Christmas Cupcake Tree

Seems weird to be writing about Christmas, but I'm trying to keep everything in order.  It's kinda fun to see my progress, now, looking back.

As soon as my son's birthday is past, Thanksgiving blows into my kitchen.  Sadly, we couldn't all get together but son had received a frozen turkey LAST year from his company and was fearing the Christmas ham that was coming, due to lack of freezer space.  Frozen turkey lasted a year because said son didn't know what to do with it, so I had him thaw the bird in his fridge and bring it over for feasting on Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend with the requirement that I would show him how to cook it and all the other "required" Thanksgiving treats. 

No matter how many years I make Thanksgiving dinner, for some reason it's still slightly intimidating.  It's truly easy - we don't do anything "fancy", just stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, veggie, and pie.  Unless it's a BIG family get together, in which case there is a veritable blessed MOUNTAIN of food.  But, it was just my husband and one son and me, so we only had enough excess to make us all happy with the leftovers.

What's that got to do with cupcakes?  Not a damn thing.  That's the point … I never got to make the cupcakes with the turkey decoration that we did in my class.   Oh well, next year.

Christmas Cupcakes

But, just a couple of weeks later I went to a luncheon where everyone brought something and I volunteered (or maybe someone else volunteered me) cupcakes!  What better way to see if my skills were getting better?

They came out so pretty!  I hated to take them  anywhere and let them be eaten.  I just wanted to LOOK at them!  They were a hit at the luncheon and right before we devoured them, I realized I hadn't taken any pictures of them!  They were simply repeats of the ones I learned in my decorating class but this time they weren't as wobbly.  All together, displayed on an acrylic stand, they were the perfect decoration and I really wanted to remember them.  Here's a photo from my phone, the colors are off but at least I have something to remember them by.

Here's what I mean by seeing progress:  the first photo is a cupcake I decorated in class, the second one is the "practiced" one.

Before

After

Before

After