Go Ravens!!!

If you love cupcakes and the Ravens, you're sure to love these!  I hope I didn't post this too late, because I'd love to make them again for the Superbowl and I'm sure you will too!  I made them earlier this year and just had to do it again for the Ravens v. Pats game.

They are so cute and so easy.  Sure to be a party favorite!

All you need is cupcakes (whatever flavor you want) and white icing.  I made my own icing, but I'm sure store bought would work too.  Last time I made them I dyed the icing purple, this time I accidently skipped that step, but they turned out great anyway!

Here is how you do it:

Ingredients: 

• Cupcakes
• White Icing
• Red icing
• Mini chocolate chips
• Black licorice (Twizzlers)
• Mini marshmallows
• Purple sugar crystals
• Leftover white icing

Steps:

1. Pour the purple sugar crystals out on a plate.  After you icing your cupcakes dip them into the purple sugar crystals to cover the icing in purple.
2. Cut the licorice into about 1" to 1.5" segments and then cut them in half long ways.  These will be the eyebrows on the raven.  You could use Twizzler pull and peels, but I feel like the normal twists have more dimension and look more like eyebrows. 
3. Put two mini marshmallows right below the eye brows for the eyes.  The icing will hold them in place.
4. Use the red icing as a glue to put the mini chocolate chips on the marshmallows.  Make sure you have enough red icing so that you can see it around the edges of the chocolate chips.  You gotta have those Raven red eyes!
5. Finally, pipe the leftover white icing into a upside down triangle for the beak.
6. Enjoy!

Last time I made these I also made Angry Bird cupcakes.  The steps are almost the same and the ingredients are just a little different:

• Instead of purple sugar crystals, use red
• For the beak I used Brach's Orange slices cut into small triangles
• Skip the step with the red icing and use white to hold down the chocolate chips

This is horrible picture, but it's all I have of the first time I made them.  It's hard to see, but you can kind of tell that I dyed the icing red and purple here (but like I said, it doesn't make a difference if you cover it in sugar crystals!)

Organization Idea!

For anyone who has as many scarves as I do, you know that it's annoying trying to find places to store them.  I had them exploding out of my coat closet to the point where I couldn't shut the door.  So here is a super easy and cheap solution to the problem-Shower hooks!

All I you need is a pack of cheap shower hooks (these were about $1.95 at target) and a hanger...and voila!

So easy!

Obviously you wouldn't hang it from a door...it fits perfectly between your coats in the closet!

Busy Holidays

The holidays are always busy for everyone, and this year I don't know what happened!  One day it was Thanksgiving, the next day, Christmas.  Despite my many efforts to start a new project nothing really got off the ground because of the chaos that was decorating.  For anyone who decorates their house for Christmas, you know that that in itself is a crafters project.  I put up two trees (one real and one fake), decorated my banister, hung a line for Christmas cards, and spruced up every available area of my house with elves, candles, candy, potpourri, floral arrangements, and wreaths. 

One thing that I did get to create were gift tags for all the gifts that I wrapped.  Unfortunately, that is the only thing that came out of my craft room this season.

Here is the only picture I have of some: 

Some things that I did to create my gift tags:

• Used left over cards from last year (usually one's with dimension to them)
• Cuttlebugged Christmas paper 
• Used ribbon to thread through paper and to decorate the package
• Used my Cuttlebug to die cut letters for peoples names