Princess Cupcakes

Since I only have boys, I jump on any chance I get to make girly treats. These past couple weeks I've had 2 cupcake orders for girls' birthday parties- I was in pink and purple heaven! Here's some princess themed cupcakes...


Since I only have boys, I jump on any chance I get to make girly treats. These past couple weeks I've had 2 cupcake orders for girls' birthday parties- I was in pink and purple heaven! Here's some princess themed cupcakes...

Preschool Snack Time.

I was in charge of snack at my son's preschool a few weeks ago and since the theme of the week was Firemen and Firestations and such I decided to let the kids decorate their own dalmatian muffins. I took in muffins that already had the frosting on them and the kids used chocolate chips for eyes, pink jellybeans for a nose, mini chocolate chips for dalmatian spots and Trader Joe's chocolate cat cookies as the ears. Look how cute they turned out!

Kuhn Rikon Mouse Measuring Cup Set

I'm going to start highlighting all the cool new kitchen gadgets I'm slowly acquiring because I love them all! I love having fun stuff when I'm baking and I've found that the best way to do that is to get products that are made for kids. I especially love kids cookbooks because they're always so bright and colorful with TONS of pictures!

So one of my latest purchase came from Sur La Table at The Grove on our recent vacation to Los Angeles. I found this Kids Kinderkitchen Mouse Measuring Cup Set by some Swiss company and fell in love with the colors. One of my favorite kitchen tools are these measuring spoons that are just plastic, but they're all a different color, which for some reason makes it easier for me. I also got some Le Cruset pinch bowls (green and red ones) and a Le Cruset Turquoise spatual, but those aren't quite as exciting (but they are colorful!). Ok, ok, ok here're pictures...

Karate Cookies

The woman who reads the stories at a local story-time that I take Christopher to asked if I could do some special cookies for her daughter's 7th birthday party. Her daughter, Charlie, was having her birthday party at a Karate studio and wanted karate people made out of chocolate chip cookies with a yellow belt and yellow m&m's. I did the m&m's as belt accents and they turned out really cute! These were fun to decorate but were a little harder to keep together than sugar cookies.

Decorating tunes were a mix of 90's songs like The Wallflowers, Savage Garden and No Doubt.

-J

Harlow's Hairbows

I took a break from the baking craziness to make a few more bows for Harlow's Hairbows and they've just been picked up by the East Sac children's boutique, Koukla Kids! It's so exciting, I feel all professional and all now! So you can either buy my hairbows directly from me or stop in at Koukla and purchase them there. The store is SO stinkin' adorable! Here's a couple pictures of the store. That's Christopher and his friend Peter hanging out on the couch (and little Katie on the floor).

Abby's Cookies

I made some favor bags of cookies for a little girl named Abby who turned 1 a week ago. Her mom, Jen, picked the perfect color combination of light pink, light green and yellow and the cookies looked beautiful together! "A" and "1" sugar cookies with lemon icing and sprinkles. Check out Abby's birthday party on Jen's blog here - so sweet!


And since I wanted to try out some techniques I made her a special little birthday cake cookie as well. It turned out so cute that I made another one for my sister for her birthday!

Decorating tunes had to be Taylor Swift's song "Fifteen" (and the rest of the "Fearless" album) because it's about her best friend Abigail and these were for a little girl named Abby!

-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 :)

Girls 'n Bows

I was originally going to keep this blog for my baking endeavors, but since I don't bake every day I've decided to expand it to all things creative. My latest diy project has been making bow headbands for little girls. I recently bought one on etsy (for my non-existent daughter, of course) because don't you just love a huge bow on a little baby? Well after examining it I decided that I could make them myself! So after trips to Joann's Fabrics and Michael's craft store, here's the finished project: a cute little pink bow headband, perfect for Easter! And if you see something you'd like to buy or have customized on here, just shoot me a message! Here's my friend's little daughter, Katie, modeling the gorgeous blue grosgrain bow for us. That one's my favorite!

-J