandparents who spend the winter there every year. It kind of became a tradition my first year out of college when I got hooked on half marathons and I have run everyone since (except for 2009 after my son was born - being my first baby I was not sure if I would be ready 4 months out - the race was snowed out anyways - it was like they knew I wasn't coming :) In any case, our crew has grown with Kellan and Addie now in the mix and my cousin Kara joined us last year - she is awesome with the kids and super fun so it's such a treat to have her. And now there are a few from Jer's family who live near Myrtle so they have joined my cheering squad so it's become a bit of a party! We all went to Margaritaville in the afternoon to have our annual margarita with G&G - CHEERS :) and let the kids run around on the beach finding sea-shells and chasing Sea Gulls for a while - but besides that we really did not do much but hang out and relax - which was exactly what we all needed and simply AWESOME!

Okay - well since I have no new cupcakes to report, here are a few more from the 2012 wrap-up :) Also here is a link I just found today that has me itching to definitely make some new ones soon! How can you beat Disney cupcakes...and fairly easy ones at that! http://spoonful.com/disney/top-disney-cupcake-recipes-gallery?cmp=NLC-NL|spoon|SpoonfulRecipes|Hero|Best-EverDisneyCupcakes||021913|||famM|#carousel-id=photo-carousel&carousel-item=46

First these are a set of hockey themed cupcakes for my Capital Crazy office mate for her 40th birthday last winter. Tough to see in the picture - but they say Happy Puck-ing Birthday :) I have to admit I was pretty proud of myself on this as she may use the F-word a little more than most - so thought it was fitting :) The Hockey Pucks are chocolate covered mini-oreos with icing 40s or NHL on them and the Jerseys I made from red-candy melts in the shape of shirts.

Next up are Pirate themed cupcakes for Mr. Ethan's 6th birthday last year. I followed a Pirate face patern I found online using fruit rollups for the headbands and then icing with candy eyes for the faces. For the sand I used brown sugar (YUM!) and then I made the little treasure chests out of mini-twix bars that I cut opened and filled with icing and rock candy for jewels.

In addition to the Pirate faces, I made a Pirate Island scene using a set of legos as in addition to loving Pirates, Mr. E is all about Legos, so this doubled as part of his present then. It was actually pretty easy and really fun to make the scene just using colored icing, the sugar rocks and sand and then pretzel sticks topped with icing for the trees.  

And last but not least, a Cupcake-cake, which I don't ususally do, but was requested for a rock-themed 60th birthday party. Turned out to be a lot of fun! Think the biggest challenge was on my friend Christy for getting it to the party! :) This was pretty much all icing work, with sanding sugar for the color (red is still such a tough color for me to get right with icing) and think they taste great that way! Just used a few chocolate chips for the bottom of the strings and used icing and silver colored sugar covered baby cookies/crackers (all about being resourceful :) for the part of the guitar holding the strings and wa-la..a Cupcake Guitar!

Well that's all I have for today, and my little ear-infected Addie (the reason I am home today) has decided that she is not in the mood to nap, so need to go get her. Happy February! :)

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Back to blogging? Maybe :)

I'm guessing most have given up on me blogging - I honestly had as well :) but scrolling through my blog this weekend, I have been inspired to try again. I know I won't blog often - especially since I'm not actually baking a whole lot these days (15 months in and I'm still figuring out the two kids balancing act :) but think I will still give it a try!



A year and a half later...a world of difference in my life!
(Outerspace cupcakes for a co-worker. Satellites made of laffy taffy!)

 So to catch on life since my last post in August of 2011 - YIKES! We have had another baby- a little girl, who is now not really a baby anymore. She is an all out toddler these days. Cute as a cupcake for sure, but she is definitely giving me a run for my money (think she is TOO much like me :) she does not sit still, she is into everything, she can't talk but knows how to tell you exactly what she wants! Luckily she does have a ridiculously adorable smile and knows how to light up any room. My son who was a toddler last time I wrote is now a pretty well spoken 3 year old! Everyday I am amazed at how grown up he is - and how he knows all these big words all of a sudden. When I picked him up from school on Friday - he goes "Seriously, Mommy?" Ha. That one might be my fault - but surprised me none-the-less. He keeps us laughing - and the two of them together are definitely double trouble! And they are absolutely my excuse as to why I have not been baking or writing or doing much besides keeping them happy and out of trouble, working, and running - BUT I wouldn't have it any other way :)


My All to grown up Three-Year Old! Kellan Wazowski :)



My Princess...at 15 months - definitely not a baby anymore
(wearing her Penguins Cheerleading Outfit as what else is a good Pittsburgh fan to do on a Baltimore-San Fran Super Bowl Day but cheer for our Hockey team :)
 

Speaking of running - while I have trained a lot over the past year since having my little princess, I have not raced much and the races I have run have not been anything to write-ome about. Life has just been busy and despite what I thought has been solid training, I have not been able to sleep much over the past year and honestly other things such as the kids birthday parties and Halloween Parades(which fell on the same day as my fall marathon) have been more important. And I'm okay with that - as while I am confident I will have many more marathons and races, I am pretty sure I only have a few Halloweens when the kids let me get to pick, design, and create their costumes. For the record we did win the local Halloween Costume Contest - so that was pretty cool and definitely made up for a not so great marathon. Now that it is a new year and the kids are a little older though, I do plan to try again to tackle my PRS (all from pre-kids 2008/09 timeframe still) - so we'll see what the year brings, starting with the Myrtle Beach half marathon in a few weeks!

 

Kellan McQueen

Addie Shiftwell

 

 

This Whole Cars Gang (including me as FLO still in my MCM Finisher Jacket!)

Okay and now to the real meat of the blog - a year and a half worth of cupcakes to catch up on- aghh! Although, like I said I have not baked all that much due to the juggling of kids, running, working, and trying to have some fun :) so not as many as could have been...but still a few fun ones. As a warning these are not going to be in any logical order as much of the past year and a half really is a blur :) at least time-wise! Lots of great memories - just not sure of the order!

Since I started by talking about the Cars Halloween costumes I made this year - we'll start with the Cars cakes and cupcakes for Addie's first birthday and Kellan's 3rd birthday celebration. The first of hopefully many joint birthday parties (until they are old enough to want their own :) 

Holley and Lightning Cakes

Cars Cupcakes to complete our Cars Fall!

I did a smash cake Holley for Addie and since I was in mini-cake mode, I also made one for Kellan. I ran out of time on the cupcakes so they are not my favorites - but I used grahm crakers for the wind-shields and if you have ever had grahm cracker and icing - you may know it's a pretty awesome combination - so despite not my best decorating, all of the kids and parents still seemed to enjoy the cupcakes!


Lightning and Mater Costumes Doubling as Decorations welcoming guests!

To combat all the sugar, the practical mother of two I now am gave out tootbrushes as favors
(which were actually a big hit with all the kids and parents, too!)

As you can see from the cars costumes and cars cupcakes for Kellan and Addie's birthday - we continued our Pixar theme from last year. Oh guess I did not write about last years yet - hmmm. Okay quick review. Last fall we did Toy Story for Halloween and Kellan's 2nd Birthday...

Kellan Lightyear and Daddy as Woody! People did stop them and ask for autographs!

The whole Toy Story Gang (Baby Addie is hiding under my Mrs. Potato head costume as she was born about 2 weeks later!)

My mother-in-law actually made all of the costumes but Kellan's Buzz - which I did make. She did a pretty amazing job - clearly :) and we did win the Halloween Parade Costume for the first time after taking second place the two years before. This Halloween thing has become a pretty big deal with us if you can't tell :) And like this year, we carried the Toy Story theme right into Kellan's birthday party - since Buzz light year has been one of his all-time favorites for quite a while now! 

The craft table set-up for Kellan's Toy Story Birthday - complete with real "The Claw" machine

 

Another excuse to make Toy Story Cupcakes!

 

 

The Birthday boy enjoying his last birthday without a little sister to share it with (and yes I do mean share it with as Addie decided it was time to join the party hours after Kellan's real birthday - we had the party early just in case :)

Okay - so now we are caught up on the past two birthdays and Halloweens (sorry lil more than just cupcakes), as you can see Oct-Nov are super busy times at our house. I have always loved fall though - so it's absolutely perfect in my mind that both of the kids birthdays fall at such a fun time of year!

 

Well since my favorite 15 month old just woke up and is now demanding my attention...going to do a quick dump of a few of my other favorites from the year quickly before she tears up every tissue in the house or climbs completely on the desk as she is now trying to do...

 

My favorite easy cupcakes - for teacher appreciation week at the kids school

 The chalk board cupcakes are one of my favorite go-to easy and ALWAYS cute cupcakes. They are really quick to make - as you just need to swirl on icing and then add chocolate covered grahmcrakers with icing letters/numbers on them. The final touch is the runt apples and the good and plety pieces of chalk- and done!


Nationals Cupcakes for a 30th birthday

Thought these were fun as have not really ever done baseball cupcakes. I made bats out of caramel and then used the white chocolate melts as the little balls. Then to make the hats and bigger baseballs I used the pull and peel licorice. The ball cap brims are just melted red/white chocolate. 

And last but not least (for this post at least) these were probably the highlight of my "cupcaking" last year. High-heeled cupcakes for my Aunt's 50th birthday party last spring. I had SO much fun making these FAB @ 50 cupcakes. I kept them pretty simple as I made them in my mom's kitchen in Pittsburgh (so I only had what I brought with me - not my full baking cupboard). I used the pirouette cookie sticks for the heals and then grahmcracker soul of the shoe (again remember the graham/icing combination - yum!) I did a mix of bows and other decoration out of Extra pink gum and the jumbo sized sprinkles. Also used lots of sanding sugar to make the color pop - and to save me from having to dye different colors of icing - making them easier.

 

Well that will have to wrap it up for now - hopefully more to come if I can keep on top of things, but for now Princess Adelyn has had enough of me ignoring her for the computer and keeps stealing my mouse to get my attention. So so long for now. Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

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An All-Around Catch-up Weekend

Soooo...guessing you might have thought I might never blog here again. Honestly, I was starting to think that myself. I have been meaning to get to it and update, but as usual life has been getting in the way. Actually it started because in March we found out we were expecting a new little Flick so for the first three months I didn't want to blog since I wasn't ready to tell the online world that we were pregnant - plus I was nice and tired :) Then somehow the three months turned into six months - and here we are today. I actually have not been baking all that much over the summer. Partly because it's been so hot that I haven't wanted to turn on the oven unless absolutely necessary and partly because we've just been  between work and trying to keep running and going on vacation etc and beyond that I've been using all of my energy just to keep up with my non-stop little man and to get ready for our little girl coming in 3 short months now!

That said - while they have been few and far between, I have actually put together some of my All-Time favorite cupcakes this year, so the goal of this post, like the goal of my weekend has been (cleaning out the basement, raking leave (YES our yard was already covered and YES I know it's only August!) cleaning bathrooms, and organizing closets, posting pics online, etc) is to play catch up and highlight these cupcakes!

Because the past year has been a bit of a blur, I am not going to even try to put these in chronological order (we'll blame that on the baby brain :), so going to start with what I would have to consider quite possibly my best cupcakes ever. These were for the fourth Birthday party of one of my Running Buddie's sons. He asked for Toy Story cupcakes. I was so excited because I have been wanting to do toy story cupcakes for quite a while now - and was right after Toy Story 3 had really come out - so I do have to say I might have gotten a little carried away! The most challenging part for me was figuring out how/what to do for each character. And the number of characters I decided to include was where I probably went overboard, but being such a Toy Story and PIXAR fan it was really hard to decide who to include and who to leave out. Thus the final list ended up being: Buzz, Woody, the Aliens, Ham, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky, the toy soldiers, and Rex! Here is part of the gang. I do have to admit that Rex was kind of a mess-up but and was the result of just playing with extra green icing - but thought he was a nice addition so we kept him :)

 The Aliens were straight from the example at FamilyFun.com using marshmallows with black icing dots as eyes (think Family Fun uses white m&ms, but since they are expensive and I didn't have them on hand I went with the half mini-marshmallows instead) The toy soldiers are obviously my easy filler cupcakes - just ice and stick a soldier in! I decided to just do cowboy hats for Woody as my attempt at making his full face just didn't look right and the hats (made out of shaped caramels) ended up being cuter and obviously way simpler. Ham was super easy and fun  - just used a half a marshmallow for his nose and starburst slightly melted and shaped for his ears. Then "spray painted" him with pink spray on icing color and added his eyes and eye brows. Then Mr. Potato head was a caramel flattened and shaped with starburst ears and icing hat and mouth and feet. I have to admit I was pretty excited how he turned out :)Slinky Dog was following a pretty basic dog pattern using a nilla wafer for his mouth/nose, mini-marshmallows for his eyes,caramel for his ears, and icing for the rest of his face.

The biggest challenge was figuring out Buzz's helmet. Online I saw a picture of exactly how I wanted to do Buzz, using half of clear Christmas ornaments as the helmet. Only problem is I no longer work near a Michael's and could not seem to find time to get out to one. Luckily my baking partner in crime Christy has a Micheal's both enroute to work as well as near her house - so she commenced a search. Unfortunately her first Michael's did not have them :( So both her office and mine spent a good afternoon discussing other options for the helmets. It was actually kind of funny to see our co-workers - yes even the guys - get into thinking of ideas. We thought of the tops of Starbucks drink cups, oops - they have lids, the little plastic containers in the quarter machines at the grocery store - close but to small, and the ideas went on and on, but none were quite right. Luckily Christy's back-up Michael's had the clear ornaments on hand and she was able to grab them for me! YAY! She saved the day again!

Buzz was by far the trickiest one to do - but also the most fun. I used cookies for his face then iced them with skin color and outlined with his signature purple and decorated with icing. The ornament globes definitely made him pop though - and pretty sure he was the star of the party! To Infinity and Beyond!!!!

Hoppping along to Easter...I did super simple cupcakes. Just butter pecan flavor with pink cream cheese icing topped with the CUTEST cupcake toppers I've seen - that my mom sent to us. Made decorating a cinch! Which was good, because I also decided to try my hand at Cake pops - which were not so easy (for me at least!) They turned out delicious - but wow - definitely a challenge for the first time. My friend Megan is semi-pro at these, so I keep telling her I need to just stand there and watch next time she makes them - there has to be some trick or something. I just found mine to be mis-shaped and messy. Luckily I was only making Easter Eggs - so the abstract look worked :) If you have never made cake balls before you create a mixture of cake and icing then shape into balls and freeze onto sticks. Then once set, you dip into melted chocolate and serve or add icing/decorations. You can see some of my eggs didn't do so well on the sticks, but luckily they still looked nice on the4 edge of the cupcake plate. And like I said - they were pretty delicious - so definitely worth the extra effort. Will just need to keep practicing them to get the method down!

Hmmm...what next. Oh here's another super easy set of cupcakes I did this Spring - for my nieces first birthday party. My sister-in-law request Minnie Mouse cupcakes - only catch was that we would all be at a family wedding the day before so would have to do all decorating the morning of the party. Clearly needed something quick and easy - but they had to be cute enough to be perfect for the little Birthday Princess! I did a bunch of googling on Minnie Mouse cupcakes and saw several pretty easy kind of abstract looking ones so thought they looked like the best bet - and actually I LOVED how they turned out - especially since they were so easy! Just did pink icing with chocolate candy melt ears, white pearl sprinkles for the polka dots and then topped with a red icing bow. Minnie all ready to go for the party!

Okay - think I have time for one more before the little man wakes up from his nap. So here's another one of my favorites from the summer. Flower cupcakes for another Baby Shower! :) Hurray for 2011 babies! The shower was a garden themed tea party, so I had fun making a mix of flowers. I did a few sunflowers - using mini-oreos for the center, then did daisies with mini marshmallow petals and candy centers. These ones are kind of cool as you cut the mini-marshmallows in half and then dip the sticky side in colored sugar and they appear to be an instant flower petal. Really they are not hard - just perhaps a bit tedious, but definitely worth it. I then added a few icing daisies to create a bit of variety like a real garden. Finally, I also found the cutest little flower lollipops on sale at Michael's so I had liked idea of "planting" them in little flower pots of cupcakes covered with oreo dirt. I wasn't quite sure how they would mix-in with the other flowers, but think they went alright and if nothing else were something different for sure! Here they are all packed up and ready for their tea party debut!

 

From what I heard both sets of cupcakes went over quite well. And most importantly - they have a new little girl in the family now - YAY! :) 

Alright - well guess I have baked a bit more then I realized over the past few months so will have to finish catching up next time- since I need to get back to catching up around the house now. Keep an eye out for an update on a Dr. Seuss cupcake set and shower and a rockin Guitar Cupcake cake next time (promise it won't be quite as long!!!) For now, Happy SUMMER! :)

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It's Raining on Sunday...

It's raining outside and quiet inside (the boys are still sleeping so it's just me and 91.9 on the radio :) and actually really quite nice. And since I ran my long run for the week yesterday (which my legs are definitely feeling this morning) I feel no real need to run today so the rain is actually relaxing - again nice. So I am just sitting here writing cards and drinking coffee and now blogging again- on a roll this week.

I have been excited to finally get to these cupcakes on the blog as they are by far the most fun ones I have made yet this year! And even better they were for a super fun occasion - the first birthday of one of K's best buddies Will, whose mom, Emmy, is one of my best friends from college. It was such a blessing to be pregnant at the same time as Em -so nice to have someone close to go through all the ups and downs of the "long" 9 months with. Plus, now we have been able to share the joys of the first year of having little boys together - just awesome!

In anycase, that said, I wanted to make Will's cupcakes perfect, but being that 1. they live in Philly now (just bought a super cute house in Havertown!!) so whatever I made had to be able to survive the 2.5 hour trip up 95 and 2. I have never done Winnie the Pooh cupcakes before this was going to be a challenge. I looked and looked for good inspiration for Pooh cupcakes online, but just did not find anything I really liked. I did come accross a few smash cake ideas I liked, but just no fun cupcakes. What to do, what to do??? So I kept looking and looking up to the week of the party. I knew the color scheme I wanted so I made sure I had all the icing and cupcake liners I needed, but still was not sure what I was going to do for the Pooh Bear design. Then while changing K one night that week, his Huggie wipes container caught my attention - it was Winnie the Pooh. And a nice and simple but very cute Winnie the Pooh at that. Poor K ended up laying there diaper-less for a few minutes as I distractedly picked up the wipe box and stared at it trying to think about would this pooh work. Hmmm...PERFECT.

So using the newly discovered Pooh wipe box as my inspiration I set out to make Pooh bears and Pots of honey to go along with bee-hives. As I still find red one of the hardest colors to make look sharp in icing - (for some reason it always looks pinkish) I decided to do my sanding sugar trick to really make the red pop. Plus as I've said before I really LOVE the combination of icing with the sugar on top - so again a win-win. Then to mix-it up a bit more so I would have some yellow based cupcakes, also coated in sanding sugar, I made cupcakes with red 1's on them. (these also were a bit easier - so gave my hand a little break :)

Pooh Party coming to life on my counter, comp;ete with sanding sugar still out..

Cupcakes all packed up and ready for teh trek up 95.

Once the cupcakes were done, I had to make the smash cake. As I mentioned, I had found some good ideas for the cake, BUT the bigger issue here was making sure it would make the trip to Philly. The pictures I found online actually used the Wilton little bear cake pan which I already had (what I used for Cookie Monster cake for K's bday) so that was a plus. My concern was that if I make a 3-D cake will it really make it in the car and if it doesn't  - then what?? Then Will has no fun cake for his First Birthday? Not acceptable. So just in case, I made 2 cakes for Will - using the extra batter after filling the Wilton pan, I just made an 8 inch round cake figuring I could make some sort of Pooh cake out of it for the back-up cake.

As it turns out, both cakes actually turned out pretty well. And despite freezing the little 3-D bear cake overnight to give it the best chance of staying solid in the car, I was super nervous the whole ride up, but the little guy made it in one piece! YAY! So Will lucked out with two Birthday cakes :)

Here is the 3-D Pooh cake on display at the Party!

For the backup cake, I decided to cut the round cake into a pooh head shape - somewhat abstract but think that's one of the best parts about baking - abstract is good! I then used the extra yellow icing I had to coat him in frosting and decorated him like Pooh. Think he actually ended up coordinating pretty well with the pooh faces on the cupcakes and was a nice addition to the cupcake display for the party!

Back-up Pooh cake on display!

Cupcake display. Emmy had the perfect mini-cupcake stand - so cute!

And here is the Birthday Boy facing off with the Pooh cake!

Goofing off in Will's new bedroom. K's not sure about having someone sit on his lap!

And being the big 14mo old here, K felt the need to show Will how to work the new Elmo airplane he gave him for his birthday (K definitely had some practice time before we wrapped it :)

Will's first birthday party was quite the hit! Lots of little guys to play with for K and lots of fun drinks for all the Mommy's and Daddy's and of course yummy food and cupcakes :) :) Just can't believe they are both one now - what a year. Looking forward to many more adventures with these two!

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Blog Break!

So instead of cleaning the house or baking cupcakes (which I need to do at some point before tomorrow for an impromtu baby shower/going away party for a girl at work) or doing anything productive as I should be doing right now since I am home with a sick K, I am sitting here drinking coffee and catching up on reading some of my friends blogs - which I rarely get to do- so kind of a nice break (almost feeling guilty how much I am enjoying K and my impromtu day home!) While I am sitting here though, figured I should take advantage of the opportunity to also update my blog (I know, 2x in 1 week - craziness :)

Before I sound like too bad of a mom though :) Let me clarify that K is sick as in has a 100.5 fever but otherwise besides being super clingy and tired he seems pretty okay. He took some baby advil this morning and is now playing away happily and just keeps coming back to me to take snuggle breaks about every 15 minutes (which I think might be the only real upside of having a sick kid home). Okay now that we have that clarified...back to cupcaking!

Well first actually - here are a few pics of my favorite little icing taste tester from last month :) As you can tell he takes his job VERY seriously :) and makes sure to get every last lick of icing off of the spatula! And while he can't quite tell me yet if the icing is good or not, I'm taking his standing under the mixer holding his spatula up as equal to a thumbs up :)

He even danced with the spatula - def saving this for blackmail when he's 16 :)

 Hmmm still thinking  :) Trying to decide whether or not to give his approval.

The cupcakes that Kellan helped ensure the icing was on par was for a fun set of Birthday/Running cupcakes for my running buddy and coach :) Kathy! As you can tell by the cupcakes Kathy is running Boston (again!) this Spring!

Simply put, Kathy is AWESOME and she has somehow tricked me into training with her and a few other girls who are also running Boston this Spring. I say tricked as while I love running I have NEVER been one to stick to a training plan, but by not really laying it out as a training plan and rather just telling me where to be when for morning runs and then telling me the workout upon arrival, Kathy has me training with them! So not only do I not have to dread :) the track or tempo workouts as I only have about a minute to think about them before we start, but the group of girls who are training with Kathy are super fun so it's become somewhat of a social hour with solid workouts so I actually look forward to them!

The cupcakes are simple vanilla with vanilla frosting covered in pink, purple and silver sanding sugar, which makes them look pretty different with the flash off vs on with my camera (above are without flash). The things with the nike swoosh's are supposed to be running shoes, but were kind of tough to make out of icing :)

Hopefully the cupcakes will be lucky ones and Kathy and all of my running buddies running Boston will do AWESOME! Not that they need luck - as they have all been training super hard and should do amazing anyway, so guess I will have to work on ideas for Boston Celebration Cupcakes for the end of April!

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