Cupcakes and the end of "Birthday Season"...

I know I've been absent the past few days, sneaking in posts in the late hours of the evening, but there is a good reason. March 25 marks the last birthday of "Birthday Season" in the Nagle household. You don't know what "Birthday Season" is? Well, let me tell you. With the conclusion of the "Holidays" our family just segues into "Birthday Season". Two days after Valentine's is Valiant's birthday, followed ten days later by Charming's birthday and concluding 27 days later with Buttercup's birthday. This year was especially festive (and busy) because the kids all had milestone birthdays: one became a teenager, one became an adult, and one hit double-digits. (I'll admit, the whole "double-digits" one was a surprise to me, but hey, I went with it!) I'll freely admit it...I'm tired.

Yesterday was Museum Day, so we hit the museum to see our friends, then we suprised Buttercup (and Valiant - Charming was working) with Olive Garden for dinner (we had saved gift cards) and then I took Buttercup shopping for some clothes (that is all she wanted this year--she's growing up! No more Barbie Pink.) Tomorrow we join a bunch of homeschoolers for a get together and, in honor of Buttercup's birthday, we are bringing cupcakes. Now, of course, I could have bought the lovely Costco cupcakes and made this a quick and easy thing, but I decided I could do it myself (even though I've never decorated a cupcake in my life). Since Thursday is also the day I make some treat for Superman to take to his office for his Friday meeting, I just doubled the number of cupcakes I needed (which meant two boxes of cake mix) and went for it. Because I combined regular-sized cupcakes with minis, I ended up with close to 60 cupcakes. As if that weren't enough, I even decided to brave the dreaded pastry bag to make the frosting swirly. Buttercup wanted blue frosting for all of them, but I used up every last bit of vanilla frosting mix I had (next time I'll make it from scratch, but this was the powdered stuff), so I switched to chocolate and used up every last bit of it, too. I now know that doing cupcakes the right way uses a ton of frosting--I'll plan better the next time.

So, tomorrow evening Buttercup will have two friends over and they will have pizza and Cold Stone and birthday season will officially conclude...

... and, this year at least, spring break begins...sigh...

P.S. I promise to be back posting new recipes and new craft ideas, as well as some easy sewing projects in the next few days...I just have to get the candy confetti cleaned up.