Totally Non-Seasonal Cupcake Bites

I know, I know, I'm way out of order, but I'm playing a little catch up here with posting pics of my projects. I made these cupcake bites for a friend hosting a Superbowl party. She requested footballs (oddly enough). Don't let the pics deceive you, these things were huge! I guess I got a little lazy as I was making the filling, so instead of tons of tiny footballs she got big ones instead. As I write this post, I'm making the filling for a bridal shower order. The bride wants spring shapes: flowers, hearts, etc. More pics to come!

It's getting a little busy around here

Whew....all of the sudden I'm really swimming in candy orders. I got an email this week from someone wanting 5 orders, 4 for a corporate event and another single order for her daughter's birthday. Keep in mind, each order averages 40-50 pieces of cupcake candy. Between this and traning for my new job while concurrently working 40 hours a week at my current job.....I guess sleep is out of the question for a while! I suppose I better get back to it, but I'll leave you with a pic of one of my newer cupcake candy creations, Hello Kitty Pops. Or, to avoid any copyright infringement....umm, maybe "What's Up, Kitty Pops" or something equally lame.

Wow, I suck.

I have not posted in forever. My apologies, everyone. A little catch up.....I last posted about five months ago. Since that time, I spent several days in the hospital, uncountable hours in the emergency room, and endless minutes in multiple doctors' offices. Oh yeah, and I finished my Master's degree! Yay for me!

So five months later, I am left with lingering squicky memories of a mean, mean surgeon putting things in and yanking them out of certain areas of my nether regions. I don't care how long you went to school, man, that's totally uncool.

On a more positive note, I am completely relieved to be done with school. It took me four long years to get my M.Ed., and I am so eager to start developing my career. Pretty soon here, it will be time for me to put on my big girl panties and start a new job. I am both excited and scared....unfortunately a nice shiny 4.0 doesn't guarantee that I will be able to be an excellent counselor, but I will sure try!

I have also had an explosion of orders for my cupcake pops! I haven't been advertising or anything but word of mouth seems to be working for me. In the past few weeks I have completed two orders and made plans for four more. This means you will all be treated to my super-awesome photography skills as I post pics of the latest cupcake pops. Or rather, you will see some out-of-focus overly dark pics of my cupcake pops. Photoshop and I don't get along.
I'll start out with some treats I made with a christmas present my husband's aunt gave me. What a perfect gift....a Twinkie pan! Not being a huge fan of yellow cake, I decided to mix it up a little and make carrot cake Twinkies. Mmmm, with homemade cream cheese filling.



The tops of the Twinkies looked so lonely I had to decorate them a little. I realize the swirls look more like the top of a Hostess cupcake, but hey, live a little.

Halloween, One Day Late

Although these pics are seriously delayed, I finally managed to snap a pic of my halloween version of cupcake pops. These were for another co-workers's daughter's halloween party. Apparently they were a pretty big hit, I delivered 55 pops and she said there were only a few leftovers. I wish I had managed to take pics of all of them (much more impressive) but after I finished 58 of these boogers I was tired! I'm getting a little better with using the candy writers, but there's always room for improvement!

We spent last night handing out tons of candy for little trick or treaters. Thankfully most of them were adorable little ones, instead of surly teenage trick-or-treaters. Speaking of little ones....check out how cute of a skunk my niece is....



And my other niece is super happy to have her pic taken....

And just in case anyone was worried, my cat Gizmo seemed to have survived the onslaught of Halloween just fine...

The Long Awaited Cupcake Pops

I finally got around to loading the pics of the latest cupcake pop adventure. A coworker of mine requested an order of cupcake bites for a dog party. Which is...I guess a party where you bring your dog? A party for the dogs? I'm not totally sure. Anyway, I suggested making half an order of cupcake bites and half cupcake pops styled like dogs, as I saw on Bakerella's blog. So after much experimenting (and by experimenting I mean lots of wasted money and quite a bit of cussing), here are my results.









Some of the pics are a little blurry, sorry. I'm definitely not a food photographer. But you get the general idea. My next challenge is a set of Halloween themed cupcake pops. I'm thinking pumpkins, of course, and maybe a few other things I saw on Bakerella the other day. Sorry, Bakerella, I'm a complete idea thief! If anyone else has any suggestions, please add your comment, I'd be happy to hear them!

Fall of the Evil Deck

Aahhh, sweet relief. Our devil-spawn of a deck is finally gone. We hacked that bad boy up with chainsaw and it now currently resides in pieces in a big ugly dumpster on our driveway. The super fun news....the siding behind the deck is all rotten and yucky. So we get to replace that, too. I often watch those home repair/house flipping shows and they always end up finding 10x as many problems when they rip stuff up....it's totally true. We ripped up the deck because we had water come in our basement. Now that the deck is gone, we've spent $2000 on a new patio but we also have to replace the siding. Oh yeah, and build new steps. Oh, and repaint the basement floor. And shampoo the carpet. And cut out the drywall where I'm mortally afraid that what my husband calls "dirt" is actually killer black mold.
On a more positive note (what?) the new patio is wonderful. No maintenance, except for sweeping. I have big plans for doing some nice landscaping around it and buying a cute little firepit.
Ah, the joys of home improvement!

So...tired...need....sleep...

...but it ain't gonna happen! Well folks I'm almost halfway through the dreaded internship phase of my M.Ed. 300 hours down, 300 to go. Who needs sleep anyway when you can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel? Hopefully in a few months I'll be an actual gainfully employed counselor.
So moving on to other random things, I have become a cupcake bite-making maniac. I found the recipe for these little jewels on Bakerella's blog and have since made them several times. After bringing them in to work several times a few co-workers began requesting them for private parties. I had no clue what to charge but my first "customer" gave me $25 for a batch so I guess I'll stick with that. I have 2 more upcoming orders so we'll see how that goes. Just don't tell the IRS I'm running a little side bidness, I'd like to keep my kneecaps intact.
I'll be attempting a new spin on the cupcake bites with the next batch so I'll be sure to include pics!