Pin for the Wednesdays: Star Wars Cupcakes

So, Monday was Sam’s fourth birthday. In an effort to keep things simple, I decided that his “birthday party” would consist of cake and ice cream at our house. He wanted another Star Wars cake, and for some reason, instead of just being smart and ordering one, I decided to make it.

I blame Pinterest.

Last week I pinned this, and I thought I could try to make cupcakes like these.

Light sabers Star Wars cupcake topper

Except there weren’t exactly any directions. (Note to pinners: pinning a picture from flickr? Not helpful.) That meant I was on my own.

The lightsabers were obviously fondant, but because I had never worked with fondant before and I had had luck with pretzel lightsabers last year, I decided to go with a mini-version of those.

But I’ll get back to the lightsabers in a minute.

Sam wanted chocolate cupcakes, so I went searching for a recipe. (Andy pointed out that there are good ones to be found on the backs of both Betty Crocker and Hines boxes, but I like to make life hard so I didn’t listen.) I went with this one, from Annie’s Eats. I also used her buttercream frosting recipe.

I am (clearly) not the best cupcake decorator in the world, but I thought they were pretty cute.

So, back to the lightsabers. As it turned out, I forgot to buy pretzels, so I decided to go with fondant after all. I used this recipe for easy marshmallow fondant.

It was a complete disaster. I’m 100% sure it was user error and not a faulty recipe, but it didn’t work at all.

So, I was back to the pretzels, but I was running out of time. I took a short cut and used melted chocolate chips for the handles, which didn’t harden quickly the way the candy melts do, and so they were super messy. Had I not been in such a hurry, I think they really could have been cute.

So, take aways from this post:
— Use candy melts, not chocolate chips.
— Don’t pin from Flickr.
— Call Cortney and Luanne when in need of Star Wars-themed (or any other) birthday baked goods.

Well that was certainly a long-winded way to get to the point – your posts with your pins!

There are just a couple of rules:

1) In your post, please link to your original source  – the pin you got the idea from.

2) Make sure and link back to our original Pin For the Wednesdays Post here at Mommin’ It Up!

3) In the Mr. Linky below, leave a direct link to your Pin FTWednesdays post, not to your main website.

4) Totally optional – grab our cute #PinFTW button!  The code box is over there in our sidebar.

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Pin for the Wednesdays: Preschool Art Project

Welcome back to Pin for the Wednesdays!  I can’t wait to read all about your winning pins!  I hope you’ll head on down to the Mr. Linky below and put in a link to a post you’ve done about something you pinned on Pinterest that you ACTUALLY, you know, TRIED! And that you loved!  Mine this week was inspired both by Pinterest AND Jen of Big Binder!  A couple of weeks ago, Jen linked up with a Pinterest-inspired art project she did with her kids that taught them about an artist. So, I decide to see what I could find for Sophie and I to do along those lines. I wanted our project to involve cutting, since even though she is all done with Occupational Therapy, I like to keep up on her hand strength.

The original pin that I found was this one below, but as I kept searching I found several similar ones based on the art of Wassily Kandinsky – his famous “Kandinsky Circles”.

 

 

I didn’t show Sophie a picture of Kandinsky circles OR have the art lesson until we were all the way finished with the project, because I didn’t want her to try to make hers look like the pictures or like anyone else’s. I just explained to her what to do, and here’s how her circles turned out. I think she did a great job!

I made some different-sized circle tracers out of cardboard for Soph and had her trace, cut, and glue them.  We did one set a day for four days, and at the end, we had our little art lesson on Wassily Kandinsky.  We looked at his art online and I told her all I had read about him in all the many fine art books I have in my home on Wikipedia.  It was fun and Sophie was really proud of her circles!  This pin was a win!
I showed you mine, now YOU show me YOURS!! Pretty please link up below with a blog post about a pin you tried and loved. (No blog? No problem, just leave a comment! OR you can leave a comment telling me how I’m such a fabulous mom for doing this project with my daughter. I know, RIGHT!?) There are just a couple of rules:

There are just a couple of rules:

1) In your post, please link to your original source  – the pin you got the idea from.

2) Make sure and link back to our original Pin For the Wednesdays Post here at Mommin’ It Up!

3) In the Mr. Linky below, leave a direct link to your Pin FTWednesdays post, not to your main website.

4) Totally optional – grab our cute #PinFTW button!  The code box is over there in our sidebar ————————–>

Now let’s see those winning pins! It’s #PinFTW!

 

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Pin for the Wednesday – Rainbow Cupcakes

Welcome to the fourth week of Pin for the Wednesdays! We are having so much fun with it and we hope you are too.

We had friends over on St. Patrick’s Day, and I wanted to make things a fun for all the kids we had running around. Fortunately, Pinterest had tons of St. Patrick’s Day ideas and I was able to put a few of them into action.

My favorite was the rainbow cupcakes I made.

The original idea came from The Girl Who Ate Everything (I love this blog, btw). She’s got complete directions on her blog, but basically you take a white cake mix, divide it up, put food coloring in, and layer the colors in cupcake pans. It is super easy and turned out better than I expected! (I generally anticipate failure in cooking endeavors.)

Blurry picture, but aren’t they cute?

Here’s the inside – Sam licked off all the icing.

I thought they turned out really well, and kids and adults all liked them. (Possibly because I made Bailey’s buttercream for the adult version.)

What kind of Pinterest stuff have you done lately? Link up or leave a comment and share!

There are just a couple of rules:

1) In your post, please link to your original source  – the pin you got the idea from.

2) Make sure and link back to our original Pin For the Wednesdays Post here at Mommin’ It Up!

3) In the Mr. Linky below, leave a direct link to your Pin FTWednesdays post, not to your main website.

4) Totally optional – grab our cute #PinFTW button!  The code box is over there in our sidebar ————————–>

 

Thank you!!!


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