no more pencils, no more books!

I offered to make cupcakes for my daughter's end of the year party at school.  I had to make 75 cupcakes for the kids and their families (and only came home with 4 extras!), so I decided to have fun with flavors and not go overboard on the decorations.  HAHAHAHAHA.  Yeah, me not go overboard?  RIGHT.

I'm very much into pinwheels these days, so much so that I'm doing a pinwheel theme for my daughter's new bedroom.  So, I made a bunch of little pinwheels to top the cupcakes.  They are non-functioning as I didn't think it was probably a good idea to put tiny little pins on kids' cupcakes, but they're pretty cute anyway.

I did the pinwheels ahead of time.  Since I didn't have any double sided craft paper, and since Michael's only had grown up looking browns and rose colors with huge flowers in their double sided papers, I glued two pieces of paper together with a glue stick.  I keep accumulating craft paper packs and never seem to use them, so I didn't really want to buy more.  However, it did make for a tedious time of gluing 12x12" paper together.  After that little process, here is what I did:

1. cut 2" squares with a paper cutter out of double sided craft paper.
2. with one of the squares as a pattern, draw a diagonal line from one corner to the opposite corner, then again with the other corners to make an X across it.
3.  measure 1/4" from the center of each line.
4.  cut from the corner to the 1/4" mark of each line.
5.  with all 4 corners cut towards the center, use this as a template for cutting the remaining squares.
6.  bring the left cut side of each corner to the center and glue it in place with hot glue or tiny glue dots.  I used got glue and a toothpick.  I thought it'd be cheaper than using 4 glue dots per pinwheel.
7.  hot glue a lollipop stick to the back of each pinwheel.
8. place a dot of glitter glue in the center or glue a small button, sequin or other embellishment in the center of each pinwheel.

And you're done with phase one.  It should take you about 4 hours to do 75 little pinwheels.  You've got an extra 4 hours, don't you?  Who doesn't?

For the cupcakes, I tried to have some fun flavors for the kids:

ROOT BEER FLOAT
These were root beer and vanilla flavored cupcakes with vanilla frosting.  They tasted AMAZING - just like the real thing. (yes, I sampled each flavor; judge me all you want.)

MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP
I made these with a white cake recipe, added creme de menthe extract and chopped chocolate pieces.  The chocolate frosting rounded out the flavor nicely. I think real mint leaves would be tasty and much more grown up, but like my friend Beth said, the kids probably would have balked at having "vegetables" in their cupcakes.

BUBBLE GUM
I think these are the cutest.  I used Sixlets to look like gumballs.  The flavor was very bubble gummy, so I figured the kids would like them.  They did.

VANILLA AND CHOCOLATE
I rounded out the flavors with some basic vanilla and dark chocolate cupcakes.  My oldest daughter thought it'd be fun to make the vanilla frosting a "sunshiney" yellow since summer break is almost here.  I agreed.

It was a fun party for the kindergartners and their families, and it gave me an excuse to try out some fun flavor ideas so I could brag about myself to you.  You're welcome.

HAPPY SUMMER!!!