Tried it again...CUPCAKES

Well, since it's my baby's birthday, you know I had to try and do some special cupcakes for my guy!! Once again I turned to my handy dandy resource cupcake book.

After making these adorable ones for the Kellster, we couldn't leave Dunn out in the cold!! So what do you make a 6 year old boy? At my house, it was going to be the sharks!! They looked a little less labor intensive than Kelly's, and better for a beginner, such as myself.

Here's how they turned out:

Not bad, but not close to how beautiful they are in the book!! Why do they have to make it look so easy, and it's actually really hard?! See that shark in the lower left corner...how he's all spotted??.

Of course there was something dripping in our extra refridgerator where these were being stored.

So I get more frosting and make it gray {so I can re-dip the mottled sharks} and it comes out a whole lot darker. Oh, well!

Gotta love my Jack {he's 12}...he says the mottled ones look more realistic. So the dark gray ones are more of a blob shape due to re-dipping. I still like them but they don't look like this:

And for the record...they are so top heavy!! No matter how I tried to angle them on the top, they would fall over...can you say difficult!! Let me also state, these are expensive to make!! You have to buy so many things just to use a fraction of what you actually bought.

Example: those really expensive thin round chocolate wafer cookies...yeah, you use 3. Cut them in half to use for the fin. I found flower shaped thin wafer cookies and cut the petals off for a fraction of the cost, but still. Then there's the fruit roll ups for the mouth. Honestly, we don't buy them. Couldn't find plain red, and when I found something that had red in it, they also came with those tongue tattoo's...really had to weild the knife to get that shape right!!

But, I would do it all again for love!! He loved how they looked!! "WOW, THOSE ARE UNBELIEVABLE", not that I'm quoting or anything ;)

Look who's turning...

Six!!!

It's my baby's birthday! My sweetest baby boy! The youngest of our 3 boys, who has the heart of a lion and whose smile will melt your heart! He is "Mr. Giggles". No doubt about it! We will be saying grace at dinner and he gets the giggles. You just look at him, and he giggles. He will make himself laugh like a maniac for the simple reason that he wants to make you laugh :)







He is also tough as nails!! He loves all sports...football, basketball, soccer and lacrosse. He can't wait to play lacrosse and football because you get to check and tackle people. WooHoo!

My Finny told me one night he thinks Dunn is going to become a professional wrestler because he loves to take people down! Good to know the career path has been set :)

I tease Dunn quite a bit and say that he is full of laughter. It's just always bubbling inside and he can't help but let it spill out all the time, anytime.

He's my boy who gets so excited to tell you something that he will repeat the first few words he's trying to say, over and over, until he finally gets out the whole thought. He's my Charlie Brown {I mean perfectly round, since birth}

Happy Birthday to my funny, sweet little, oops I mean big guy :)

xoxo,

Mom

Hello Cupcake!

What the H*%@!!! What have I been doing, that I totally forgot to post about sweet Kell's birthday. Uh. It. Was. February 24th. O.K. flog me with a noodle. Take away my sewing supplies. Make me watch Barney 100 times in a row. Anything to ease the guilt.

At least I had planned for her birthday properly. After all, this is my little girl. Only girlie things will do. And I'm pleased to announce she has kept her end of the bargain by being in love with ponies {for now}. All things horsie, pony, my little pony and or "honeypie" {from Strawberry Shortcake} related are number one in her book.

So I promptly scoured Amazon for the perfect cupcake book and this is what I found. It is worth it!!! You will be so glad you did. I can't tell you how amazing this book is and how impressed all your friends will be when you start whipping some of these out.

Anyhoo...they do have pony cupcakes in there. Now, I have to say that one of the items called for in the book is a white circus peanut. You know those ugly, weird I don't even want to know how they get them that color, orange peanut shaped hard marshmallow thingies. Those are used as the pony heads. Well I wasn't making orange ponies, I believe we're entering the age when nightmares could start. So just try and find a white one, I dare you. Oh, I found them somewhere as a "rainbow mix" Good golly, they come in a rainbow of colors.

So I started thinking...what else could I use? What, what, what???!!! It hit me...caramels!!! Sometimes I'm so clever, I scare myself. {Not really, but it would be nice if it were to happen once, just once}.

So this is what I made:

I think they turned out awesome!! The necks were chocolate sugar wafers and the tails were little pieces of pretzel {sawed off with a serrated knife...per the book}. Little pointy icing ears and long icing manes. Of course they were of the palomino variety as well. Can't wait for Dunn's birthday {5/21}. I'm thinkingof doing the shark cupcakes...just in time for summer ;)

Happy Birthday Lovebug

Here's my "lovebug". This is my nickname for the guy who laughs like Woody from Toy Story, always has a smile, plays with his little sister and brother as if he were their age and will always give me a snuggly, cuddly kiss. It doesn't matter that he's 9. He is not embarrased to show his love with every member of our family!

Happy Birthday Lovebug!!!

Please stop growing now. I'm not sure I'm ready for another year to go by watching you grow up to be such a wonderful young man! Please? Please? Please?

xoxo ~Mom