Holidays on My Mind

I used another Christmas present this past weekend.  I received a cupcake decorating book from Mike's mom for Christmas but had not yet made anything from it.  When I opened it in December, I picked out some cupcakes to make for upcoming events.  I knew my neighbor Allison's birthday was coming in January and she is crazy about cats.  So I picked out a cat cupcake pattern for her.  And then I knew in February we had Valentine's Day so I picked out a decorated cupcake for that day.  The good news is that I have now made both of these cupcakes.  The bad news is that I missed the deadline for both. 

Since I was a little bit intimidated by the cupcake decorating, I decided to wait for Suzanne to come up for the weekend and have her help me.  She was a real good sport about helping even though it took both of us nearly the whole afternoon on Saturday to decorate twenty four cupcakes.  In case she is not available the next time I want to make cupcakes, I made notes in my cookbook of all the tips she taught me.  I've never used a hair dryer when baking before!

The first twelve cupcakes we made were called Lucky Kitty apparently named after a Japanese figurine of a beckoning (or waving) cat that is suppose to be lucky.  Thank goodness Suzanne was aware of all this or the significance of these cupcakes would have passed me by.  As it was I kept telling Suzanne we could leave off the beckoning paw and make it easier on ourselves and she would have none of it because it would not be Lucky Kitty and I was just oblivious to her meaning. 

Then we made the Valentine cupcakes.  These cupcakes required us to take apart some Vienna sandwich cookies, saw the cookie on a diagonal and put it back together as a heart.  To keep the heart together we needed to paste it with melted chocolate and then pour slightly thinned pink frosting over the entire heart shape.  The frosting did not cover well and that is when Suzanne came up with the blow dryer idea to melt the frosting so it would spread.  Very creative.  

The end result was worth the effort.  The cupcakes looked very appropriate for Valentine's Day and tasted great.  In fact, we were so impressed with them that Mike and I collected some of each of the two different cupcakes  and delivered then to Allison's family and to Lois and Bill across the street.  Of course I made sure to give Suzanne most of the credit.  Heavens only knows what they would have looked like if I had done them by myself. 

After Suzanne and I finished baking, I headed to the sewing room.  I had seen an Easter pillow on Instagram that I wanted to try and replicate.  Unlike the cupcakes, this was something I was pretty sure I could figure out how to do all by myself.  Turned out I was right.  I only had to ask Suzanne's opinion of a fabric selection.  Otherwise I was able to complete it this weekend and I was very pleased with the result. 

I am also glad that Valentine's Day is over so I can actually display my new pillow in time for Easter.