Nihao, Cupcake!

Celebrating Pi Day with Some Cupcakes

Happy Pi Day! For those of you that don't know what Pi Day is, it seems to be a relatively new phenomenon (at least in our part of the world) in our schools to take some time to celebrate & have fun with MATH! As most of us hopefully know, Pi=3.14. Today is March (3rd month) 14th, thus 3.14, thus Pi Day.

Our elementary school celebrated with fun math games and activities in the cafeteria. Students who are trying hard and/or know what Pi equals receive raffle tickets, raffle tickets are used to enter the raffle to win pies donated by the parents.

In middle school, the math class had a Pi Day party. Children could bring in circular treats that they woule measure before consuming.

These cupcakes were our contribution.

My Cake Design Process: Lego Ninjago Mini-Fig Cake Tutorial [Part 2]

Welcome back for Part 2 of my cake design process, specifically this Lego Ninjago Mini-Fig cake crafted especially for my son's 8th Birthday. (To see the Part 1 of this tutorial, go here.)

Yesterday, we left off at this photo - the head and torso frosted.

To add more realistic dimension to the mini figs feet, I cut two rectangular pieces to place on the end of the legs to create his "feet."

I frosted those just like I would were they pieces of cake. No crumbing!

NOTE: I added a small disc of rice krispy treat to "C" shape hands as the mini fig's wrist.

To frost the hands, I softened some premade dark chocolate frosting (my prefered brand is Duncan Hines) a few seconds in the microwave in a glass measuring cup until it was the thickness of heavy cream. I skewered the mini fig hands (see photo above with rice krispy treat "C" shape) with a wooden skewer and immersed them in the melted frosting until they were fully covered.

As you can see in the photo above, I left them to set on a metal cooling rack over a piece of waxed paper.

For the ninja mask, I wanted something that would look somewhat like fabric. Until this cake, I had never used anything else besides cake & frosting to decorate my cakes & cupcakes, but after 13+ years of practice, I thought it was time to EXPERIMENT (one of my intentions for this year) & get adventurous. 

And as I mentioned before, our family is not a big fan of Marzipan or Fondant, so I decided I would try candy clay (which I am guessing might be molding chocolate though I am not entirely certain). I first saw it in the book Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My! by my favorite creative cake & cupcake decorating authors, Karen Tack & Alan Richardson of Hello, Cupcake! & What's New, Cupcake? fame. Check out their blog at blog.hellocupcakebook.com.

They have never let me down before (I am a huge fan of all of their books), so I knew I couldn't go wrong, but I was nervous nonetheless.

They did not disappoint! Making the clay was SOOOOO easy. And I loved working with it. It was as simple as melting some white chocolate (or melting chocolate) & blending it with corn syrup! After letting it sit for a few hours, you knead in some food coloring and you have yourself some very easy to work with edible clay!

Meanwhile as my clay was sitting for a few hours at room temperature, I continued the decorating process.

I frosted my rice crispy treat arms and placed them next to Ninjago Mini-fits torso.

To transfer my decorations from the template (again excuse the butter marks!), I cut along the detail lines and use my sharp wooden skewer to draw the decorations into the frosting. This has to be done very carefully so when the template is removed, it doesn't stick to the frosting and ruin your frosting job. 

Next I take my dark brown frosting, put it in a Ziploc freezer bag with one corner snipped off and add the detailing.

 

More detailing...

Additional detailing and fruit roll ups cut into thin strips as a belt with more frosting details for belt buckles.

And more metalic gold decorator sugar to edge the Ninjago Mini-fig's robe.

When the candy clay was ready to work with, I formed some of it into a ball and then sandwiched it between two pieces of waxed paper and rolled it thin with a rolling pin.

I used the face/helmet template to give me an idea of how to shape the mask scarf. Hopefully, you can tell which part of the template I used as my guide. I wanted to add in some folds but I was too nervous not knowing what to expect from the maleability of the candy clay.

To add a little depth, I put some small pieces of left over rice crispy treat undernead. If I were to do this again, I would give myself some slack and try to add in some folds. As I mentioned earlier, the candy clay was extremely easy to work with.

 

I used the same Ziplock bag of dark chocolate frosting to outline the helmet decoration as well as the eye space in the helmet. The eyes are brown mini M&Ms with dots of yellow frosting for pupils. The eyebrows are more dark chocolate frosting.

Next I added the hands & wrists by pressing them into the arms.

Then I added more detailing with yellow gold frosting also using a Ziploc freezer bag with a hole snipped from the corner.

Some close up detail shots.

And our Ninjago Mini-fig is complete!

Please let me know if you have any questions. Do not hesitate to leave a question in the comments or email me. I'm happy to clarify any details or explain my process in further detail.

And if you attempt this cake or any variation (or just use my cake design process for a completely different design), please let me know! I would love to see it and share it on my blog.

Soon I will be sharing my best tips & tricks for baking and decorating cakes & cupcakes. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I will do my best to respond in that post.

Thanks for stopping by! To see all of my Decorative Cakes & Cupcakes shared on my blog, please click here.

Check out My Creative & Fun Cake & Cupcake Ideas PINTEREST board here.

My best recomendation to get started on cupcake decorating (and for some very cute ideas) are these three great books, all by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson. Look for the easy ones and start with those. The instructions are fantastic - don't skim over all the wonderful information as it will really help!

 

My Cake Design Process Tutorial: Lego Ninjago Mini-Fig Cake [Part 1]

24 PROJECTS in 12 MONTHS #2

I present to you as my 2nd Project for 2013, not only this Lego Ninjago Mini Fig cake but the 2 part tutorial as well!

Go here to read about this year long goal and go here to see Project 1.

I am not a professional cake decorator! I have been making cakes & cupcakes for my own family, friends & school events over the past 14 years. And today I am sharing my process for designing cakes.

I have loved cake decorating almost as long as I can remember. I think it started in elementary school. Our school, Parkway Elementary, had an annual carnival. One of the big activities was the cake walk. My mom made a dog cake every year. She followed the directions from this page in this cookbook.

I have a clear memory of the template that was spelled out on the page. That shaped cake was magical to me. 

I think my mom may have made the sailboat cake too. I remember walking the cakes over to the cake walk station as soon as we arrived at the carnival to drop them off as our donation. I always hoped my particpation in the game would win me one of the amazing cakes on display.

In middle school I entered a 3D Pac Man cake in a cake decorating contest and won most humorous. It was a given then that I would start making wonderful, amazing creative cakes like these as soon as I had children. I could hardly wait. In preparation I purchased two booklets from a catalog, one on making and decorating cakes and the other on making and deocrationg cupcakes. They were published by CURRENT who also sold decorative checks.

I kept them tucked away in a safe place until the occasion of my first born child's first birthday party. One of his favorite books was Teddy Bear's Picnic, so that decided the theme. And one of my cake books had the prefect teddy bear cake.

And now every birthday since, I have made a cake to match the birthday theme. As my kids have gotten old enough, we have decided on a theme and cake design together. Unfortunately, as my kids have reached middle school, they are no longer interested in my special designs. They just care if it is the right flavor and more recently, that it is an ice cream cake. Sometimes they even want to decorate it themselves! 

As much as I miss the whole design process, I also don't mind. The best part is working together with my kids and giving them what they want for their special day.

Luckily I still have one child who is more than happy to have a themed birthday party complete with matching cake. He's in second grade and a bit Lego fan, so a Ninjago Cake was his cake of choice!

DESIGNING THE CAKE

First order of business is deciding on the cake design. After searching the internet and much discussion, we decided on a Lego Ninjago Mini Fig cake as opposed to just a head. The head would have been very simple. There were a lot of very cute, very easy designs out there. 

The mini fig idea was more complicated. I searched and searched but the only decent mini-fig cake out there was made from the Lego mold. The only problem was, not only was the mold no longer available from Lego any longer, but the ones on the market were $45 each and up! That was too pricey for a one time venture, so I needed to find an alternate plan.

Again, I searched and searched, to no avail. Finally, I realized I would have to design one myself. And this is how I did it... 

THE TEMPLATE

I always come up with some kind of template first. This was going to be a shaped cake (as opposed to a rectangular cake or circle cake with an image drawn on top), so I first needed to figure out the size my cake needed to be. 

I took apart a grocery bag (reuse!)and traced the perimieter of the pans I wanted to use - one 8x8 cake pan and one 11x13 cake pan.

I then folded it in half two times both horizontally & vertically so I would know exactly where my centers were.

Then I estimated perspectives, by rough measuring of my mini fig model (as seen in the photo above). After I determined the basic shape, I sketched out his details on the template pattern.

In retrospect, I wish I would have done more exact measuring (i.e., of the mini fig itself), so that the cake's perspective would have turned out more life like. I think it turned out too short & squat looking.

In the past I have also used the graph technique to transfer a smaller image I drew or traced onto my cake template. Here is an article I found explaining exactly what I mean. Of course if you are starting with a 2 dimensional image, you can scan it and enlarge it on your computer, using your printer or your copy machine.

My son wanted the details from this red Ninjago mini-fig on a green cake.

Here is the face/head of the Ninjago character. Next I cut around the outside outline of my templates. 

Please excuse the ever increasing fat stains on my template. It is just part of the cake decorating process. Going behind the scenes is not always beautiful!

I place the template atop the cake (turned upside down out of the pan). As you might be able to see on the rectangular cake, my pan has very rounded corners. It works much better if your corners are much more square than mine. That is something that must be compensated using frosting or some cake size is lost.

The next step is using a serrated knife to cut around the template to shape the cake(s). You can try first freezing the cake to reduce crumbs when cutting.

For this cake, I wanted to add a bit more dimension so that the mini figure would look a bit more realistic. I wanted the arms to be cylindrical rather than just flat rectangles. Worried that they would be difficult to frost and would crumb when frosted, I decided to use rice krispy treats instead of cake as my base.

I first saw this technique on one of those cake decorating reality shows a few years ago. In the little bit of research I did I found out that some people prefer it to marzipan because it is edible and enjoyable to eat. Our family does not like marzipan. I do not like the taste and we jokingly consider it "cheating." So, rice krispy treats was the perfect solution for us.

 

I discovered that to keep the rice krispies firm and compact, it helps to use something to pound the treats together (wait 15 or 20 minutes after the treats have started to firm up, too soon after cooking and the treats are too soft and hot to work with). I used a lightweight aluminium meat tenderizer (pictured above). It also helped to butter my hands, cover my work space (cookie sheet) with waxed paper coated with butter.

This picture above shows the arms (long cylinders) and one of the "C-shaped" hands. The other circle is the other hand before cutting out the middle. I used a sharp paring knife to cut out the middle of the hands.

Next I began assembling the Lego Ninjago mini fig. After frosting the head, I took the head template, cut out the eye hole and placed it lightly over the green frosted head. I used a sharp wooden shishkabob skewer to trace around they eye opening. I did the same for the decoration above the eye hole.

I scraped out most of the green frosting from the eye space (but not the helmet decoration) and filled it with yellow frosting. I filled the helmet decoration with yellow frosting and then filled that same space with gold metallic decorator sugar.

TIP: I used a small piece of stiff paper touched to the edge of the decoration edge to make sure the decorator sugar didn't go where I didn't want it. If any pieces of the gold sugar strayed, I picked it off with the sharp tip of the skewer. 

This post is getting long enough for one day, so for now I will stop here. Please come back tomorrow for Part 2 of this cake tutorial.

In the meantime, do not hesitate to leave a question in the comments or email me with one. I'm happy to clarify any details or explain my process in further detail.

Soon I will also be sharing my best tips & tricks for baking and decorating cakes & cupcakes. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I will do my best to respond.

Thanks for stopping by! To see all of my Decorative Cakes & Cupcakes shared on my blog, please click here.

Check out My Creative & Fun Cake & Cupcake Ideas PINTEREST board here.

My best recomendation to get started on cupcake decorating (and for some very cute ideas) are these three great books, all by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson. Look for the easy ones and start with those. The instructions are fantastic - don't skim over all the wonderful information as it will really help!

See you tomorrow for Part 2!!

Linking up here today for Wipperberry Flair Link Party.

Lego Ninjago Birthday Cake

I wanted to share the fruits of my hard labor from the last two days, this Lego Ninjago birthday cake for my youngest son's 8-Year-Old party. I searched high and low for a DIY how-to but I didn't find anything. I did find a mini-fig mold but the lowest price I could find wass $35 or $40 which isn't really worth it for a one time endeavor. So, I was on my own to design this one.

The perspective is a little off. Mr Ninjago is a little shorter & squater than he should be, but oh well. I think the frosting adds ten pounds, much like a camera! 

The birthday boy was happy and that is all that counts!

For a look at Part 1 of the in-depth process of how I designed and made this cake, go to this post. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow (3/9/2013).

Looking for a DIY Valentine idea for your Lego Ninjago fan? Click here to see what we are doing.

Click here to see the Lego Ninjago-inspired Birthday Party invitations we sent out.

DIY Ice Cream Cake (much easier than you think)!

Ice cream cake "frosted" with vanilla ice cream.

My sister-in-law just emailed me to ask me how to make an ice cream cake. After I was done writing her back, I realized I should share that information here. It's really quite simple and much easier than it sounds.

1) make sure your freezer is turned up high (do this several days in advance since it takes that long to get the temperature up there).

2) make your cake 24 - 48 hours ahead of time so it has time to freeze well (I've never done either of these first two things so my cakes melt quickly - in the top photo notice the red dots - they kept sliding down the side of the cake so they are all willy nilly).

3) Make your cakes (I'm assuming round layer?), freeze them (wrap in saran wrap so they don't dry out)

4) Get a half gallon (approx 500 ml) of ice cream & put it in an (ideally) chilled bowl. Soften it with your hand mixer until it is soft and the same consistency as icing (roughly). (If you are worried that a half gallon won't be enough, get a second half gallon just in case.)

Ice cream cake "frosted" with cookies & cream ice cream.

5) With a spatula frost the frozen cake layers the same as if you were frosting it with icing. If it starts to melt and become too runny, throw it all back in the freezer (but this usually doesn't happen).

6) Once your cake is "frosted", put it back in the freezer until it is firm (wait as long as possible). Remove to decorate with ordinary icing (i.e., write "Happy Birthday" or pipe fancy stuff around the edges).

TIP: Be careful, if you tint your icing with Wilton icing colors (or likely any other food coloring) and your "frosting" (aka: ice cream) begins to melt, the colors will run. Same goes for sprinkles. The longer you can keep the cake well frozen, the less running you will have. But not the end of the world. Get a good photo, and then who cares. The kids don't. They just want to eat it.

To see everything on my blog related to cakes/cupcakes, including lots of fun decorative cake/cupcake ideas, click here.

Soon I will be publishing a "how-to" post on making a Ninjago Mini fig cake using my own design. You can use the process I will demonstrate to make any kind of 2 dimensional personalized cake you can think of.

And if you have any questions, please let me know! ENJOY!

Three Years Ago Today... Life in Beijing

Grabbing lunch with Mom & Dad at a Vietnamese restaurant in The Place (it closed this past summer 2012 just before we moved home).

Paul has a Vietnamese coffee to finish off his lunch.

A scrapbook page I made this day - probably the reason I forgot to frost my cupcakes - see below.

Grabbing a bite at the new outlet mall down the street from the school before their performance.

I totally forgot to frost my cupcakes this day - brain lapse! So at the last minute I had to grab all of my supplies, throw them and my 5 year old in the taxi and frost them in the school's industrial kitchen. Thank goodness we had to be there more than an hour early.

My lair of tiger cupcakes for the bake sale. They are red because it was the year of the tiger and red is the color of celebration and the program was in celebration of Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival.

Children in the cafeteria waiting for their turn to be on stage.





I remember loving this performance. This was back when I loved the school and thought it was a wonderful way to introduce my kids to the Chinese culture. One year later, my feelings had changed 180 degrees!

What a difference THREE years can make!

Check back later today for my PROJECT LIFE: Week 3 post.

The Ultimate Cheesecake Recipe : Tyler Florence : Recipes : Food Network

via www.foodnetwork.com

I made this today except without the topping. I kept it "on the side" since not everyone in the family likes fruit on their cheesecake!

The lengths I go through to make sure everyone in this family is happy and eats! I hope they all get children as equally as difficult to feed as I did. Ha!

We're having it for dessert so I'll let you know how everyone liked it soon.

And did you see??

This was realeased today! I am saving up my pennies so I can buy it and start working it into my current PL album. 

Red Chinese New Year Dragon Cupcake Cake with Chocolate Pretzel Wings

My youngest son's birthday landed on Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) this year. And as you may know, it is the year of the dragon, so what cake is more fitting than a red (color of celebration) Chinese dragon cupcake cake for the occasion?

My middle son was born in the year of the dragon, so this is his year too! Quite a serendipitously special year for our family since we are living in China, to boot! And this is supposed to be the best year of the dragon as well as the best year of the 144 year cycle (12 cycles of 12 years). Not bad!! 

I'm especially proud of those chocolate pretzel wings that I came up with an hour before we had to leave the house to take the dragon to school. My original idea was a horrible failure, in fact, I knew as soon as I opened the package of the fruit tape that it wouldn't work, so I didn't even try. When in doubt, turn to melting chocolate - it is so easy and you can make anything you want. 

I drew the outline and bones of one wing, put the drawing under waxed paper, I traced the three bone areas with a thick line of chocolate and then placed the pretzel sticks down, Then I filled in the wings and coverd the handle pretzels with a lot of chocolate. Then I flipped the drawing over, traced it through to the other side, followed the same steps as above to make a new wing that was the mirror image of the first wing. Then I placed them in the refrigerator for around 30 minutes and they were done! I did have to saw off the ends with a serrated knife because the handles were too long to stick into a cupcake. But otherwise they worked perfectly! PHEW!

And here he is with the goodie bags he made for his class. (I'll post more details about these in a future post.) That is his drawing of a dragon dance complete with lanterns. THe back side says Happy New Year inside a latern surrounded by fire works. I did not coach him on these drawings but based on the amount of detail they include, there is no mistake he has spent half of his seven years in China!

There's nothing like making a cool dragon cupcake cake (special cakes made by mom are one of our family traditions) and putting together some homemade goodie bags to make a little one smile! It is all about the simple things, isn't it?

If you are interested in tips on how I made this cupcake cake, feel free to email me. 

To see my other cake & cupcake creations, click HERE.

I'm linking up at Simple Things Sunday today.

Art Journaling & Project Life {Weekly Photos [Nov 19 - 25]}

 

I am so excited that I have finally been able to make progress on my Project Life album so I am starting off with a photo of my completed page! My photos finally arrived. I hadn't inserted photos since mid-July. Now I am working on adding the journaling and the ephemera. That is the time consuming part.

 

I had fun with water colors on several of my journaling cards to highlight certain words. And as you can see above, I did some stamping and watercolors on the back side of a journaling card. It's all the influence of my art journaling. It is so much fun I don't want to stop playing.

 

 

Here's my DIY Date Card/Weekly Title Card. I cut a piece of patterned paper down to 4x6 (I used a 6x6 paper pad) and swiped a few coats of gesso on it to make a space for stamping the week's dates. I let the gesso dry between coats.

I bought Project Life in 2010 and never finished my album. I tried again this year using the same kit and half way through I decided there were a lot of the journaling cards that I didn't want to use because I didn't like the colors. 

I sorted through all my journaling cards and set aside all the ones I didn't want to use. The rest I divided into color families so I could use them all on one page to bring a sense of unity and flow to each two-page layout. WIth the remaining cards, I have been using the backside and adding my own personal touches to those. Nothing fancy.

I plan to use 

Project Life Core Kit - Amber Edition, the DIY date cards, & the Grid Journaling Cards to finish up my 2009 album & make my 2012 album. I may also buy the Clemntine Core Kit to mix it up a bit. Those two kits and some of my own personal touches using the Grid Journaling Cards, may even get me through 2013! We'll see.

But what I can't wait for are the Signature Black & White albums and the Amber album. I love that beautiful orange!

Before we get to the photos, here is what I bought on Black Friday (in addition to the Amber Core Kit:

Photo Pocket Pages - Big Pack of Design A (60 Pages)

Big Envelope Pages

 

6 x 12 Page Protectors

Not a Project Life/Becky Higgins brand product, but a totally great addition to a PL album. I can't wait to use these:

Photo Protector - 6 x 12 for 4x6 Photos - Horizontal 10 pk

Before black Friday, I had two boxes of these in my cart:

100 Journaling Cards - 3" x 4" with Grid Design

but they are now sold out! Hopefully, they will have them back in stock in time for me to get a couple extra boxes before I return to China. Fingers crossed! 

 

WEEK IN PHOTOS

Saturday, November 19

Braden wanted to make a scrapbook page after he saw me create this one, so I let him pick out a couple of photos, some supplies and go to town. It turned out great!

 

 

 

Sunday, November 20

We went to Ikea to find a coffee table once and for all. The only one we were interested in buying was sold out! They won't be back in stock until January so we still don't have one. Our Ikea tradition is ice cream cones after typically one+ hour of shopping. I pass, though, since I don't like vanilla ice cream. They are only one kuai each (approx 15 cents).

Monday, Nov 21, Tues, Nov 22 & Wed, Nov 23 - NO PHOTOS: it was a rough week and I was so focused on other things that I completely forgot! I will insert significant emails and maybe some news stories of the week. Paul was in Singapore.

 

Thursday, November 24

Nicholas talked us into going out for dinner on the "real" Thanksgiving even though it isn't a holiday in China. We found Grandma's Kitchen and walked there through the embassy area adjacent to our apartment building.

 

Photo #2

It was fun to go out. (The table next to us was full of people from Major League Baseball [MLB] working in Beijing.) The food was not so good, but the dessert (I had apple pie) was pretty good. Next year we'll try NOLA instead!

 

 

Friday, November 25

Nicholas' poster advertising the Upper Elementary Winter Concert was featured in November's Friday assembly.

 

Photo #2: The night before our big Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. I spent the day food shopping and baking pies and sweet potato casserole. The sweet potato casserole is the one thing non-Americans have never had yet think is delish! I need to double the recipe next time so we will actually have leftovers. Another guest had never had pumpkin pie and raved that it was delicious. Perhaps he is hinting at something... too bad they don't sell frozen crust over here or I'd think of making him one of his very own!

 

Now for a glimpse at my latest art journal pages. I hope to keep this up even after my class is over on Thursday. :(

 To See everything PROJECT LIFE on my blog, click here.

PROJECT LIFE INSPIRATION FOUND ON THE WEB

A beautiful album documented on a blog in Finland.

 

ART JOURNAL UPDATE

My internet is has been annoyingly slow on some days so it makes watching the videos for my class almost impossible to watch. What I usually do, is load the page, click play on the video, walk away and return a few hours later after the entire thing has played through once, then I replay it.

On really bad days, the internet is so slow that I lose all of my pages even the ones that alreay have videos ready to play. So, on those days, I skip watching videos. This happened alot last week so I've skipped over one of our two page spreads and moved on to the next assignment. I'll go back to it when class is over. I have a thing about 'keeping up with class.'

Besides, once I saw what we were going to be doing, I could hardly wait to get started. This totally reminds me of doodling I did as a kid. I'm not exactly sure at what age. The huge difference, though is the addition of water colors. I've never worked with water colors before. They make the doodles look sooooo cool! I love this! 

It couldn't be more fun.

 

It was so much fun that I forgot to write my journal entry for the day. I'll do that when I am done posting! Oops! 

 

Some details photos...

 

 

 

 

 

To see my ART JOURNAL posts, click here.

 

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to link me to your blog if you are posting completed Project Life layouts. Or give me your best Project Life tip. I'd love to hear.

Or do you art journal and blog about it? I want to stop by and see. Please link me to your blog so I can be inspired!

Hello, Cupcake! BLOG: Oh, My! Cupcakes look even better!

via blog.hellocupcakebook.com

The authors of my two favorite cupcake books (Hello, Cupcake! & What's New, Cupcake! are coming out with a new book. I couldn't be more excited. And this time the are expanding into cookies and pies.

 

Today is 11.11.11. I'm out taking photos for www.onedayonearth.org, are you? If not, why not sign up and join along? It is a really cool project. I'll be posting my photos sometime next week.

An American Favorite Made into A Cupcake

via www.hellocupcakebook.com

Some of my favorite emails I get are from the Hello, Cupcake! Newsletter by the authors of my two favorite cupcake books, Hello, Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake.

The authors come up with a new cupcake each month and send it to my inbox. Here is November's design: S'more cupcakes. Pretty cute and looks yummy. The next best thing to a campfire.

The Best Monster Cupcakes I Have Ever Made!

It was my son's birthday on Friday. One of our traditions is that I make a fun cake or cupcakes in the theme of the birthday child's choice. Nicholas insisted on these monster cupcakes. I had to alter them from the original version which used far too much frosting and have proven difficult too transport. I stayed up past his bedtime Thursday night decorating. He came into my room early Friday morning waking me up saying, "Mom, those are the BEST monster cupcakes you have ever made!" What could make a mom happier than that?! 

He repeated the same sentiment multiple times throughout the day and into Saturday. I'm so glad he appreciates my efforts. I do find it humorous that they are only the second monster cupcakes I have ever made, but I'll take an enthusiastic compliment like that whenever I can get one!

It's the SIMPLE THINGS like a heartfelt compliment from a newly eleven year old boy that warms my heart and makes me smile!

Here is Nicholas with the 18 friends he invited to his birthday party at school.

And this is the cupcake cake I made for his birthday party on Saturday! He told me he specifically chose this design because he thought it would be easy for me to do and he knew I had been working hard on the last minute (less than 2 days, but that is a story for another blog post) party. He has his moments, but most of the time I couldn't ask for a sweeter, more thoughtful son!

Happy Birthday!

To see anything about FUN CAKES & CUPCAKES on my blog, click here.

{A Menagerie of Halloween Cupcakes}

Back to cupcakes. My children's school had International Day on Friday. Since Halloween is an American holiday, I thought what better cupcakes to make than a menagerie of Halloween cupcakes! Originally the plan was to make an American flag-esque cupcake cake, but at the last minute I talked my son into these cuties. I get bored easily and would rather make five different types of designs rather than one big design.

I think these are all new designs for us. Many of them are all over the internet but we've never made them before. These were all easy to make and of course are really cute!

I love the little details. Just adding eight little legs on to this mini M&M gives this cupcake a personality.

This Peeking Monster Cupcake is so easy and so cute! He is good for those cupcakes that don't come all the way up to the top of the cupcake liner. Fill that space with frosting and push in as many candy corn as can fit, add two Necco wafers for eyes and with a dab of vanilla icing stick on two mini M&Ms and add pupils with chocolate frosting. Couldn't be easier or cuter!

 

Another super easy and cute cupcake. The teeth are Tic Tacs and the eyes are mini M&Ms. Super easy!

 

These spider cupcakes are a little tricker but with a few tips, they are easy too. To add the black licorice legs, I took a 'naked cupcake' and with a toothpick, poked four holes in each side of the cupcake. With a simple toothpick hole, the licorice laces slid right in. I then frosted the cupcake with chocolate icing, dipped them in chocolate jimmies (sprinkles) and then added red mini M&Ms for eyes. So cute and easy too. No special talent needed!

 

I only had a few cupcakes left to decorate. I was tired of decorating mummies, green monsters and spiders, so I started dotting a cupcake with white spots, added some mini M&Ms and thought they looked kind of like eyes, so added the pupils and ended up with a alien-esque multi-eyed cupcake. Or it could just be colorfully decorated!

 

This one looks even more like eyeballs and it is even easier. It is just white dots of icing topped with a dot of chocolate. A little bit cute and a little bit creepy.

 

Another fun batch of cupcakes made! I'll be doing the same thing next week because it is my son's birthday and I'll be bringing cupcakes for his class. He wants me to make monster cupcakes that look furry and have big bulbous eyeballs (lollipops with gummy candy rings around them) - tune in same time next week to see how those turn out!

This is the 28th post in a 31 Day series: Creative Inspiration. Check out all the posts here.

To see anything about FUN CAKES & CUPCAKES on my blog, click here.

Even more Halloween cupcake ideas in my photostream on Flickr.com.

31 DAYS of INSPIRATION: Day 23 {Halloween Cupcakes}

via www.marthastewart.com

This is the 23rd post in a 31 Day series: Creative Inspiration. Check out all the posts here.

These adorable bats are found at MarthaStewart.com.

And more cute and easy Halloween Cupcake ideas from MarthaStewart.com:

via www.marthastewart.com

 

Here is a list of 25 ideas for Halloween themed cupcakes at partycupcakeideas.com (UPDATED: dead link so has been removed).

via partycupcakeideas.com

 

via 3.bp.blogspot.com

These spider cupcakes are super cute and couldnt' be easier. Just remember to give your spider eight legs or your cupcakes will be mere insects!

 

These are the cutest Eyeball Cupcakes I've seen in a long time. I like the added dimension of the donut holes. If you don't want to get this complicated, you can just use candy and frosting and skip the donut holes. I found thme at BHG.com where they have a ton of other very cute Halloween cupcake ideas.

 

Here are a bunch of cupcakes I made a couple of years ago for Halloween. There are three-eyed aliens with pretzel stick antennae cupcakes, chocolate & candy bug cupcakes, blood shot eyeball cupcakes, chocolate black cat cupcakes, white chocolate ghost & skull cupcakes, jack-o-lantern faces made from chocolate and chocolate bat cupcakes. These are all quite simple to make with ordinary ingredients and candy.

For ideas on how to make the toppers made from chocolate, go to this post on making chocolate toppers for cupcakes.

 

via vernellc.typepad.com

I love these gravestones from Vernell's blog: Ole Talk. What a cute idea - effective, yet simple. She also has a link to a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes - yum!

I have to make some American-style cupcakes for Friday's International Day and then Monster birthday cupcakes the week after. Any good ideas?

To see anything about FUN CAKES & CUPCAKES on my blog, click here.

 And to find out what Halloween cupcakes I ended up making this year for Halloween 2011, click here.

 

Even more Halloween cupcake ideas in my photostream on Flickr.com.

31 DAYS of CREATIVE INSPIRATION:: Day 17 {More Cupcakes}

This is the 17th post in a 31 Day series: Creative Inspiration. Check out all the posts here.

These are some more cupcakes that I designed all on my own. I LOVE snowflakes. Every winter, I re-learn how to make really cool paper snowflakes and paste them all over my living room window. I am always trying to figure out how to make yet another interesting snowflake shape so I am always paying attention to different types of snowflakes.

All this time making paper snowflakes led to my idea for these cupcakes. All I did was draw these basic snowflake shapes on a piece of paper and place a piece of wax paper over it. I melted some white chocolate chips, placed them in a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off and then traced over my pencil drawings. 

When finished making all of the snowflakes, I placed them in the refrigerator to harden. Frosted each cupcake with blue icing, dipped them each in blue decorator sugar making sure each cupcake was fully covered and when the snowflakes were finished hardening, I topped each cupcake with one to three snowflakes. Aren't they pretty? You could even add decorative pearls at the ends of each snowflake line. OR you could add decorator sugar to the snowflakes before placing them in the refrigerator to dry. 

So many possibilities.

If you want more detailed instructions on how to make similar chocolate toppers for your cupcakes, check out my guest blog post from a few months ago on Vernell's blog. I shared my tips for making chocolate designs to decorate cupcakes. Please go over & check it out!

To see anything about FUN CAKES & CUPCAKES on my blog, click here.

Tomorrow we will play around with some paper folding fun that can be used on your scrapbook pages.

Adorable Halloween Cupcake Idea - AllYou.com

via www.allyou.com

Look what I found! How cute are these Halloween Cupcakes?! They are cute enough for other occasions too. What about a picnic, summertime birthday party (think boys, bugs, dirt, magnifying glasses and butterfly nets, maybe even a bug house) or a bake sale at school? Just change up the colored sugar and the icing and make them match the theme of your occasion. Maybe yellows & reds or what about blue and orange. Just a few little changes and these can be very versatile cupcake designs.

For all things CUPCAKE on this blog, click here.

 And to find out what Halloween cupcakes I ended up making this year for Halloween 2011, click here.

Even more Halloween cupcake ideas in my photostream on Flickr.com.

31 Days of Creative Inspiration: Day 1 {Design Your Own Cupcake}

Welcome to my blog! I'm so glad you've decided to join me for:

Day 1 of 31 Days of Creative Inspiration.

As I explained in this post, during the next 31 Days, I plan to inspire you with photography (specifically 'everyday photojournalism' & travel), cake and cupcake decorating, crafts, favorite recipes and personal stories all meant to inspire you!

Feel free to grab the code for my blog button over there on the right side of my blog.

 

Day 1 is all about

{Creating Your Own Cupcake Design}. 

*I hope by sharing with you my process of making my own cupcake design, you will be inspired to try your own.*

I often decorate cakes and cupcakes. But I usually get my ideas from books or online. 

A few weeks ago, however, I came up with a design of my very own. I needed cupcakes to send with my husband to his office for the Moon Festival. There is a legend about a rabbit who ends up in the moon. I wanted to create 'Rabbit in the Moon' cupcakes, so I searched for a rabbit I could make out of simple shapes.

For me the key is KEEPING IT SIMPLE.

This is the sketch that I made, using mainly circles.

The next step was making the moon to place the rabbit inside.

I frosted each cupcake with white frosting and then placed a circle cookie cutter, a little smaller than the top of the cupcake right on top of the cupcake to use as a stencil.

 

I sprinkled yellow sugar sprinkles directly inside and even flipped the cupcake upside down to get rid of the extra ones. The circle cooking cutter miraculously stayed in place. What could be simpler?

After much practice trying to reproduce a perfectly proportionate bunny body using frosting, I discovered a few things to make it come out right.

Start with the ears first. Since this is a picture of the back of the bunny, the ears would be furthest away and therefore on the 'bottom' of the picture.

Next would be the head.

To get perfect circles and a bunny that looks properly in proportion, I like to use stencils or guides when possible. I found that the frosting coupler from one of the many sets I have was perfect to mark my bunny head and body.

The coupler I had was made up of two perfectly sized circles. The smaller circle, I used as the stencil for the head. After I stamped that circle and filled it in with frosting, I flipped the coupler and used the larger circle as the stencil (or stamp) for the body.

I used just a couple of light marks in the sugar crystals as my guide to make the perfect circles. When I tried it without the guides, my circles were more like ovals and didn't have the right proportions for good looking bunny bodies. I'm just not that precise on my own. But there's no shame in that, is there?

And the final touch was an upside down white chocolate chip for the tail. I put it right on the little pointy thing that comes when the frosting bag is moved away. Bunnies don't have pointy things on their backs, but they do have white chocolate tails! 

The best part of the white chocolate chips is that it adds dimension.

Now I created these cupcakes for the Moon Festival here in China (click here to see what other things we did to celebrate the moon festival), but there is no reason you couldn't use these for Easter or any other spring celebration. Don't be afraid to change the color of the moon and make it an Easter egg or just a cheerful circular background. (More spring and Easter cupcake ideas here.)

For all things CUPCAKE on this blog, click here.

Hopefully, you have seen how SIMPLE it can be to come up with your own cupcake decoration with a little thought and experimentation. Let me know if you decide to create your own design or even if you replicate this one, I'd love to see how they turn out!

Thanks for stopping by on Day 1 of 31 Days of Creative Inspiration. Tomorrow will be all about story telling.

Mid Autumn Festival in Beijing: 10 Favorite Memories on the 10th

Right now in China the mid-Autumn Festival is in full swing. In fact, Monday is a holiday the kids will be home from school and my husband will be home from work. It is a traditional Chinese holiday but only in the last couple of years has the country started acknowledging it again.

It is an important family holiday and a symbol of the festival is the Moon. In fact, it is often called the Moon Festival. If families can't be together and they are feeling homesick, they look at the moon and know that no matter where in the world their loved one is, they are also looking at the same moon.

There is a legend that is associated with the holiday that ends with a rabbit going up to the moon and grinding medicine. The Chinese believe if you look up at the moon, you can see the outline of the rabbit. Look up at the full moon, the next time you are outside in the dark and see if you can see it.

It is customary to give friends and loved ones Mooncakes during this holiday time.

We have been taking full advantage of living here and have done as much as we can to learn about the festival.

Here are our top ten memories in photos of the holiday so far:

1) My son and I went to a mooncake making class and the chef who showed us what to do, made this rabbit out of mooncake dough just for my son.

2) Here are some mooncakes that my son made at our class. Two are filled with sweet red beans and two are filled with date paste. There are many types of mooncakes. Most that we see have a pastry like outside that is brown in color. These are made from a glutinous rice flour and usually baked. However, since we did not have an oven in our classroom, we steamed them. They were fun to make and looked pretty but the steaming made the outside a little hard and difficult to chew and swallow.

 

3) Moon Festival Rabbit Cupcakes - my husband wanted to give his staff a gift for the festival. But since they already receive so many mooncakes (kind of like our tradition of fruitcake in the States), he wanted to do something different. We knew the legend of the medicine grinding rabbit, so I came up with this cupcake design instead of mooncakes. It is supposed to be a rabbit inside a full moon. I'm not sure it is all that easy to tell but they are pretty cute anyway!

 

4) At school, the kids celebrated Chinese Culture Day with their Chinese class with a Mid Autumn Festival themed activity hour. Each child was able to choose a lantern. Lantern are used to decorate for every traditional Chinese holiday.

5) Painting a greeting on his Mid Autumn Festival Lantern

6) The artists show off their lanterns.

7) First grade gets to paint on a lantern too.

8) Proud of his Mid Autumn Festival Lantern!

9) Using a modern press to make an old fashioned mooncake.

10) Braden's mooncake came out perfectly. So fun!

If you are interested in learning even more about this holiday, check out this link, it looks like it is full of great information.

I'm linking up at Shimelle.com for the 10 on 10 monthly fun! Thanks for stopping by.

Vernell's Frosting Recipe for Cupcakes

On Saturday of this week, Vernell of Ole Talk was my guest blogger. We had many requests for her frosting recipe that she uses on her cupcakes. It sounds delicious! I've made a lot of frosting from scratch but I have never used marshmallow fluff. I can't wait to try it:

 

1 cup butter

2 cups icing sugar

1 cup marshmallow fluff

vanilla essence

milk (optional - add a little milk if the frosting is too thick)

Whisk butter until light and fluffy. Mix in icing sugar, then add the essence and marshmallow fluff and whisk until light and fluffy. This is my base recipe and I usually just add different extracts or spices to this for variety. For example I have added cinnamon and nutmeg to make a spice frosting, a couple tablespoons of Baileys Irish to make frosting for Irish cupcakes and say you wanted to make peanut butter frosting you would use 1/2 cup marshmallow fluff and 1/2 cup peanut butter. I should also note that I usually just wing it when it comes to frosting so adjust as needed.

If you give it a try, please let us know how it turned out.

I'm guest blogging today -- chocolate toppers for cupcakes...

Today is the day that I am a guest over at Vernell's blog. I am sharing my tips for making chocolate designs to decorate cupcakes. Please go over & check it out!

I'm so excited!

Still the same after all these years

 

 

This photo makes me smile for more than one reason. First of all, it is so Reece - if there is nothing else consuming him at the moment, he is reading. I love that this custom made Bionicle is joining him on his bed. He is almost 13 but still loves Legos as much as he did at 3 when he first discovered them. This morning he had dug out our Bionicle encyclopedia and he was pouring over it and searching for just the right pieces to come up with his very own personalized Bionicle. I'm holding on to these moments of boyhood while they last.

 

GUEST BLOGGER & GUEST BLOGGING

Thank you everyone who stopped by yesterday to read the tips from my lovely guest blogger, Vernell. I loved her tips and will be ready to go the next time I bake some CUPCAKES.

We had a few requests for her icing recipe so I will be posting that very soon. She sent it to me but I am having some odd email problems (possibly related to government internet blocking?) and when I get them fixed, the recipe will be up!

Don't forget to pop over to Vernell's blog on Monday when I will be guest posting on her blog and sharing my tips for making cupcake topper designs from chocolate!

Similar to these - but the ones I made for her blog are a bit more sophisticated:

To see everything CUPCAKE related on this blog, click here.

Baking Tips for Cupcakes by Vernell

Hello, blog readers! Today is a special day because I am welcoming my very first guest blogger. Her name is Vernell and she is not only a talented blogger, but a lover of delicious cupcakes that she makes from scratch.

Through all of her baking experience, she has acquired some great tips along the way she is generously sharing with us today:

 

I was delighted when Margie asked me to be a guest blogger on her blog.  As you can see we both share a love for cupcakes and really do complement each other as she loves to spend time decorating her cupcakes while I tend to focus more on trying new recipes and sticking with the basic piped frosting as decoration.

When Margie first asked me to do this post I was not sure what angle to approach it from.  The ideas I had were sharing some tips or blogging my process from recipe to completed cupcake.  I was leaning more towards the latter as I did not think that I had that many tips to share…but boy was I wrong.  As I made my last batch of cupcakes I realized just how many things I have picked up in the couple of years since the cupcake bug bit me.  So today I will share with you tips that I have learnt from my adventures in cupcake land.  Some of these may seem pretty obvious but chances are that if they are on this list that I learnt them the hard way.

**If the recipe calls for two or more sticks of unsalted butter, assuming you are using sticks that is, I use a mix of unsalted butter and margarine and then I just reduce the amount of salt I add by a bit.  This is more of a cost saving tip as unsalted butter costs way more than the margarine.

**If using a mixture and it has different attachments use the flat attachment to mix the cupcakes and the whisk like attachment for the frosting.  The whisk attachment makes the frosting that much more fluffy and light.

**Always crack eggs into a bowl individually before adding them to cupcake mixture.  Trust me on that one!

**Most recipes say that you should turn the oven on to heat and then combine the dry ingredients and then cream your butter and sugar.  I always put my butter and sugar to cream first and while I am waiting for it to get nice and light and fluffy I combine my dry ingredients.  I don’t turn the oven on until I am scooping the mixture into the cupcake liners.  Trust me the oven does not take that long to heat up.

**Always make sure your mixer, if you are using one, is at the lowest setting before adding the dry ingredients unless you want to be cleaning flour from places you did not know that flour could settle.  Same thing goes for adding icing sugar.

**Double up on cupcake liners if you want the pretty patterns of the liner to really show up after the cupcakes are baked.

**I always used to wonder how people got their frosting to look so full and fluffy on the cupcakes and not just flat until I learnt that I was using the wrong type of frosting for my cupcakes.  I am also an avid cookie baker at Christmas time and I was using the same royal type icing for my cupcakes when I first started making them until I realized that I should be using butter cream frosting to get those beautifully frosted cupcakes.

**If frosting is too stiff add some milk a little at a time until you achieve the right consistency.

**Double up on your icing bags as this makes it easier if you have to change colors or flavors if you want to use the same tip.  It also makes it less messy for clean up.  Also don’t fill them to the top unless you want icing coming out the top while you frost your cupcakes.

**Use a coupler if possible –makes it easier to change icing tips.

**Don’t go buying those fancy icing bag ties I just use a bag clip and it works like a charm.  I got mine at Ikea.

**When frosting, set cupcakes on a surface that is lower than counter top high – like a dining room table – makes it a lot easier to swirl that frosting on.

Well I hope that these tips have been useful and if you have any questions just leave a comment, as I will be checking back throughout the day.

Now go bake some cupcakes!

 

EDITED: Vernell's frosting recipe is now posted here.

 

Thanks, Vernell. Those were some very helpful tips. Now for some more cupcake goodness (and other crafty things), check out Vernell's blog.  (Rumor has it, she has a special announcement on her blog today! Go check it out.)

 

To see everything CUPCAKE related on this blog, click here.

Thursday at the Blog: Big Announcement, LOAD Day 18 & 19 & Embrace the Camera

So finally, the day has come when I announce my fabulous guest blogger.

Her name is Vernell and as I mentioned yesterday, she has a lovely blog and makes delicious cupcakes. On Saturday she will be sharing with us a whole bunch of cupcake making tips, but in the meantime, head over to her blog for lots of cupcake goodness, and other crafty things. But don't forget to come back here on Saturday for those great tips.

 

LOAD Day 19

 

LOAD Day 18

 

To see everything related to LOAD on my blog click here!

EMBRACE THE CAMERA

IIt's a terrible photo this week, but my husband is trying to take more photos of me. He just needs to figure out how to use the focus point and to stay still when he takes the picture. He'll get there eventually. To his credit he is trying to follow my instructions by getting more pictures of me interacting naturally with the kids. Maybe we'll get some better ones this weekend.

I do like that I am walking with my arm around my middle son. And it's cute you can make out his ice cream cone. A special moment...

To see more Embrace the Camera on my blog, click here.

Announcing my Guest Blogger... tomorrow!

First of all, have you noticed any changes to my blog? I have finally added a personalized blog banner and changed the name of my blog which really never had a name. All of these changes are temporary. I am not sure I like anything about my banner or my new name. But, since I have been trying to make changes to my blog for months now and have done nothing at all, I thought it was better to try out something imperfect rather than continually leaving the same boring impersonal picture up there with my no-name title.

Please let me know what you think. Especially viewability. How does this work on your browser? Is it easy to read and scroll through? Is the blog banner too busy and confusing? Distracting? I wanted to show a sampling of what I often post about which is our family adventures in China, photography, cupcakes and scrapbooking/memory keeping. Any ideas on how to show memory keeping or scrapbooking without an actual layout?

GUEST BLOGGER coming Saturday, May 21

I had planned to announce my guest blogger today, but then I thought a little better of it. I want to add to the suspense just a little bit longer. Today I am going to give you several hints as to who she is and then tomorrow I will announce her.

photo courtesy of my mystery guest blogger

First I should tell you why I invited her to do a guest post. One of my hobbies is decorating cakes and cupcakes. I have had an affinity for the type of decorating I do for a long time. It started in my childhood (more on this story another day) and now I love to make cakes & cupcakes for my boys and their activities. However, now that I have three boys and triple the activities, my time, creativity and patience is limited. A few years ago, I decided to give up making my cakes from scratch. I've switched completely over to box mixes and store bought frosting. This saves me loads of time and stress and saves all my creative energy for the decorating.

photo courtesy of my mystery guest blogger

My guest blogger, however, is very creative in the kitchen and she loves to experiment with cupcake recipes. Her cupcakes look delicous! I thought she would be the perfect complement to my blog which only focuses on the decorating aspect of cupcake making.

 

Any ideas who she is?

She is a very talented blogger.

She loves to bake cupcakes and experiment with recipes.

Her latest obsession is Pinterest.

I discovered her in the class Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers taught by Shimelle.

She makes lots of beautiful cards.

On April 19 she celebrated her 5th year of blogging! Happy Belated Blogiversary.

She has three cats.

She designed her own blog.

 

Well, if you don't know who she is by now, hopefully you can tell she is very talented and I am lucky to have her share her talents with us on my blog. Come back tomorrow, when I will announce her name! In the meantime, take a guess at her name and leave it in the comments!

 

Lots More Cupcakes....

Can you believe it? More cupcakes!

Yet another bake sale. My older two boys' school has an annual fundraiser in which the kids organize everything. They decide where they money will go, how they will raise money and organize all kinds of booths to do it -  a guess how many booth, bounce houses, manicure station, face painting, arts & crafts table, cafe with entertainment, car wash, obstacle course, etc. They organize volunteers, make signs, etc, etc. This was my personal contribution - cupcakes! That is no surprise. Oh, and I also volunteered to be a wandering photographer, so I will share some of those photos soon.

Making those cupcakes is quite a SIMPLE THING but it makes me happy every time. It is a lot of work and I have to plan my week for plenty of baking time as well as decorating time. But it is rewarding and it means a lot to my kids. They get so excited when they have an event that needs food. They always volunteer me for cupcakes. I love when they get into it and when they help me decide which ones to make. My only criteria are that we can find the ingredients relatively easily in Beijing and they aren't too difficult so I can make a lot in a reasonable amount of time.

Nicholas helped choose what to make this time. He really wanted me to make these pie cupcakes. I must admit, those are the last ones I would have thought he would choose.

I chose these for variety. I get bored making too many of the same ones.

Nicholas didn't want me to make these because he said Easter is over. In my view, rabbits are always in fashion and it is the year of the rabbit so that would be true, especially this year. And we attempted to make them red since that is the Chinese color for celebration, but they turned out more like dark pink. Oh well. They are still pretty cute.

And this picture makes me think of that Sesame Street song - Which of these is not like the other? Which of these just doesn't belong? (I'm sure those aren't the exact words, but hopefully you know which song I mean.)
I also made more bird's nest cupcakes like I did last week for our other school.

And here we are in the taxi on the way to the FUNraiser, buried in cupcakes.

The ideas for the rabbits came from FamilyFun.com, the pies come from the book Hello, Cupcake (I strongly recommend it if you like decorating these kinds of cupcakes or want to learn. They have excellent instructions and a fun blog with tips.), the mad scientists came from googling - just saw several photos from different locations and copied and the bird's nest cupcakes I made up by combining different recipes for nest cookies and using them as cupcake toppers.

To see everything CUPCAKE related

on my blog, click here.

Click here for CUPCAKE BAKING TIPS from my guest blogger, Vernell.

 

In a few hours at 8 AM PST come back to my blog for the monthly One Little Word Blog Hop for Ali Edward's class at Big Picture Classes. This month we have 21 people showcasing their monthly project for April.

The class is still open for registration at BigPictureClasses.com and once you sign up, you are welcome to join us for the next blog hop. We do it every month on the 1st. Just send me an email.

Come hop around and see what the students did for their April projects.