Celebrations

A couple of years ago, we came up with the idea to make and decorate cupcakes as a new birthday tradition.  This idea came from the fact that we either made a cake, ate 5 pieces (1 each) after the birthday dinner and then had leftovers and ate way too much sugar for a week, or tried to make a healthier dessert and the birthday boy/girl ended up feeling cheated it didn't really feel as much like a birthday cake.  With cupcakes, we each get one and then we can either throw away the extras or (more often) send them to work with someone (you can't take 1/2 of a cake to work, but you can take 12 cupcakes).  My sister got this great book, Hello Cupcake, and we started trying different designs.  Some are very complicated.  We've also bought What's New, Cupcake and tried some out of there.  These designs tend to be easier.  Yesterday was my mom's birthday and we all got together and celebrated today.  The cupcakes we chose to make for her were, by far, some of the easiest we've made.  These were in the What's New, Cupcake book and only took a couple of hours to decorate (as opposed to an entire day).  We were very happy with how they turned out.  On a side note, I can't take credit for the pictures...my sister is the photographer in the family.