Valentine's Day Cupcakes

I feel like every post lately has started with the phrase "So on Pinterest..." Frankly I eat, sleep, breathe this silly website.  I have it on my phone and my kindle and lay in bed scouring new ideas and recipes.  It's terribly addicting and I'm not quite sure what I did with my life before it.  Now of course I will begin this post with:

So on Pinterest I saw this recipe for these super easy quick cupcakes for Valentine's day, so naturally I wanted to try it out.  I don't normally used boxed mix or premade frosting but I seriously procrastinated this year and decided to make cupcakes when I woke up on Valentine's day morning....so quick it is!

 

I wasn't too convinced with this recipe, lemon-lime soda mixed with boxed cake mix....yeah right there's no way that's gonna turn out!  Well it did.  It gave the cupcakes a more sticky feel but super moist and lemme tell ya the batter was delicious (and egg free!) I did use premade frosting as well and piped it with a ziploc bag to somewhat seem fancy.  They were a huge hit and got devoured at home and work. 

 

The only problem I had was these need to be treated very much like angel food cake in the oven.  I like to turn my pans halfway through baking/cooking times to evenly cook (our oven is old) and when I turned em I did bump them slightly and they all the sudden collapsed in the middle like an angel food cake would...they never recovered.  So that was good to know for the future.  I may used this recipe again and experiment with different flavors but probably only if I'm bored or in a bind.  I enjoy cupcakes from scratch wayyyy too much!

Here's some lovely pics!

 

 

 

Toddler approved! 

 

Valentine's Day Cards

So now that I have a 19 month old I've been wanting to introduce a lot more crafts and I'm finding myself more interested in holidays which is very unlike my old, pre-baby self.  This year for Valentine's day I knew I wanted to make a personalized Valentine for immediate family and close friends.  So with the help of Pinterest (follow my boards here: Amy Hendrickson )

 

I had seen this pin:

(Link here to original project)

 

I had some notecards in my printer paper stash and since his hands are so little yet I was able to fit them on there.  Plus we had nontoxic, washable finger paints (Crayola) already. I put him in his highchair without a shirt and we practiced on a few pieces of paper first.  He loved it...it got messy but thankfully it was completely washable.

 

And yes he did try eating it...BUT this was a super fun and surprisingly quick project.  We made 8 cards.  I embellished with some stamps and wrote a quick note on the inside signed with Gabe's name.

 

I kind of found a quick system of painting his hands instead of dipping them (he would try to pick up the paint ending in a huge glob on his hand) and then pressing his hand down and doing it all over again.  I only did one hand at a time so both weren't messy.  We will be using finger paints and hand print pictures a lot I think as he loved it!

 

Here's our finished project!

 

I really love how they turned out!!

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

(all of my photos are taken on Instagram, follow me on there as well!)

 

 

 

4th of July SALE!

The 4th is only a week away so I have marked down all my patriotic hair accessories so that they can be bought and sent out before the holiday gets here!!  Check em out and let me know if you have any questions or comments!  Thanks! (Click on the title or photo to go straight to the Etsy page)

Red, White and Blue Flower

Headband with Bow





Patriotic Flower

Simple Red, White & Blue Headband

Simple Patriotic Headband