Patriotic Cupcakes...

If you're looking for an easy dessert idea for this weekend, try these!! I found the idea here, but instead of making mine with 5 colors, I just used red, white, and blue.
I'm excited to try this same idea for other holidays too. Think how cool they'd look using Christmas colors....and Valentine colors.....and pastels for Easter! Yummy!!

Purse Card Holder...

I have a problem. A crafting problem. Every day I find new ideas that I want to try. The problem is, I don't know if I'll ever get to all of them!! But I'm sure going to try!

One project I can now cross off my list is this cute card holder. I love how it turned out!

The instructions didn't say to do this, but I used a velcro dot on it to keep the flap closed.

And here are the cards I made to go inside.

This was a fun project with an adorable result. My girls are now begging me to make them each one to use as a purse. We'll see....

Birthday Cake #3...

My oldest daughter turned 10 yesterday...I can't believe I have a 10 year old!! When we were trying to decide what to do for her cake, she saw this idea and loved it.
This cake was so much fun to make! We used a chocolate fudge cake mix for the cake and regular buttercream frosting. So good!

She got to invite 4 friends over for a "late night". We made some gourmet popcorn for them to eat while they watched a movie. The most popular flavor was butterscotch...it was gone before I could take a picture!! The four flavors we tried were semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, and butterscotch.
The popcorn was a sinch to make. All you do is make popcorn (can be microwavable or from a popper), melt chocolate chips, and mix together. Yummy!!

After her friends went home, my daughter told me that this was the best birthday party she's ever had! That made it all worth it to me!!

Birthday Cake #2...

My baby turned 2 today, and the boy is obsessed with cars and trucks! I checked around at different craft stores for car cake pans, but decided that I didn't want to spend forever decorating the cake (been there, done that!).

Instead of making his cake into a car, I took the easy way out and used a cookie cutter in the shape of a car for my template. I just pressed it in, outlined the shape with frosting, and then filled it in with a star tip. For the wheels I used some black gel icing from a tube. Easy peasy! And it doesn't look half bad! **his name was covered for privacy**

On the side I just winged it and put wavy lines and dots of frosting.

My kids loved it...they kept telling me how cute it was. And my boy kept saying "Car" over and over as he pointed to it.

The point I want to make in sharing this is.....**you don't have to spend a lot of money on a cake from a bakery, and if you make it yourself, you don't have to spend a lot of time on it to make it cute! ** This cake took me less than 45 minutes to decorate, including the time it took to make and tint the frosting. I know I could have bought a cuter, more professional looking cake, but I think it means more to my kids to see me taking the time to make them a special cake for their birthdays. Atleast I hope it does!!

Try this the next time you need a cake. I think you'll be surprised at how quickly it will come together, and how cute it will turn out!

**Two birthdays down, one more to go! I hope you're not getting tired of seeing my cakes...I'll be sharing one more this week! Then I'm done with birthdays until September....

A Simple Birthday Party...

I've never been one to go "all out" for my kids' birthday parties. I'd love to be that mom who throws elaborate parties every year, but I learned long ago that simpler is better (especially when 3 of your 5 kids' birthdays are within 1 week of eachother!)

For my daughter's birthday this year I made her invitations first. I didn't have a 'theme' in mind. I just made the invites based on my mood for the day. This is what I came up with.

After the invitations were finished and passed out, I decided to use 'flowers' as a theme. I found a cute fry box idea here and made some for the treat bags. (I ended up using a bigger fry box template from here). I decorated them the same as the invites, threw in some candy, and wrapped them in cellophane bags. They turned out pretty cute, and the kids loved them!

Since I was going with 'flowers', I decided to have atleast one game that went with the theme. I made this flower using my scrapbook paper scraps and we played "pin the leaf on the flower stem" (I know, it's not a great title, but I don't know what else to call it!). BTW...the little hearts weren't really on the leaves...I just added them to block out the kids' names.

For the cake I made a double layer 9" round cake and frosted it with basic buttercream frosting. Then we (my girls and I) got out my flower cookie cutters and used them as a template for the flowers on the cake. We pressed the cookie cutters in where we wanted them, then filled in the spots with colored frosting. My girls all got to fill in some flowers and had a blast! I think eating the extra frosting may have been the best part of their day!
Again, the hearts were used to block my daughter's name.

Although it was simple, the birthday girl had a great time! In my book, that's all that really matters anyway!