Camo Cupcakes-homemade goodness!

These were so fun to create and they topped off my nephews' Camo Birthday Party. I will share with you here today how I made these. I was needing 2 cakes- one white and one chocolate. The chocolate one I found in my book: Taste of Home's Complete guide to Baking. It is a Chocolate Buttermilk Cake. I don't buy buttermilk, I just make my own. I needed to do that first. I poured 2 TBS of lemon juice into a 1 cup measuring cup. Then filled the rest of the way up with milk (I used 1% milk). You could also use white vinegar if you do not have lemon juice. Let is set for about 5 minutes and it will curdle. While that is going on I go ahead and get the rest of the ingredients ready.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake
Ingredients:
1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
2 and 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup water

In a large bowl, cream shortening and sugar until fluffy. Beat in buttermilk and eggs. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with water, beating well after each addition. Set aside and star the next cake mix!

I was looking for a white cake mix, however most white cake mixes call for lots of egg whites. I finally settled on a yellow cake mix on Pinterest called The Best One-Bowl Yellow Cake. I was willing to try this recipe because it has charm. It came from a 100 year old cook book. Hey, with that much experience behind it, it is bound to be good. And besides it only called for 2 eggs! I followed the recipe just as it says.

Once the yellow cake mix was ready I divided it in half and colored 1 olive green and the other I added just enough brown to make it tan. Then I was ready to fill the cupcake pan. I used small scoops and alternated the chocolate, green, and tan cake mixes. (Sorry forgot to take a picture of this step). I baked at 350 degrees for around 20 minutes or so. This is how lovely I mean how manly they looked coming out of the oven!

While the cupcakes cooled I got to work on the frosting. In my same book: Taste of Home's Complete guide to Baking, they have this one to go with the Buttermilk Chocolate. I ended up doubling because I had almost 40 cupcakes. But for the regular recipe it calls for:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups confectioners sugar
4 to 5 tsp milk

Cream butter, shortening and vanilla in a large bowl. Gradually beat in confectioners sugar and enough milk to achieve a spreading consistency. Once I had the frosting complete, I separated it into 3 bowls and colored one olive green, one tan, and the last brown. I used a large star tip and coupler set to get the swirl effect I was looking for.

 They were yummy and just about gone before the days end!

Print Recipes

It all started with a box (part 2)...my journey into my own home business

"Sunshines" 1st birthday cakes: baby jungle theme

2nd birthday party: Minnie Mouse theme

I am still looking for Sunshine's 3rd birthday picks: it was My Little Pony theme

4th birthday party: Princess theme 

We lost the pictures on the camera to her 5th birthday: it was Tom and Jerry theme

6th birthday party: Dolphin theme

From my post here I ended with discussing the recent conversation of "you should do this for people" It got me really thinking and praying. I have been asking the Lord for quite a while about work that I could do from home. I currently work three part time jobs outside the home and with the help of my mother-in-law, homeschool our daughter. Someday I will do a post on how that all works. Add in co-op, 4H, church ministries and all that goes in to keeping a home; my plate is full and I don't believe this is sustainable for me... for us. My heart is for being at home and homeschooling our daughter. But I also need to help contribrute to the budget area. We have become as frugal as they come and we have zero debt besides our home, but things are still tight! I have tried other work at home opportunities that I loved. But they just weren't the best fit for our family. So what else Lord, what can I do?...

In the process of praying and figuring this whole thing out I came across something I read somewhere- to write down what you love, what you are passionate about, what makes your heart soar. I wrote down several things and the funny thing is party designing/planning was not on the list. Creating was but not "party creating". In fact I was in the middle of checking some other opportunities out, when it was again said to me "you know, you should do this"... and the idea hit me. Then the name came: Singing Honey Bee Designs. My name Melissa means honey bee and creating makes my heart sing (and I love to sing too). So with my husbands blessing and lots of prayers I am going on this journey of starting my own kid's birthday party design/planning business. I hope to share with you here the in's and out's, trials and errors of starting a new home business and all the fun parties to come! I am excited, scared, nervous, and did I say excited- about all of this!

What about you? Have you or are you starting your own home business? Please share!

It all started with a box...

 

A Valentine box that is. Sunshine's new favorite animal is the baby black panther. Did you know that a black panther is just a jaguar that is born black? Did not know this until we watched Wild Kratts on PBS. Anyways she loves them and after I helped her make this valentine box for her co-op class party she informed me that she wanted a baby black panther birthday party. WHAT!?
This is the conversation that ensued: "No Sunshine not that for a party theme. Not black! Not black frosting and black party decor. No way!" "I thought you wanted a pony party?" "Well now I want this party, mom!" "Pretty Please!!!!!" Then she, in her first grade hand writing, hands me a letter stating how much she loves/wants a baby black panther party. She wins, after all she did do extra credit in handwriting practice (music to this homeschooling mom). So a mom that loves to create fun parties for their child gets to work. I ended up coming up with what amounts to baby black kitty party. I had intentions of printing more baby panther photos and adding them to the decor but my printer decided to go on strike. So this is what we ended up with and she loved it.

I knew that I would be using lots of black but I did find the cute pink and purple leopard print items at Walmart and they went well with what I had already started. 

For starters we made these adorable cards to invite her friends and family.

I took black card stock and with a black marker put the spots on (Sunshine help with some of this). Then I hand cut the pattern using an oval and then adding 2 rounded triangles for ears. I taped the ears on and this gave me a template to make many more kitty faces. Once we added the eyes and nose Sunshine also enjoyed helping to add the whiskers and smiles to the kitty's. 

Then we added kitty faces to black cups, which we filled with thank you goodies. I added black ears to the large plates too.

I made these cute kitty hair bands too. Will have to do a tutorial on this some day.

For activities during the party we did these fun kitty wands. I actually came across a sale for the printed duct tape B1G1 Free. And look they had a cute leopard print tape! We used this to hold all of the items to the stick.

We also did: 'learn how to draw a kitty' pages. Everyone also made there own mini kitty pizzas to lunch on.

For decorations I made these fun yarn balls for garland. I used different yarn to wrap around foam balls and a dab of hot glue at the top to keep the yarn from unraveling.

I made fringed paper streamers by taking black paper streamer and folding it in half length wise. Then just cut a bit into the open part of the fold.

Then for something new I wanted to try, I taped faces to some balloons. They turned out cute!

My friend from Dumpster Diving Darling lent me the bird cage and some stands that she made (they are the ones with food on them). Her post on how to epoxy items together is here and the 2 black kitty's we found for only 65 cents each at a local thrift store.

the silver and black stands were made by my friend Heather

My hubby rents the cupcake stand where he works so we got to borrow it for the day. And speaking of cupcakes: the cake itself was made from scratch (it was a dark chocolate recipe). I will have to share another time. But the frosting came from a can. I frosted them and cut the licorice for whiskers and Sunshine decorated them herself. She used small Hershey kisses for the ears, pearl green Sixlets candy for the eyes, red jelly bean for nose, and black licorice for whiskers. She had fun creating! 

So in the middle of all this birthday planning fun my mother-in-law asked me what the theme was for this year. I told her and in the conversation she said "you know you should do this for people". And she has not been the first one to say this. hmmm.....I have been praying to the Lord asking Him to give me a vision on what I can do to help with income but also be home with Sunshine as much as possible. So the wheels are turning...



All photos in this post were taken by myself. Copywright Singing Honey Bee Designs 2014.