Cupcake Fun

Life being somewhat chaotic at the moment, we celebrated Abi's and Luke's birthdays on the same day - June 25th. Luke really likes Red Velvet Cake, so about two weeks ago I whipped up a batch of red velvet cupcakes and threw them in the fridge. On Thursday, I pulled them out and made up some cream cheese frosting while Abi was on a special breakfast date with grandma. Lily was something close to helpful in the taste testing trials - we decided to add a little more powdered sugar than the recipe suggested. She gave the final result a finger lick and an enthusiastic "Mmmm-mmmm!"

Abi helped with the cupcake frosting during Lily's morning nap. Abi wanted to know if we could lick the knife between cupcakes. A fine idea if you ask me, but we opted to wait when I noted that there would be frosting left over for us to dip Teddy Grahams in. Then I got a cute idea: what if we put Teddy Grahams on top of the cupcakes like happy little dancing bears? I floated this by Abi, but she thought it might be better to put jelly beans on top of each cupcake. So, she completed the final garnish. I think they turned out very nice!

The rest of the party food was a re-work of dinner two nights prior - leftover cuban black beans + cream cheese = black bean chip dip; leftover chicken filling + cream cheese + corn tortillas = taquitos. Ya-Ya added her famous guacamole which was a big hit!

I think we will name this dual birthday party the "Red Velvet Hello Kitty Fiesta". A name that is equally delightful for a four year old girl, and a thirty-three year old man.

Yesterday Abi and I bought a gift for Luke. A bicycle water bottle cage and some of his favorite candy to use as "filler", kind of like tissue paper in the bag. Luke's other gift is going to see the new transformer movie tonight, so I thought movie candy would be in order. We discussed keeping the gift a secret, and Abi has done a masterful job on that count. One fine detail we left out was keeping the hiding place a secret. Abi divulged that one with a simple question from her daddy.

Here are the rest of the pictures from the big event which included Ya-Ya, Lydia and Tyler, Sully and Natalie, and our family: