BBQ Cupcakes!

Ok, so not actually what it sounds like.. thank goodness. That sounds rather awful. I found these awesome cupcakes on pinterest and just kind of winged it. They turned out super cool though! They’ll be even better next time… if there is a next time. They were a lot of work!

What you will need:

– Cupcake mix

– Icing

– Food dye

– Chocolate

– Wax paper

– Gummy bears

– Tooth Picks

– Frosting decorating tip-things (I’m not a baker. I don’t know what they’re called or how to use them)

– Plastic bags

– Patience

– About 2.5 hours

Step 1: Find something in your house that is approximately the same size as the top of a cupcake. Trace some circles on a piece of wax paper – add extra circles to allow for messy grill tops. I made 16 cupcakes and did 20 grill tops just to be safe. I was bound to mess up and/or break a couple.

Step 2: melt some chocolate (I wanted to find candy melts, but this was a last minute project and the grocery store doesn’t have them, so I just used semi-sweet chocolate chips. It worked, but the chocolate needs to be kept refrigerated once it’s formed, which makes these difficult to take to an outdoor BBQ in the middle of the summer. Bummer.) Put the melted chocolate in a plastic bag and snip the very tip of the corner off. TURN THE WAX PAPER OVER so the pencil outlines are on the bottom and you’re tracing the side without pencil lead on it. Trace the circles in melted chocolate from your bag and add some grill lines through the middle. Any extra chocolate left in the bag after doing the grill tops – make some chocolate hamburger patties with. Put them in the fridge if you used chocolate chips. They don’t harden well at room temperature.

Step 3: Make cupcakes! I don’t cook, I don’t bake. I made boxed cupcakes – 1/2 vanilla and 1/2 chocolate.

Step 4: While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, cut your gummy bears into thirds and put them onto the toothpicks like skewers. This is very time consuming. And makes your fingers hurt. A little trick I figured out is to get some canola oil and grease up the tooth picks before stabbing the bears. They will slide on much easier.

Step 5: Dye the frosting. I did 1/2 of the frosting red (pinkish) and the other 1/2 yellow. I added the frosting to a Ziploc bag, alternating colors – 1 scoop of red, 1 scoop yellow… etc. Snip the tip off the bag, a bit more than you did for the chocolate. If you know how to use frosting decorating tip-things.. use a frosting bag and do your thing. If you’re like me and you have no idea, just wing it and hold the tip onto the corner of the bag as you frost. I liked the look of the spiky tip and added some “flames” to some of the cupcakes.

Step 6: Add the grill tops!

Step 7: Add your skewers and burger patties!

There you have it! Adorable. Don’t use chocolate chips if you’re transporting these to someone else’s BBQ or if you want to be able to leave them out on the table for aesthetic appeal – they melt easily. Wish me luck, I’m about to take them on a 30 minute drive while it’s almost 90 degrees out.

Happy Memorial Day – party safe and wear sunscreen. But most of all, have fun and remember why we’re celebrating!

 

DIY Fun

A friend and I have been making a habit of visiting thrift shops and we found some cool old shutters at the Good Cents store. (if you haven’t visited this store – it’s pretty awesome. Everything is SO cheap – usually just cents! Just remember to bring hand sanitizer, you’re going to get a good layer of grime on you from sifting through bins of stuff. Worth it, though!) We got them without a clue what to do with them, but after some thinking – we came up with a pretty neat idea, if I may say so myself! DVD holders!

The shutters looked exactly like this: (though these are not our shutters. I wasn’t sure how this would turn out and I neglected to take a “before” photo – the shame!)

We hit the hardware store and chose 2 colors – I chose a cocoa brown for the base color and a sky blue for the top color. We cleaned all the grime off the shutters, then spray painted the base color and allowed it to dry. We topped it with the top color and gave it a good long time to dry. Sanding when still tacky is a bad idea. After a couple hours, we got some sand paper sponges and just went for it! We were worried about being too rough and taking off too much paint, but we quickly realized that the rougher we were, the cooler it looked!

The final product:

I need to do a bit more sanding on the top and right side, but I’m really happy with how they turned out so far! I’ll have to get a picture of Leah’s later, she chose really awesome colors – teal on the bottom and a smokey blue on top.

What I would do next time is beat them up a bit more before painting them. Get some good dents in the wood – when you sand over the dents, it gives it a really neat look!

I love it. We also got a huge bag of old clothes from the salvation army for $20! Who knew that Friday was “fill the bag day”? All you can fit in a big paper bag for $20 – we got 33 things! That’s 60 cents a piece! Keep an eye out for more posts about what we do with those clothes. We started with some huge polka dot shirts that we are almost done re-making into some adorable collared tank tops! 🙂

Chapter 7: “__________”

The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur. A quick recap: I graduated from FSU with by B.S. in Psychology (and minor in Chemistry… don’t ask), I turned 22, I enjoyed a lovely visit from my family, and began a new chapter in life. That chapter doesn’t have a title yet, but neither did this post when I began writing it so I’m confident that given some time, this chapter of life will find a title as well.

Obviously, there is a lot of change going on lately. One bit of change that I’m finding myself quite fond of is this: when I come home from work, I get to do a little something called “relaxing”. I think most college students can attest to the unfamiliarity of this concept, likely due to the constant nagging in the back of your mind when you try to do so. (“I should be studying! If I don’t study, I will surely fail! I can’t even enjoy this movie because I’m thinking about my Organic Chemistry final next week!”)

Another bit of this change that I’m not so fond of is somewhat related… what do you do with that time? I almost miss studying. I have some deranged version of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve developed some strange feelings of appreciation for the institution that held me captive for the past 4 years. I think I need a hobby.

Ok, moving on to bigger and better things. I used my “relaxing time” today to play ball with the dogs. I went a bit snap happy with my new i-phone. Yeah so, it took a while to figure out how to use the camera. And make phone calls. And do everything else on it… but I managed to get a few cute shots.

Without further ado:

There is no greater bliss than Bruno with a tennis ball

And it’s not a good time unless the ball leaves slobber marks when engaged in post-play bouncing

Lilly didn’t get left out, mom just forgot her camera during her play session