Brain and blood clot cupcakes

Hey y'all! 

This weekend a friend of mine had her annual Halloween Party! Hubby and I left Little Man with the grandparents and had a great time! You will get to see what our costumes were on Wednesday. 

A few years ago, my friend started having a contest for the yummiest, most grotesque looking food. This is the first year I actually participated. I found this link on Pinterest and decided that this was going to be my entry. 

The cupcakes are a doctored up version of boxed French Vanilla cake mix. I promise I will do that post soon. It's really quite easy!

The cupcakes are then cored and filled with strawberry jelly. This is the blood clot part of the cupcakes. The tartness also helps break up all the sweetness of the cake and icing. 

The icing is my standard buttercream recipe from Wilton, with Almond extract as flavoring. I mixed together pink, yellow, blue and a tiny bit of black to make the fleshy grey color of the "brains." These we're lot easier to do than I thought they would be. All I had to do was do a big squiggle on each side of the cupcake, and a smaller squiggle on top of each big squiggle. The squiggles were made with Wilton Tip #3. 

And there you have it! They were big hit at the party, and although there weren't any prizes, I won the contest! We had a blast at the party, and are already planning what we will befor next year!! 

Happy Halloween Week! See y'all Wednesday! 

November Sub - Give Thanks

Hey Y'all! 

Hubby and I are getting ready for a friends Halloween Party this weekend, so basically, I am getting ready for the Party. I have gotten all of our pieces to our costumes, and am baking cupcakes today! It's going to be awesome and you can expect pictures next week! :) 

For now, you saw that title and were expecting to see a post about Thanksgiving, not Halloween! So let's get to it! 

The November Sub actually came to me about 3 weeks ago, but I thought I would post about it a little closer to it actually being November. 

Also, it's not my favorite sub. It's not strictly Thanksgiving, it's a VERY similar color palette to the October Sub, and there are a lot of stickers that I probably will just not get a lot of use out of. Let me quit yakking about it, and let you see what I'm talking about. 

I do like that she remembered to include the Purchase Sub reminder sticker this month. If you didn't get the sub last month, she sells a sampler sheet that has those reminders on them, here. I'm not thrilled about the card, because I already have my own thank you cards leftover from when my little man was born (ENDLESS BABY SHOWER THANK YOU CARDS!!) lol. I don't foresee myself using the label stickers much because they are so wide! They take up a big chunk of the EC boxes. 

I like the half boxes. Those turned out really neat! The quotes page looks awesome, but I don't really put quotes in my planner, especially not full box quotes because I want to fill it up with things I do. I like the idea behind the acts of kindness stickers because I think we should always strive to do kind things for others, but I never really plan out doing those kinds of things. They usually just happen. I don't know, maybe I'll use them. 

The Thanksgiving sticker set is adorable. That one will most likely get used with the leftovers I have from the October Set! 

Overall, I don't love this month's sub. I will still order a December one, so it hasn't deterred me at all because I have been ordering these each month since June, and this is the first one that I really just don't like. That is not bad at all. 

Don't worry Kayla! I still love your shop, girl! In fact, I just ordered a bunch of washi from her website, so expect a haul once that shows up! :) 

Have a great weekend, and I will see y'all Monday! 

Birthday Cake Fail, and Redemption!

Hey y'all! 

As promised, here is the story of my dad's birthday cake. His birthday was Sunday. As you all have probably figured out by now, I enjoy decorating cakes. I took all four Wilton Cake Decorating classes last year, and have done a few special occasion cakes since. 

Well, as my gift to everyone, I have been doing my family's birthday cakes. Except my husband......he never wants to make a big deal out of his birthday, and it's kind of hard to surprise him with a cake because we live in the same house. 

Anyway......
So I go to Pinterest and find this cake design. It looks simple enough, and goes with the fall designs we usually do on dad's birthday cakes, so I got to work making it. It turned out beautiful!

However.....

....this happened. I. Was. Devastated!! That cake was simple, but time consuming! I felt so bad. And my dad, being the awesome dad he is, ended up comforting me on his birthday!

Well, this year, I was determined to right this tragic wrong! I got my redemption in the form of the new cake....

It's not as pretty as the original one was, but it didn't fall on the ground so I call it a win! Just to be sure, we had it at my house so I didn't have to try to transport it anywhere! And sorry for the blurry photo, not sure what was up with my phone that day. BTW, don't you just love Timehop? It's great when it brings up past cute photos and videos of my little man, not so much when it brings up past failures!

I like this cake because it is chocolate with chocolate icing. I filled it with Marshmallow fluff, which actually ended up soaking into the cake and just made it extra moist and yummy! When the slices are cut, each slice looks like a candy corn!

Dad was very happy with his cake this year, and is grateful that he finally got one! lol. Here's to hoping this doesn't happen again with any of my cakes!
Hope y'all got a good laugh! Have a great week and I'll see ya Friday! 

Pumpkin Patch!

Hey Y'all! 

So...... I'm getting kind of bored of the planner posts, and judging by the number of views on my last one (a big, whopping 3!), you guys are too. So, I am going to take a break from those for awhile. 

Today is all about the fun we had on Saturday! We took my son to an honest to goodness pumpkin patch on a farm for the first time! His first Halloween he was only 4 months old, so we didn't go anywhere to get a pumpkin. Last year, we went to one of the church pumpkin patches set up on the side of the road. It had a really cute area to take pictures, though. 

That was my sweet boy last year! Adorable, isn't he?! 

This year, we went full out! The farm had a playground for kids, a petting zoo, a mini hay bale maze for toddlers, a little tractor for kids to ride on, a hay ride, and a giant corn maze! We all had a blast! 

We took my nieces, my Father in law, and my parents and crammed into my mom's minivan to drive the hour to the farm. It was actually quite fun! 

We ran into some friends from church there, which was awesome, because Little Man ended up having his own friends there to play with! 

This farm had many opportunities for pictures! 

Hubby and I even joined in the fun! 

And the weather was perfect! There was a strong breeze the whole afternoon!

There was so much to do, that Little Man didn't even fuss with missing his nap! The only meltdown we had was when we took him off the tractor ride. He wanted to do it again, but it was time to go. :( 

This hay bale maze was flipping adorable! Little Man ran through it with his buddies for, like 15 solid minutes! That's like three days in toddler attention time!

Once the corn in the corn maze started getting taller, Little Man enjoyed riding on his Daddy's shoulders. It was so fun, because he would just giggle along while we walked through the maze because the corn stalks were tickling his cheeks! 

We ended the trip with a big pumpkin to take home, and I do believe some carving adventures are in our immediate future! 

We had such a great day! I definitely think we will be going back there next year! 

Sunday was my dad's birthday, and I have a fun little story about his birthday cake, that you will just have to come back on Wednesday to read about! 

Hope you have a great Monday!

Week of 10/12 - 10/18

Hey Y'all! 

Happy Columbus Day! 

This week continues the Halloween themes I've had going in my planner for the entire month of October! This week starts some pretty fun fall festivities, and I can't wait! 

It's Freaky Fountain week! :) I have been looking forward to using this Darice Book for awhile now! Halloween is such a fun time, anyway, but when you add in the cuteness of a soda shop theme, this is bound to be a great theme!

All of the wash tape used this week is from Michael's except the skinny washi separating the weekend. That one is from Hobby Lobby and was part of a set. 

As usual, the hydrate sticker is from Oh, Hello. The half box is from AWigsDesigns, and the rest are all by me! I am actually enjoying being able to slowly become independent in supplying my own stickers. It feels nice to be able to save money on everyday functional stickers, and it helps me justify purchasing some more elaborate stickers that I wouldn't be able to design for myself (at least not easily). 

Appointment stickers and churches are from Oh, Hello. I used some of the fall stickers from the October Sub (posted about here), and again, the half boxes are from AWigsDesigns. So are the baking stickers. Everything else is my own designs! 

As you can see, my dad's birthday is Sunday! I'll be baking his cake this weekend, and since his birthday is in October, he always gets a Halloween cake. I will be posting about how I made it next week! We will also be going to a Pumpkin Patch on Saturday so I will be posting about that experience as well! 

In the meantime, look forward to Thursday! I have my November Sub from Oh, Hello, and I will be posting about it then! 

I hope you are all having a wonderful Monday so far! 

Talk at ya later! 

Drawing Challenge Update 2

Hey y'all! 

So, I have finally done some more of my drawings! Here are days 8 through 14!

I hope you all enjoy these pictures! As long as it takes me to do them, it's because I actually want to put some thought into them. I enjoy doing these very much, and it's fun to have things prompted to you and try to figure out how to best do them! Next week, I will put up the next seven drawings! 

Love you guys! 

Week of 10/5 - 10/11

Hey Y'all! 

This weekend was a wee bit crazy. My son and I were rear ended on Friday. We are ok, but my car is a little worse for wear. There may be a new (to me) car in my future, but I don't know for sure. Just kind of waiting on the insurance company to call back. Bleh... 

Anyways, on to the more fun stuff! 

Here is this week's Halloween spread! This weeks sticker book is Witches Way! 

Not a super heavy week as far as happenings. Monday and Wednesday are kind of busy, but everything else is pretty bare. However, things are already starting to pop up, so I have a feeling it will fill up quick. 

The Hydrate Sticker is from Oh, Hello (as usual). The Half Box on Monday is from AWigsDesigns, which apparently is closed now. The rest, (except the Witches Way stickers) were all made by me! I am so excited about being able to make my own stickers!

The Church Stickers are from Oh, Hello. 

So, I love decorating my planner, and I love sharing the spreads with you guys. But after awhile, it gets difficult to think of things to say. Especially, now that the majority of my stickers will be self-made.

I might switch to doing one of these every month so that you can see my favorites. Or maybe, I will just post pictures without descriptions. I don't know. I haven't fully thought it through, but there may be some minor changes coming soon. 

Hope y'all have a great week! If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see from me, please let me know in the comments!