Anyway, for my daughter’s sleepover that turned more into a mini birthday party we did these great cupcakes from Hello, Cupcake. A great book full of ideas to decorate with candies and not a lot of experience. Well mine don’t look like the book but the kids loved them. The blankets were made from starburst. I got some from a friend so they were not fresh out of the bag so be sure you have more than you need b/c I ruined a few in the microwave.

I made one to look like each of the girls and baby brother attending. (more ideas from this party in an upcoming email). There was a dairy allergy so we had to improvise one face. The girls loved deciding which one I made for them.

Then we had her school treat. Of course she was looking through the book when we were making the sleepover ones and saw the butterfly version. Of course I was somehow convinced especially since we have been seeing them a lot in our yard. Also after reading the instructions I thought it would be an easy activity for her.

You can really make any design with chocolate discs and some wax paper. Simply make the design on paper and cover with the wax paper, and trace with chocolate.

I added the second color and did the swirling. These came out pretty fragile and did not look like this picture when we got to her class the next day!!

A few years ago I decorated brownies with chocolate spiderwebs and bats using the same technique, but just all chocolate.

My final cupcake was the simplest but still very cute in my opinion. My daughter was having a horse birthday at her cousins house during our recent trip. Because we live a way from family this was a one time event to have a cousins party. Although the horses in Hello, Cupcake are adorable I did not want to ask my sister to do it and knew I did not want to spend my one day with them working on these cupcakes. Instead I found Jelly Horse suckers on orientaltrading.com . I simply had my daughter frost the cupcakes when we arrived and added the suckers. The suckers also serve as part of the goody bag.

We used a cupcake tree and filled the empty holders with cupcake liners and M& M’s. Will not take credit for this idea, thanks sis. But will definitely do it in the future.

Our cupcakes were in the holder too long and the weight of the suckers started to cause the cupcakes to tip over.

All in all here are three different ways to decorate homemade cups cakes, either from a box or from scratch no matter what your skill level.