Simple Cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Simple and yummy! I think I did these on the fly, so there were no decorating tunes :(

-J

Pretty Liners

I recently bought these beautiful cupcake liners from Bake It Pretty. Hmmm... what should I bake in them? I'm leaning towards some fancy muffins with a huge dollop of cream cheese frosting up on top. What do you think?

Rainbow Cupcakes

In the post about Christopher's Birthday Cupcakes I didn't even mention the best part! Since I like to complicate things and because I thought it would look plain cool, I did all of the birthday cupcakes rainbow on the inside. I thought it'd be a nice little surprise for the kids when they ate them but they didn't seem to think it was as cool as the adults did. I thought they looked neat and the inside of the cupcake wrappers looked pretty too!

Birthday Cookies 2009

Besides doing cupcakes for Christopher's birthday I stuck to my speciality and did some cookies to give out in the goody bags. Since Christopher's starting to have his own little opinion I wanted to include him in the party planning so I let him pick out what colors he wanted the cookies to be. He first picked blue because that's his favorite color and then for the 2nd color he picked yellow "so it would look like Sprinkles." Sprinkles is his stuffed animal giraffe and his best friend. I thought that was too adorable!

Also to help keep him involved and because I needed someone to try them, Christopher stepped in as my cookie taster and they seemed to be good enough for him! They were sugar cookies with orange royal icing them time. Decorating music was Taylor Swift's "Fearless" album again :)

-J

Birthday Cards

If you'd believe it, baking isn't my only creative outlet. Before I ever started baking my main creative outlet was through scrapbooking and making cards. I don't get as much time as I'd like anymore, but once in a while I can get a couple things done. Here are some birthday cards I did last year for a 1 and 3 year old's. My style is definitely not to keep things simple (when I have the time) and I like lots of small details. I especially like that glitter on the 2nd card!

-J

Christopher's Birthday Cupcakes

first photo credit goes to my dad of Rudy Calpo Photography.

Christopher had his first real birthday party this past weekend and it was a blast! Despite my planning every last detail I was finally able to relax once the party was set up and the kids were running around. Now he doesn't watch it all that often, but we did a Sesame Street themed party, basically centered around these cupcakes. Gregory's sister, Elaine, saw a picture of them and told me I had to do a Sesame Street themed party for Christopher. So starting with the cupcakes, we centered things around bright, bold colors, the letter C and the number 3, and all the Sesame Street characters.

The invitations said "Christopher's birthday party is brought to you by the letter C and the number 3." we had his cake done by Freeport Bakery with Big Bird and Elmo racing across it, these Sesame Street cupcakes, the kids played a stick-the-nose-on-Elmo game, and the favors were those little beach buckets with Sesame Street stickers on them, Sesame Street pencils, bubbles, Elmo lollypops, C & 3 cookies and those fun little crazy straws.

I know Christopher had a lot of fun and that was the most important thing :)

Butterfly Cake

Butterfly cake I made for Stephanie's birthday last year. I tried to make one the year before but it didn't turn out quite right. This one was WAY better. So pretty, but I should have used more colors. The biggest challenge was keeping the sanding sugar from going all over.

I don't remember if it was white or chocolate cake, but I think it was a chocolate cake and I used store bought frosting. The big dots were gobstoppers and the small ones were just round rainbow sprinkles. Also, it was way easier to decorate when I let it sit in the freezer for a little bit to keep it from crumbling.

-J

Easter Cookies

Well, I had a family emergency that sent G & I out of town the day before Easter, but luckily I already had the cookies baked and Elaine took the time to decorate them. Aren't they so cute? Bunnies, eggs, and tulips. I was able to add the tiny details of the bunnies eyes, noses, and tails. Thanks Elaine! Sugar cookies with royal icing.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!
-J

Easter Cookie Inspiration

So this Easter marks the 1 year anniversary of my first attempt at making all these yummy sugar cookies! Unfortunately I can't find the pictures of the cookies I made last year (darn!), otherwise I'd post them. But don't worry, you aren't missing out on much, they just kind of looked like pastel blobs.

But now I'm hunting around online for a little inspiration for this year. Definitely bright colors, maybe some butterflies, Easter eggs, and bunnies? Or some tulip flowers? Oh, I like the tulip idea. Maybe a bunch of really bright tulips in pink, purple, blue, yellow and orange? With a little green detail? Yeah! Can you tell I'm just now thinking about all this? I do love these mini iced cookies by Williams Sonoma. Maybe I'll try a little something like that... with vanilla icing! Yummy! I guess you'll have to stay tuned to find out what I finally decide on.

Also, how great do these look! Chocolate Eggs. But a lot of work.

And, looking for cookie inspiration is the worst thing to do when you're hungry...

Hope you're having a good week.
-J

Birthday Cookies

Well, it's that time of year again. Christopher's birthday is quickly approaching and it's time for more cookies! Last year Christopher and his cousin Austin, who also turned 2, had a joint birthday party and I did little A, C & 2 cookies and put them together as favors. Here are some of the cookies from last year. Since they were so small, only about 2 inches high, there were a TON! I was sick of cookies for a while after that party!

But this year I'm going to be doing number & letter cookies again because Christopher is having a Sesame Street themed birthday party- yay! Luckily, each child only gets 2 bigger cookies, so I'm not going to have to do quite as many this year. It'll be fun though!

Have a great weekend.
-J

Flip Flop Sugar Cookies

Here are some yummy flip flop cookies I did for a bridal shower a couple months ago. With sugar cookies I love using bright colors that really pop and draw your attention. I also love adding extra detail to cookies like the dirt on the dump truck cookies and the sand on these.

I hope everyone enjoys eating them as much as I love making them! Sugar cookies with yummy Italian-lemon royal icing.

-J

Harlow's Hairbows

Pretty exciting, I've got more of the popular red hairbows in stock! I've also got a couple new colors. One is a beautiful bright pink grosgrain with white stitching, another is bright pink with yellow polka dots, and the last is a light green with brown polka dots. All of the new ones have 15" long headbands, except for the blue one pictured, which is from the original batch and is 14" long.

Check out the pictures! I think these are going to go up in the etsy store, but if you see any you'd like shoot me an e-mail.

-J