birthday cupcake towers

Our version of Hello, Cupcake's birthday cupcake towers:

ducks' pond birthday cake

I started out with plans to make a bottle cap cake, but the kiddo started looking at the cake books and really wanted his dad's birthday cake to have ducks on it.

These were made using the directions in What's New Cupcake?  by Alan Richardson and Karen Tack. We used marshmallows instead of donut holes for the heads and mini chocolate chips for the eyes, but otherwise the ducks are pretty close to their predecessors. We chose the "melted frosting" approach to coating the ducks, which was a success.

The pond is colored buttercream through a star tip, and I used chocolate rocks and confetti sprinkles around the edge of the platter for the shore.

And yes, it looks more appropriate for a baby shower than a grown man, but the Mr. was a good sport about our kiddo's decision to add some ducks into his birthday celebration.

But sometime soon I'm going to try again to make the bottle cap cake I'd planned on. Unless my kiddo's agenda sounds more fun.

Are you working on any non-conventional food lately? Anybody else have kids who like to play art director?

Thanks for reading!

delusions of grandeur part 4: cartoon portrait cupcakes

I won't lie: I've been a bit overwhelmed. The past couple of weeks have been an absolute marathon of projects. Not only was I competing in So You Think You're Crafty?, but I've also been making a ton of stuff for my kiddo's birthday and trying to keep up with book covers at work. And so, last night, with the party over and the party mess carted from the community center back to our living room and kitchen, I went to bed at 10:30 pm for the first time in months.

But let's back up for a minute:

First, I was eliminated from the competition last week, with my upcycled Sunburst Mirror project. Now, I don't really feel like my project deserved to do as poorly as it did, but admittedly, I was ready for competition to be over (so I could focus on birthday stuff). So when the other competitors ratcheted up their voter drives on the last day (don't ask me how), I maintained radio silence and decided to let the chips fall where they may. And fall they did.

And so I worked on robot decorations and cakes and giant crepe paper chandeliers and . . . well, let's just say there are a ton of party posts in our future, readers.

Now, my kiddo's party was all about robots, but he also has a thing for cake lately. He can't get enough of the duck cupcakes on the cover of What's New, Cupcake, for example. So we had to make a batch of cupcakes for our monthly play group last week.

After carefully studying all of the cupcakes in Hello, Cupcake, my kiddo kept coming back to the funny face cupcakes. When I asked if he wanted our cakes to look like him, I got an emphatic, "Yes!"

We used the recipe in the book to doctor a cake mix using buttermilk and eggs, then tinted cream cheese frosting and used a mix of candies for the faces (he picked green shoelace candy for the mouths).

Finally, to cartoon-ify his crazy hair, I filled a Ziploc bag with a mixture of white chocolate and butterscotch chips + two drops of yellow food coloring and melted them together. Then I snipped a corner and squirted out some wild hair squiggles onto some parchment paper. When they'd hardened, I cut slits into the cake and poked in the hair.

Ta-da! Pretty quick and easy. And he was one happy kid, looking at all those little cartoony hims.

Anyway, I like to do a little warm-up cake project before doing a big all-day cake (like last year, when I made the rainbow cupcakes before the Zelda cake) and these guys fit the bill. I'll be posting the robot cake soon . . . it was a little more time-consuming than these cuppies, but you might like it anyway. :)

Thanks for reading!


p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that! clever you.

better already

Changes since the last post: six old red/orange lanterns removed; two new white lanterns hung; placement of the large lantern has changed; orange wall primed with first coat of zero VOC primer.

The kiddo saw the area for the first time after his nap today and declared it a window. Right on.

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

another paper lighting fixture

Yes, I make a lot of lighting fixtures: ReadyMade magazine and I can't seem to get enough of them. And while this one turned out really well (thanks to a DesignSponge tutorial), I'm a little unsure about it.

I read the tutorial on DesignSponge awhile back (based on this $898 light from Anthropologie)and pinned it to one of my Pinterest boards, but didn't really move on it. See, we have seven paper lanterns at present in the corner of our living room. And I've always kind of dug them, aside from the ugly cord messing up the view.

But closer inspection reveals that they're on their way out. There are small tears in the tissue paper here and there. There's some fading in spots. So, while I like them, it was time for a change.

I did things just a little differently; instead of white cupcake papers and patterned candy cups, I used the opposite. And I glued the candy papers into the cupcake papers before attaching them to the lantern to streamline the process a bit.

Here's how it looked when I was a little ways into the assembly:

It took a couple of hours, and here's what came out at the end:

Okay, it's growing on me. Especially in close-up.

The patterned liners are by Reynolds; a blue and grey starburst pattern in their line of Party Baking Cups.

But it does dim things down a bit, and it's pretty clear that the other lanterns need to go. Since I'm in the process of getting rid of the orange walls, the bright colored lanterns are a bit of a deal breaker (in addition to the aforementioned rips and tears). So I guess this is still a work in progress, which I'll update you on eventually. In the meantime, what do you think? Does it make the cut?

(p.s. other versions of this project can be found here, here, and here. there's a whole wide world of internet out there!)

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

Linking up to:

cupcake box baby shower gift

A few months back, I posted here about some little baby clothes I'd printed for my step-sister's baby shower. Because I sometimes like to make the presentation of special gifts look outstanding, I started shopping for ideas on how to package the gifts.

Cruising Pinterest, I found several pins about baby shower gift boxes available on Etsy (and other places) made to look like bakery boxes full of cupcakes. (Try here, here, and here for examples.) Since I already several little onesies printed and ready to go, I just needed to buy a few more things to pull together my own cupcake box, which makes a really lovely alternative to the ubiquitous diaper cake.




Here's how you can put one together, too!

Start with a window-topped treat box, 3 for $4.99 at Joann (buy them with a coupon, and you'll get 40% off).

Also pick up some king-size white baking cups. They come in a package of 24 and you'll pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 for them.

You can buy fancy baker's twine here too, but it's expensive. I had some left from a project a couple of years ago, so I just used that. Make your own using this tutorial, or buy a big cone here for about $10, to avoid feeling like you're overspending for string.

At Target, I picked up a three-pack of elastic headbands for babies for about $3. If you're building a cupcake box for a boy, you can use rubber bands or the same twine listed above. You'll also need four pairs of baby socks (or, if you're really trying to budget, four socks {two pairs} total, but baby socks can be found at Target or Old Navy for $1 a pair) and four onesies or baby t-shirts. My cupcakes were made using onesies.

To make: if you're printing your own onesies as I did, wait for them to dry and heat set them, of course, so you don't mess up your hard work. Fold in the sleeves, then fold each onesie into thirds, lengthwise.

Take a pair of socks (or a single sock, if you'd prefer) and place it at one end of the folded onesie or t-shirt. The toes of the socks will look a little like cherries in the center of your cupcakes, so keep this goal in mind as you roll the socks up inside the onesies. When rolled, make sure the onesie will fit inside one of your king-sized baking cups, then bind with one of your headbands or some baker's twine.

Repeat for all four onesies, then place each inside a baking cup. Place all four cupcakes into your assembled bakery box, then tie the box with baker's twine. Add a tag, and you're ready to go!




This one is packed and ready to ship inside a priority mail box, surrounded by crumpled construction paper.

Happily, you'll have enough bakery boxes, baking cups, and baker's twine leftover for a couple of more gifts, so if you find you suddenly have a baby boom among your friends (or at your office, like we had at mine!), you'll be set to put together a couple of more on short notice.

Of course, I have a couple of other tricks up my sleeve for ways to use these cute bakery boxes. Stay tuned!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

Linking up to:




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wow. just, wow.

You like this? This is a cute little vintage "treat pedestal" available on BHLDN by maker E. Isabella Designs. It is an astounding $78.

This is an article from ReadyMade Magazine's MacGyver Challenge a year ago, telling you how to make the exact same thing. For $78, you could make more than a dozen, and have them on every table at your wedding. Things like this are why some people spend $20,000 on a wedding instead of on a downpayment for a house.

If you really need to buy something like this, because you don't like to use glue or have an aversion to DIY, you can buy a similar item on Etsy for between $12 and $20.

cupcake is one year old!

Cupcake's first acknowledgment of my presence came when she was just a few days old. She was a tiny ball of fur, less than six ounces in weight, hanging over the edge of a box in our carport. She was so new that her eyes weren't yet open, her ears were folded over, and her tiny little claws were barely holding on to the box; but when I picked her up, she leaned back her head, opened her tiny, toothless mouth, and hissed at me. If the other two cats guessed she was spunky, they kept it to themselves.

For the first month of her life, I carried her in my sweatshirt pouch all day at work and fed her with a bottle of kitten formula every four hours. I worried when she didn't poop, cleaned up when she wet her bedding, and bathed her with a warm washcloth. In return, she helped ease my broken heart.

Here we are, a year later, and at once it feels like she's always been here and like she can't possibly be a year old. Shawn and I are so impressed my how high she can jump, how fast she can run, and by her thousand quirky habits. And we still marvel at how such a tiny little Cupcake has become such a big, strong girl. Happy Birthday, Cupcake!