Gory Cupcakes for Halloween

For Halloween do you do silly fun or gory?  We always do silly fun but I do like a little bit of the gross.  So when I saw these cupcakes over on Pinterest (my new love) from Cakehead Loves Evil I knew we had to make them. Totally cool, right?!?!

We made stained glass candy and stuck them into frosted cupcakes.  My kids thought they were so cool.  And my daughter loved the glass candy.

Happy Halloween!!!





I'm linking to the parties on my sidebar.

Meatloaf and Mashed Potato Cupcakes

Meatloaf and mashed potatoes are comfort food to me. I love them! My kids love them! And I love that my kids love them! But I wanted to kid it up a little. (We eat meatloaf a lot.)

So I made my regular meatloaf. It's nothing uber fancy. I buy the spice packet at the grocery store and ground turkey and follow the back directions. One trick is to use fresh bread to make bread crumbs, not the packaged/dried kind. If you just shred up soft bread it makes the meatloaf lighter and not super dense. I also add KC Masterpiece bar-b-que sauce. It's my favorite and adds a lot of flavor to it.


I put the meatloaf in muffin pans to make little meatloaf muffins. (Make sure you put a cookie sheet under them in case the grease spills.)



While the little meatloafs were cooling I made the mashed potatoes. I just make the boxed mashed potatoes. Don't get me wrong, I love homemade mashed potatoes but they take awhile to make. (How bad am I?!) But I give the boxed ones some kick by adding ranch dressing to them to make them creamier. They taste delish!

I put the mashed potatoes in my Easy Accent Decorator from Pampered Chef (I love that tool!) and there you have it... meatloaf and mashed potato cupcakes! My kids thought they were great!


They also discovered my Easy Accent Decorator and helped themselves to some mashed potatoes...

Mad Scientist Party - Part One

My son just turned 7 this week. I can't even believe it. Where has the time gone?!?!?

Every year we start planning for the birthday parties months in advance. I realize that it would be much easier to just forget about it until a couple of weeks ahead of time and then plan like crazy. But I don't work that way. It's a disease. We talk about it and try to come up with cool ideas and then I hunt for great deals. It's nice because with so much time I can do that. I can surf the internet and find ideas and look for bargains. Everyone likes a bargain, right?

So my son wanted a Mad Scientist Party. Hmmm... How am I going to do that? So I surfed and found some great ideas over at Homemade Mamas. It inspired me. So we planned and planned and planned.

I'm doing this post in two parts because there is way too much to put in just one. We had too much fun and the party was a HUGE success. The look on my son's face was well worth the time and energy!


So this post is on the decor. Here's some of the things we did...

I bought test tubes and petri dishes here. There are tons of sites out there and they are pretty cheap. (Oh yeah, and they are plastic!) We filled the test tubes with skittles and some with skull candy.


I made glow in the dark jello and put it in the petri dishes. Yep, you heard me right... glow in the dark! It's so cool. Just make jello the normal way but instead of water use tonic water. The kids loved it! Before it set up we added a gummy worm. What do you think?


The goodies bags were a ton of fun to do. Inside were Nerds, gummy frogs, fizzy soda candy, and a magnifying glass. When the party was over each child got to take a test tube and a petri dish also. And then there were all of our experiments that we did. They got to take all of them home as well. (Atomic slime, fake snow and magic worms. You'll see more about these in part 2.) I made the stickers myself (super easy) and the magnifying glasses were 3 for $1 at the Dollar Store. Pretty good deal!


I made a jello centerpiece to look like a science experiment. It didn't turn out as well as I had hoped but the kids thought it was super gross (which was what I was going for.) I just made lime jello in a serving bowl and added lots of gummy worms and bugs. They gobbled it up!


But I thought the cupcakes were the best. My son and I made eyeball cupcakes for him to take to school.


We kind of liked how they turned out but we decided to make brain cupcakes instead for his party.


I'm not sure if you can see what the cup is or not. The wrestling coach at my work gave me a bunch of pee cups. (Yep, pee cups. New, of course.) The kids got a kick out of drinking out of them.


What a blast! I think this one will be remembered. It was crazy fun!


Make sure to come back and check out part 2 with all of the cool experiments that we did.

A Rainbow of Wonderful

For those of you who know me it's no surprise at all when you hear me say I love to bake. I bake all the time. It's therapeutic for me. (Not the eating part but the actual baking part.) Unfortunately I'm not a therapeutic cooker and I don't whip up a five course meal when I'm a little stressed out. Instead I bake cookies and cupcakes and muffins and all the stuff that your Mom always told you not to eat. How horrible is that?!?! But the one nice thing for me (although everyone else says it's odd) is that I don't necessarily like to eat what I bake. And it's not even that I don't like it. I make things I love. I just like to eat things that OTHER people make. Weird???

My kids have followed in my footsteps (yeah!) and also love to bake. They come in the kitchen with me and look at the recipes and help me gather all the ingredients. It's wonderful. It's time that we spend together. It's time that I can tell them stories about when I was a kid (and not the stories about walking 5 miles to school. The good stories about how I used to bake with my Mom too.)

So this past weekend we wanted to make cupcakes. My kids love cupcakes. Well, let me rephrase that. My son loves cupcakes. My daughter likes to lick the frosting off of them. But we wanted to jazz up our cupcakes so this is what we came up with... Rainbow cupcakes. Who doesn't like something colorful?!?!

A couple of years ago I gave up trying to not make a mess when my kids helped me in the kitchen. I used to wipe the counter off as soon as something spilled or would not let my kids add an ingredient because it was "too messy." Heck, now I let them go at it. It's more fun for them and it's definitely less stressful for me. And how better for them to learn than to try?!

So they measure and mix.

Cody even cracks the eggs for me. (I do have him crack them in a separate bowl so we can pick out all the egg shells.)
But when he got the second egg cracked without crushing the shell and breaking the yoke - you would have thought he just won the marathon. He was so pleased with himself!

We mixed up the cake mix. (We used a boxed white cake mix for these). Then we added the food coloring.


I wasn't too sure of this at first. The tubs of cake mix looked like slime.


We layered the different colors in the muffin tins. We weren't able to put in more than about 3 layers because of the size of the muffin pans. And we put all different combinations of colors in the cups.

Then we waited....


We were pretty pleased with our creations. And after adding frosting! Well, we thought we were ready to open up a shop. Okay, maybe not but we thought they turned out great!


And yes, I actually did eat some of these. They were delicious!


http://hoosierhomemade.com/

Sweet Addition to Newberg

A new shop opened in Newberg that quickly caught my eye. It's called Sweetest Thing Cupcake and let me tell you... they are delicious! I'm not afraid to say that I love my sweets. But I have been cursed. Not with a sweet tooth or even a salt tooth. I have a fat tooth! I love fatty foods. (Okay, maybe I'm a little afraid to say that.) I crave cookies and cupcakes and donuts (don't get me started with donuts!) So when I found this shop I was delighted.


The menu changes daily, which I like. And each month they change up the choices as well to keep everyone coming back. Today we chose to buy an assortment for my Grandparents. We can't go for a visit without bringing a treat for them. So we picked four of the mini cupcakes and had them put into a nice box. It was a great treat without it being too big (my Grandparents are little) and costing too much.


My kids had to have a treat as well. But theirs didn't quite make it to the car. They also got the mini cupcakes this visit. They aren't too big (which I like) but big enough so they feel like they are eating a special treat.


They have a large dining/entertaining area where you can have private parties. I thought the princess tea party sounded fun for my daughter and her friends. This particular party includes dress-up with their princess accessories, tiara and wand for the birthday girl or hostess, princess music and dance, craft, tea lunch menu, gourmet princess cupcakes and choice of milk or juice all in a tea party setting. Gift bags are even provided for each child. And the party is hosted by their Private Party Hostess so I can be busy doing other things (like taking pictures and eating cupcakes!)

It's definitely a must if you are going through Newberg. What child doesn't love cupcakes???