Tackle Box Cupcakes

My husband's birthday always calls for something special. Like the last two years I have created him a birthday cake designed from his momentary obsession. This summer he has been fishing more weekends than not, so it was only fitting to create for him something that had to do with fishing. That is how I decided to create the tackle box of cupcakes. Each Cookies n' Cream cupcake has a different tackle piece, and the cupcakes were placed on the shelves and inside an actual tackle box. I had to disassemble the tackle box in order to reassemble it back with each shelve having enough room for a cupcake.

Dora Cupcakes

Dustin's niece turned 2 last month, and she had a Dora party. You know what that means, CUPCAKES! These cupcakes were chocolate and pink buttercream icing on white cake. They were so cute and delicious!

Strawberry Cupcakes with Chloe

My little niece Chloe came and spent the night with her favorite Aunt and Uncle this past Friday night. She loves baking with Aunt Marley, so we baked up a new recipe for Strawberry cupcakes I have been dieing to test out.
They were a big hit with the family and my friends at work. I think these might even be better than the key lime. Below is Chloe showing off her work, right before she dumped her take-home-plate in the floor. Good thing the 5 second rule still applies! :)

New Cupcake Flavors

I have been wanting to add new flavors for folks to choose from; so, I used my friends at work and at bunco to taste test two new flavors.

The first was Cookies n Cream. They were oh so pretty!
I think they were over-cooked but they were pretty good. I might be working on this recipe though. I wanted more of a creamy cookies n cream, so there might have to be a hidden surprise added to these cupcakes!
Everyone headed straight for the cookies-n-cream, but as soon as they had their taste of the next flavor, they all new which was their favorite.
Key Lime Cupcakes! Oh so yummy! They were an instant hit. That creaminess with the crisp lime flavor was oh so delectable. This one definitely made the cut!

Cupcakes for the Fourth

On our vacation to Orange Beach, the kids and I had some fun making cupcakes while the men grilled, and the women cooked. They had fun playing with the fondant.
These colors run deep!

Pool Ball Cupcakes

Dustin's brother had a birthday recently so I wanted to make cupcakes for him! I saw this idea and had to try it! They were a big hit!

I even had to line them up like they where ready to be hit.

Gerber Daisy Cupcakes

Dustin's sister just had a birthday, and I volunteered my cupcake making efforts for the occasion. I got the cutest gerber daisy cutter, and these turned out so cute.
I liked this shot cause they it looks like art.

Master Bath Remodel

I am finally going to reveal the transformation of my master bathroom. It was the most drastically changed room of our house. We had to rip up carpet, yucky bathroom carpet, rip out wall paper, yucky bambo floor to ceiling wallpaper, and remove antique toilet and sink before we could paint the walls, have someone else hang crown molding, after we tried :), put up beadboard, wainscoting, and baseboards, install new lighting, install the re-purposed dresser vanity, install the new toilet and new shower fixtures, and hang curtains. Sounds easy, but some things were easy and some were a nightmare. So here are the before and afters.

The Vanity. New lighting and new vanity.


The tub. I love this tub, but we still want to get it refinished.


The toilet. Not a good shot of the new toilet, but you get the picture.


And the shower area, complete with new curtains.


On of my favorite things in my bathroom is my new vanity. We took an antique dresser, refinished, cut the hole in the top for the sink, and cut out the back and some of the drawer space to fit the plumbing.

And wallah, we have a new vanity.

Chuck E. Cheese Cupcakes

My little cousin was turning 5 and he needed some cupcakes for is birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, well his mom needed them. She wanted to stick to the Chuck E. Cheese theme since he was sharing his party with another boy in his class, how sweet right? I had been seeing other cake decorators create the flat layered cupcake toppers, and wanted to give it a try. So here is what I created.
And here they are on the cupcakes I made for him! Yummy!

These were so much easier than I thought. I just created the image in photoshop, separated the colors and printed each color. I then used those as templates to cut the fondant out with a razor, and while still soft I put in the stick. If you are considering this, give your pieces a full day to set so that they will stand when you stick them into the cupcake. You don't want droopy fondant.

Guest Bathroom Remodel

We finished our kitchen in time for Bunco, but I still had one room left I really wanted to completely redo. That was the guest bath. With three weeks between Bunco and Easter, I pressured my sweat hubby into getting the guest bath complete so we could host Easter this year. My plan worked. He loves hosting get-togethers, so he got our tub refinished, the tile down, the old fixtures out, and the new fixtures in, with my help of course, in three weeks! I painted of course. :) So if you don't remember what our bathroom looked like before here is a reminder.
Our bathroom was complete with pink toilet, pink tub, and pink wall mounted sink that was enhanced by the exposed plumbing underneath. We were also blessed with yellowish linoleum flooring and again floor to ceiling wallpaper which was blue with pink flowers. When I decided that I would start to tackle this bathroom, I thought to myself, "I wonder how hard it is going to be to take down that wallpaper." So, as I was thinking this, I snuk to the bathroom, and grabbed a piece and yanked it. The entire piece came off in one pull, and I had the bathroom wallpaper free in 30 minutes. That really got me rolling, and this is the final product.
We got rid of all the pink, and replaced the toilet and added a black vanity with white marble top and brushed nickel accents. We added porcelain tile floors and painted the walls. We added a new vanity light fixture, but by compromise only did the large mirror stay. I am thinking about framing it out with a ledge like a window, painted out black. I love it. It feels spa-like, yet it could be changed with a new shower curtain and accents to be a kid's bathroom, which it is getting closer to being since I am so close to having the house the way I want it. :)

Sorry no tub shots yet, we still have to put back the fixtures. :)

MSU Cake

Last month was my little cousins birthday, and he and his family are huge I mean obsessively huge MS STATE fans. It is a rare site not to see them wearing their maroon and white, and in most cases the whole family shows up to family events in their STATE gear. So, when my cousin asked me to do a cake for her oldest son's birthday, it was obvious we were going in the bulldog direction with it. When trying to thing of what I could do that wasn't sport specific and not just the words MSU on the cake, I was reminded of the headache I received the one time I made the mistake of going to the EGG Bowl in Starkville. YIKES, cow bells are awful, especially when you are for the apposing team. A cowbell to me describes this kid to me in every way, the true State fan that he is, the in your face kind of fan. Not that we don't' agg him on sometimes. :) So for all the aggravating we have done to him in the past, I felt I should do his cake justice and not plaster the Rebel in the middle of the cake with a big HOTTY TODDY! So here is what I came up with.

The cowbell was constructed using store bought rice krispie treats molded together.



All the rest of the decorations are made of rolled fondant. And just FYI making maroon fondant is a timely process and a work out for your arms. I used burgundy gel color.



Thanks to Jenny who assisted me on icing and rolling fondant on the cake. That part scared me because of all the nightmares that happen on Ultimate Cake Off. It wasn't too bad in the end.

Kitchen Remodel

I haven't been posting much this year because I have been swamped with work. Work work, house work, second job work, church work, and trying to make time for me time. The going going going is really weighing on my energy these days. I reached 36 pounds lost, but have been staying at that for the past couple of weeks because I have no energy. Back to the work discussion. We really have been working to get our house the way I want it, so that when a kid comes along, we won't be stuck where we are with the house. So I am ready to start revealing our home improvements. We have worked in both the master and guest baths, updated furniture and curtains in the living room, and revamped our kitchen. I am going to start today showing you our kitchen remodel.

If you will recall our outdated kitchen complete with old off white appliances, sheet linoleum flooring, and floor to ceiling stripped wallpaper.


We thought about removing the wallpaper, but unfortunately, well fortunately for the amount of work that lessened, there was a couple of layers of wallpaper on top of paneling that was spackled smooth. So we found a solution to painting over wallpaper, prime twice, sand seems, paint. Once we had our new appliances, we first tackled the floor, well my husband did. Then we painted out the cabinets, painted the walls, and nailed up bead board for the back splash, the cheapest easiest to install solution I found. So without anymore delay....


.....I present........




.... our new kitchen....





Complete with my favorite color GREEN, walls, black cabinets, bead board back splash, freshly tiled ceramic floors, and brand new stainless steel appliances. Our countertops look more in style now with the black contrast. I even watched a show on HGTV the other day that said that these type countertops were back in style. My budget and design are happy. :)
Shall I reveal our living area, our master bath, or our guest bath next week? Hmm... I have a decision to make.

Valentine's 2010

It is hard to believe that 5 years ago Sunday, my husband proposed to me and I accepted! He got rid of my three roommates from my apartment, went and got us a steak dinner, (he had planned on cooking, but got carried away buying table stuff that he didn't have time) set the table with a white table cloth (aka a white sheet, and it ended up being a fitted sheet, my poor baby tried), he lite the candles, and had dinner on the table when I got home from work. I got to my apartment to a beautiful setting, but I was in my old ugly Kroger shirt and jeans, not what I wanted to be proposed in. I changed into a sweater, and we sat down to eat. Before we could finish eating, he reached in his pocket and declared, "I can't take it any longer." He got down on his knee and asked THE QUESTION. The ring was and is beautiful, we did go ring shopping together, but he picked this one out before it even caught my eye. We looked at many smaller ones while shopping, but he went all out and got the bigger one. It will always remind me of where we came from, and where we are now. He had to finance that ring then, and he was living pay check to pay check. Now we have only a few monthly bills. I am so happy we have had each other for the past 7 years and 8 months, even though we were in separate towns for most of our engaged/dating life. Two years married this past December! Dustin I love you!

So today is the Valentine's Work Day and my husband suprised me with Flowers. He is so thoughtful like that. Funny thing is I may have gotten flowers before we were married once, but now that we are married and I have a day job, I get flowers every Valentine's and Anniversary. He must be making up for all those years of flower neglect. Just Kidding. Thanks Dustin, they are beautiful!


Also, God surprised me with a nice Valentine's surprise! SNOW!!! I know I know, it isn't much, and we didn't get a snow day from work, but I liked being able to see snow on the trees and ground on my drive to work. It is all gone now of course, but I got to see some snow. Everyone in north and south MS gets snow, but we have been missed everytime. Till now.

Hope everyone has a great Valentine's weekend!!

Christmas Surprise!

So I got my husband big time this Christmas. He thought all he was getting was a buddy heater for the deer stand, but when he got the email from priceline telling him he had spent "WHAT!?!", he knew he was in for it. I did on the other hand talk him down and made him think he wasn't getting anything else. That is until he got to opening his second gift from me, and was on the 4th box in before he thought, maybe she got me a trip to the mountains. THE MOUNTAINS? Heck no. I wouldn't go do that, I went for more! So what do you ask did I get him! Well read below to see how it played out!








HOTTY TODDY!!!!