Cupcake Fun Time!

For my brother's birthday last month and my friends birthday this week I decided to get crafty with cupcakes :) Everyone loves cupcakes, and if you can make them even more fun than they already are why not?? For Craig's Bday I made these super awesome Hamburger Cupcakes:
They are so easy to make!

You will need:

~ One box Yellow cake mix, One box chocolate cake mix (you can do from scratch too if you like!)

~ Red and Yellow gel food color (these offer a more intense color shade to mimic katchup and mustard as closely as possible)

~ Green liquid food color (to color the "lettuce", will distribute more evenly than gel)

~ Sweetened Coconut flakes

~ One container white or cream colored icing, the flavor is your choice

~ Seasame seeds

You will do:

~ Mix cake mixes according to instructions on box, fill cupcake tins with twice as many yellow cupcakes as chocolate ones

~ While cupcakes are baking, divide the icing into two bowls and dye one as red as you can get it and the other yellow

~ In another bowl put about about a cup or so of the coconut flakes, add 2 or 3 drops of the green food color. shake and toss until the flakes are an even green color

~ Once the cupcakes come out of the oven, sprinkle some seasame seeds on the yellow ones only and lightly press it to stick

~ Once the cupcakes are completely cooled, take them out of their wrappers and slice all the yellow ones in half. There are your buns!

~ For your patties, first slice off the curved "muffin top" of all the chocolate cupcakes, JUST the muffin top, and then slice the bottom portion in two so both patties are flat on both sides

~Build your hamburgers with your buns, patties, katchup, mustard, and lettuce as you would a real hamburger! I put both icing colors in two ziplock bags and snipped a tiny hole (like 1/16 in, no more) in one corner to pipe on the stuff as if i was squeezing it out of a katchup or mustard bottle.

Check out my awesome presentation skills:

love it! And last night I prepared Tie Dye Cupcakes for my friend at work today! These a slightly more simple to make:

You will need:

~ One box Yellow or Vanilla cake mix

~ A regular set of liquid food colors

~ Icing of your choice

You will do:

~ Mix up cake batter as per the instructions, then seperate evenly into 6 bowls.

~ Dye each bowl a different color, using a different spoon for each. You don't want any cross contamination! I used plain red (came out pink), plain blue, plain green, and mixed orange (about 8 drops yellow, 2 drops red), purple (12 drops red, 8 drops blue), and lime green (8 drops yellow, 2 drops green)

~ spoon about one spoonful of each color into each cup til they are 2/3 full. Do this in random order for each one so they're all different.

~ Bake per the instructions, and ice however you like!

Easy! I really loved making these and I know they'll be a hit! I used Buttercream icing dyed pink just because thats what i felt like. Enjoy!

Julia's stay is over :(

We had a great weekend tho! She and Sally had to sit at the airport for nearly 3 hours before finally taking off around 10:30 thursday night! She got to my house at midnight so we still were able to make it to ladie's 80's thank god!! goodness, we were drunk! afterwards she wanted to go surprise a friend who lives near the short north and in my drunken confusion i didn't want to go and left her, making her have to find me looking like a lost puppy by the UDF lol!!! I have hazy recollections of this. I do remember being SO releived to see her! we also HAD to stop by white castle (of course) and walked up to the drive thru cuz the inside is closed right now for renovations. people were yelling at us from their cars, who knows what they were saying. Friday we did a little shopping at Ragarama, met Sally and Mark at Betty's before browsing around the Short North for a while, and then we had dinner at the Happy Greek and got a drink or 2 at Surly Girl. we were so tired tho, so we made it an early night after that. Saturday we grabbed lunch at the North Market and got some Jeni's ice cream while we walked home. on the way we checked out the new whiskey bar on high and tried a flight of scotch and a flight of bourbon, that was interesting. We had dinner at Hoggy's that night and went to Bodega for drinks. Again, drunkie :) both sally and julia ended up breaking glasses on the table, we're not even sure how ha! what, are they made of sugar?? julia wiped out too, walking thru the bar cuz the table area where we were sitting is a step up from the bar area and i guess she forgot that was there hahaha! Today, sunday, Julia was invited to Mark's family's place for lunch so she left here around noon :( His family lives somewhere in another area of Ohio, I'm not sure where, so that will be a day trip for them so I bet I wont see her again before she goes back to NYC. They have a flight back early tomorrow morning, and she'll be there a few days doing some interviews. hopefully she can get a job! It was so great to see her and I hope to go visit her in london sometime soon. I'll miss you Julia!!

Ragarama

hotness

Whiskey bar

Goofing around at Hoggy's

3 Little Piggies

Broken glass #1

Broken glass #2

Mark and Sally

Mark, Julia, and Sally

The most happy day is approaching!!!

My dear Julia will be here in 2 short days!!!! She's flying across the pond to come visit!!! my 80's buddy will be back! for only a weekend, sure, but anything is better than nothing :) and we will be hitting up ladies 80's together for the first time since she left last april! the whole weekend is going to be a wonderful drunken haze and i cant wait!! get here soon, Julia!!!

Bootcamp has started!!!!!

well, it started yesterday so this is a day late but whatever. it was really fun!! they send an email each sunday with the schedule of what areas of the body will be focused on each day and since molly and i are doing 3 days a week we can pick and choose which days to go to based on that. i am all sore now lol, my butt and legs are hurting the most. i was hobbling all around my apt this morning trying to get ready haha! i can't wait to see what my results will be :) i'm also trying to keep up on eating well, i still have alot to learn i think. what i really need to do is do some research and consolidate it all into an easy chart or list that i can refer to. i'm gonna do that in the next day or two. wish me luck!!

p.s. happy st patricks day!!!

Videos from the Mothership... Phish, Hampton VA

Oh how I wish i was there.... this first video was posted by some lucky asshole who not only got into the show but scoped out a perfect spot on the floor, dead center. this was a general admission show despite being a venue that seats 13,000 or so. so needless to say i hate this guy. but for those of you who dont know phish this will give you a taste of what they are like.

Did you notice the giant blue orbs hanging above the audience in the video above? they changed color throughout the entire night as they pointed different lights at them (i know this from all the videos i have watched) and durring the song below we see they happen to be giant balloons! they had to be at least 8 or 10 ft in diameter, enormous. They dropped them over the audience durring Bouncing Round the Room and you'll see one even popped over Page (on keys) as he played! What a sight!

GIRL SCOUT COOKIES CAME TODAY!!

I am thoroughly over-excited about this!! 1 box tagalongs, 2 boxes Samoas (the best kind), 1 box thinmints and i'm trying a box of the lemon chalet cremes, mmmmmm! One of the dudes on the graphics team has a daughter in girl scouts so he brought her order form in like MONTHS ago and they are finally here!!! yaaaaay!!!

mmmm mmm mmmmmmm doin the happy dance.

St. Patty's Day is coming!!!

In just 9 days, for the second year in a row, I am going to visit Lindsay in Chicago for St. Patty's day! Well, St. Patty's day weekend since the actual holiday is on a tuesday. I cannot wait!! Gaelic Storm, a Celtic-Rock band we LOVE, will be playing at the House of Blues again. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Irish music?? Just give me songs about drinking, a fiddle, and a dude with an accent so thick you can barely understand him and I'm in heaven! I was first introduced to them at the Irish Fest in Columbus a couple summers ago (one of the best weekends of the summer!) and have been hooked ever since! Chicago really pulls out all the stops for St. Patty's Day, too. They dye the river green, there's a parade, and people decked out in green wigs, clothes, beads, and costumes crowd the streets. And when i say dye the river green, I mean bright neon radioactive green. Here's a few choice pics from last year, and I will be posting the new ones after I recover from the weekend :)

wow

Those Rock of Love bitches are drunken sloppy amazing channels of entertainment lol!!

Amanda is amazing

My dearest and oldest friend of 18 years, gorgeous and beautiful Amanda Buffington (seen above in the red scarf next to my other equally gorgeous best friend Lindsay in the red shirt, and also giving me a kiss at Ladie's 80's) has been out in L.A. for the last 5 years or so trying to be an actress. (side note: keep her in your thoughts and wish her well!). Well, she just got a job to work as an extra for a couple days on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland!!! That is the coolest thing i have ever heard!!! She tells me her costume is elaborate and amazing and she will be in the White Queen's court, the White Queen being played by Anne Hathaway. Johnny Depp will be the Mad Hatter... What other roll could he be?? Helena Bonham Carter is the Queen of Hearts... this is going to be an amazing movie!! Super super cool. Go Amanda!

Make me a Superhero!

I found this fluff of a website, The Hero Factory, where you can make yourself into a superhero! As you can see I am a cyclops/butterfly/whipsaber wielding bitch. This is clearly the most awesome thing ever. I might have to make this into a halloween costume.... who wouldn't want blue skin???

The Sixth Challenge

I saw this on another blog so decided to try it. Here's how it works, i post the 6th picture from the 6th folder in My Photos on here and invite 6 people to do this as well. Well, I dont know 6 people on blogger yet so I will just leave this open to anyone who wants to. In fact, I think I will try to start this on facebook since that will probably get a much bigger response. I just love these chain activites, so fun!

and its a pic of tim and little jerry on the "dog's couch" at tim's house, awwww so cute!!

Jerry Fun Time!

We had more photoshoot fun with Little Jerry today, enjoy the cuteness!! He's our little babushka!

I am currently obsessed with....

Digital Scrapbooking, OMG! I am in the process of making a book to document the first 5 years of Girls Trips that my best friends Amanda and Lindsay and I have taken so far. This year will be the 5th but I had to start on the first 4 already. There is so much inspiration out there and people doing amazing things. This is the blog associated with a great scrapbooking site, and they have some great ideas!
http://blog.designerdigitals.com/
I think these are such creative and fun ways to record memories. I can't wait to make more.... i should have my next one focus around our music festival/phish tour plans this summer! Gotta commemorate the reunion of the greatest band ever!!