And Now For Some Cupcakes!

Well, I made my first cupcakes from my new book: Hello, Cupcake! We really loved them and thought they turned out great!

I took a risk and let The Princess choose whatever she wanted out of the book for her birthday. I thought she took it pretty easy on me when she chose this one:

And she really did, these are probably the least complicated in the entire book~thank goodness. Although putting it together was the challenge! Vince and I nearly came to blows in the kitchen trying to get it just right-ha!!

First I gathered my *stuff*: cupcake papers, cake mix, candy decorations, cookies, frosting ingredients. Then we got started.

I went with the *Funfetti* cake mix, which is just white cake with sprinkles mixed in. As you can see in the photo from the book they used different brightly-colored cupcake papers for each tier with white cake. I couldn't find solid bright cupcake papers anywhere so I decided to use white paper cups and food coloring gels to dye the cake mix. It was a pretty good solution!

After the cupcakes were cooled and frosted (with my fave buttercream frosting!), we began the decorating and stacking process.

Note: use a wider platter than the one in the above picture! We ended up having to take this apart and start over on a very large silver platter.

I never knew that candy could be so expensive!! I bought this at one of those mall candy shops where they sell it by the pound. Quite pricey, but I justified it since I was saving so much money with a *homemade* cake:) wink, wink

Then we put on the cookie candles. I couldn't find these types of cookies with pink stripes like in the book, so we bought these golden Oreo fun stix (which are sinfully delicious, I might add) and my sweet sis, Kari, striped them for me with red food coloring. She did an awesome job!

To make these look like candles you put a *banana* Runt candy in the top and pipe orange frosting around it. Really cute!!

So there you have it! Not perfect by a long shot (especially since I had to trim off some overly browned edges and that made the frosting process more difficult), but a very cute and memorable birthday cake! It tasted absolutely delicious, by the way:)

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Fun With 4th of July Crafts: Part 3

I love my new patriotic front door wreath!! I had fun putting this together, although I must admit this is more of an adult craft than one for kiddos. I was inspired by this article in Family Fun magazine. I didn't have quite everything I needed for this one, but all I had to purchase was a few sheets of scrapbook paper and some double-sided tape. Then all I had to gather up were some scissors, regular Scotch tape, a ruler and some cardboard. First I cut four (5"x 6") pieces of each paper. Then by placing a piece of double-sided tape on one of the short ends of the papers, I rolled them into cones, pressing the seams together well. Then I cut a 10" circle out of cardboard and began to stick the cones on it. I used another piece of double-sided tape to stick the cones on, arranging them in a circular pattern. Next I used regular Scotch tape to attach them on the back to the back of the cardboard. After getting all the cones on, I was ready for my centerpiece. He...

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