Simple Spider Cupcakes

Since Julia's birthday (October 23) falls around Halloween, we have created Halloween themed cupcakes for her birthday bashes at school.

For her class party this year, we found several versions of these cute (and of course SIMPLE) spider cupcakes on Pinterest and we whipped them up in no time!

All it took was a package of Oreo cookies, black licorice cut for legs, and mini morsels 'glued' into place with some leftover icing.

Kirsten's 7th Birthday Breakfast

Today we celebrate Kirsten's 7th birthday! I am continuously amazed by her carefree spirit and the happiness she exudes!

We started our morning with our favorite special occasion breakfast... Cake Batter Pancakes! Just replace one of your two cups of Bisquick pancake mix with one cup of cake batter.  Prepare as usual.  Add a few tablespoons of sprinkles to the batter.  

Top with powdered sugar mixed with a little milk and some additional sprinkles... Crazy delicious! 

Summer Fun Beach Cupcakes

For Julia's End of the Year celebration we went with a beach theme.  Instead of making similar individual cupcakes, we decided to turn our four rows of cupcakes into a beach scene.  I started by icing one row with standard white vanilla icing covered with crushed graham cracker sand.  I then tinted a tablespoon or so yellow for our sun and the remaining icing two different shades of blue... one blue for the ocean and one blue for the sky.

Julia then went to town, adding candy corn for the sun's rays, red striped peppermint puff candy for beach balls, Fruit by the Foot beach towels,

gummi peach O's for life preservers, and Teddy Grahams to frolic in the sun and surf!

Nutter Butter Balls

After figuring out how easy it is to make no bake truffles or balls from crushed cookies and cream cheese, like these Mint Cookie Truffles, or this recipe from Bakerella.com, we just had to try making Nutter Butter Balls.

Just as easy... and still sinfully delicious...

Just one package of pulverized Nutter Butter cookies mixed with one 8 oz. package of cream cheese.  

Just throw them in a food processor or one Julia wielding a meat tenderizer works, too.

A drizzle of melted chocolate.... and peanut butter heaven!

Unicorn Cupcakes

For Kirsten's 5th birthday, we created an All Rainbows & Unicorns bash (you can find all the details here).  We kept that theme as well for her birthday bash at school.

For this round of baking fun, we created these adorable unicorn cupcakes, as seen on www.easycupcakes.com.

The simple requirements for this adorable fantasy treat were:

1 mini marshmallows cut in half for the ears

1 marshmallows cut in half for the nose

1 Bugle for the unicorn's horn

blue M&M's for the eyes

1 edible food marker to add details

Ending Another School Year

Last year I read this article, Spicing Up 1st Day of School Photos, by Kim Holmes and I just loved her idea of listing your child's favorite things that year right on the photo.  GENIUS!  But since it was spring and I had already missed starting a first day of school tradition... I figured why not try her idea as an end of school year wrap-up!

So on the last day of school each year we will continue with this tradition...

Julia Celebrates Alphabet Day

Last week, Julia's awesome Kindergarten class celebrated Alphabet Day!  I am not sure why, but any excuse for a party and cupcakes is fine in my book.

The children were asked to make an alphabet poster, wear either an alphabet shirt or hat, and bring in an alphabet treat.

Julia decided her alphabet poster should be a cupcake with the letters of the alphabet as sprinkles.

Next, Julia opted for a T-shirt... Which we covered in foam letters with the help of some craft glue.

Our alphabet treat... of course, CUPCAKES!

And leave it to me favorite store, DOLLAR TREE!, to have alphabet cookies for just $1 a box!

Since the cookies were a bit boring... we spruced them up with some brightly colored sugar crystals (with a little bit of powdered sugar and water mixture for glue).

One successful Alphabet Day...

Father's Day Fun

Looking for some Father's Day fun...  Here are some of the projects we have created for the special daddy in our world and a another trip down memory lane for me!

What parent or grandparent doesn't melt over those tiny handprints turned into art?

As the girls grew, so did the complexity of our projects.  It was also nice to include dad in the creation for some quality father - daughter time.

By far our favorite Father's Day celebration to date... a rocket launch at the Center for Science Teaching and Learning!

A quick, easy, and of course delicious Father's Day treat... chocolate chip pancakes cooked in the shape of the letters D... A... D!

S'mores in a Cone

We decided this weekend that Memorial Day is like Thanksgiving... well in the sense that it is a day to say, "thank you!"

But after the parades, Memorial Day becomes a kickoff to summer...

and is the beginning of BBQ season!

This Memorial Day, like others that have come and gone, we gathered with friends to relax, celebrate, and of course eat.  But in our last minute efforts to pull off a simple BBQ for 16... I failed to buy a key ingredient for dessert.

So when Julia proudly announced that it was time to make s'mores, I cringed at the thought of disappointing the eight eager beavers.  So I did what all moms do best... I improvised!

Instead of the graham crackers, which I left on the shelves in the store, I opted for sugar cones!

We layered and stuffed each cone with Hershey's milk chocolate and strawberry marshmallows (Julia's new favorite).

Wrapped 'em in some aluminum foil and threw them on the BBQ.

And in a few short minutes... a yummy treat (that I must admit was far less messy)!

Pinkalicious!

A few weeks ago I received this advertisement in the mail for Pinkalicious, The Musical, playing at The Culture Project, Bleecker Sreet, Manhattan.

I was instantly taken back to the fun we had when we took the girls to see the play three years ago (oh where does time go?).  Dressing in our finest PINK duds... Lunch in the city at Max Brenner (who doesn't love chocolate) with Aunt Madelyn... Our first taxi ride... And of course, one fabulous pinkatastic show!

I was also transported back to the pre-show pink cupcake bake fest we had the night before!  

Pink batter... 

pink icing,

 and of course pink hands and faces to match.

A PINKATASTIC DAY!

April Fools' Fun

So April... and most of May... have come and gone, I had failed to write a post about one of our favorite days of the year, April Fool's Day!  On the eve of this wacky day, I posted this blog about our Wacky Sunday (aka April Fool's Day), 2012.

My idea for these wacky days comes from the Dr. Seuss book, Wacky Wednesday, which begins with the main character waking up to find a shoe on the wall! As the pages of the book progress the number of items gone awry increases.  The best part of the book is the illustrations, which double as picture puzzles needing to be solved.  

This year we celebrated April 1, 2013 as Wacky Monday.  After composing this letter,

we brought back our favorite shoe on the wall...

 a note in the toilet... (insert giggles)

a refrigerator staring back at us...

a quick update of our kitchen sign...

and my new favorite...

Oh how I wished I would have been there to capture their reaction when they realized their 'orange juice' was Jello and would never make it through the straw!

Hope you April Fools' Day was as *wacky* as ours.