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...