Happy Mother's Day!

This Mother's Day I decided to try my hand at something new. Something I have always admired but have never attempted: Cupcakes!

I love cupcakes. I don't particularly love to eat them as I am more of a pie person but I love to look at them. I have books on cupcakes, cupcake picture frames, cupcake ribbon, cupcake iron on transfers, cupcake canisters, a cupcake shaped cookie jar, cupcake dessert plates, I even have a mechanical pencil with Hello Kitty holding a cupcake. I love cupcakes. I just think that they are so damn cute.

A couple of the cupcake books I own are Hello Cupcake! and it's recently released sequel What's New, Cupcake? The authors of these books are genius. They show you how to make the most amazing cupcakes simply, using every day ingredients in new ways (did you ever think that you could take rice crispies, a couple of pink & orange fruit chews and a strip of green licorice, throw it on top of a cupcake and make a person think that they are looking at fried rice?). I mean it is all relatively simple and you come up with awesome results. So after months of flipping through these books (and sitting next to the ever crafty Erin, who also owns these books and decorates cakes for any and every occasion) I decided I was going to take the plunge and whip up some cupcakes of my own.

My mother loves this almond poppy seed raspberry filled cake she gets at Thriftway. So I decided not only to bake cupcakes for the first time but that I would make jelly filled cupcakes with chocolate butterflies. Sounds like a pretty arduous task, but actually it ended up being one of the funnest things I have done in a long time. I love it. Watching the butterflies take shape and putting the little swirls in them, making the perfect shade of yellow frosting. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't without its snafus (my ability to frost something does leave something to be desired and the sun melting the antennae during transportation did not fill me with joy) or without a seriously messy kitchen (oh, who am I kidding? My kitchen is always messy. It is just now messy with frosting and chocolate). But I loved every minute of it! I think I see cake decorating classes in my very near future.

I actually am quite proud of this accomplishment. I thought I would crash and burn but instead I managed quite nicely. In the past year, I have really been trying to take strides to do crafts and prove myself to be a "crafty" individual as I hail from a long line of super crafty people (and I married into a family of super crafty people as well) and if I want to continue to hang with these people (or claim relations) I need to step my craft up. I taught myself how to crochet, finishing a couple of scarves and starting a blanket (sorry to say but finishing is not my strong suit). I learned how to embroider, finishing a really cute "cats are evil/puppies are angels" half apron and have another embroidering project sitting in my craft basket waiting to be stitched. I didn't newly learn how, but I refreshed my skill at flower arranging, doing my own flowers at my wedding. And now I am learning the wonderful world of cake decorating (which thankfully, plays into my short attention span since it only takes hours to complete each project, not weeks). Maybe I will end up being "crafty" after all!

If you are lucky enough to be my friend on Facebook and are longing for more, you can log on and see more pics of the Monarch cupcakes and the flower arrangement I made for my mom today. I'm going to try to post pics of the apron I embroidered later on this week.