Hello Poor & Pretty readers! I’m Suzi, Sami’s older sister and I love making cupcakes! Recently my daughter’s {Scarlett, who you may remember from the diy cucumber mask video} school PTA hosted a family fun night with tons of activities for the whole family, including bowling, face painting and Bingo! It was a great way to spend an evening with your kids.

Being the cupcake lover that I am, I volunteered to have a “Design Your Own Cupcake” station with my trusty sidekick Kaylie. With the help of the PTA, I gathered up all the supplies we would need: 200 cupcakes {yes, you read that correctly}, 12 tubs of frosting, food coloring, and more candy and sprinkles than even Willy Wonka’s factory has! Clearly, these were the makings of a great night! I dyed the frosting four different colors and also had chocolate for those with a more classic cupcake palate. Each topping had its own bowl and spoon to keep things neat and sanitary.  Additionally, each child had to have signed permission from their parents before they could dive into my cupcake heaven {because you never want to mess around with food allergies}.

I don’t know who had more fun — the kids or the parents! I don’t believe there is anything better than getting together with your family to create beautiful, colorful, fantastically fun art that you can eat!

Happy Cupcaking!
-suzicakes

For my birthday, Suzi decided to make these deliciously adorable mini cupcakes, petits fours, from the Hello Cupcake book. These pastel and bright colors are perfect for spring, but with food coloring you can create all kinds of colors to be used for any occasion. These would be really cute for Independence Day, too, maybe red, white and blue cupcakes?

Tip: I didn’t get a photo of this, but to achieve the super-smooth frosting look all you have to do is microwave the frosting for about 10 seconds, stir it thoroughly because sometimes the food coloring separates, then dip the top of the cupcake slowly into the frosting. If you twist the cupcake in the frosting a little bit, then gently swirl it up and out of the frosting, it will settle smoothly across the cupcake. Next time, I’ll try to get pictures of this step!

Happy Memorial Day! :)

We had so much fun at the BUST Spring Craftacular yesterday. It was amazing how much talent was oozing out of The Warsaw in Brooklyn! We’ve never been in a room with so much talent before… it was so inspiring. There were vendors selling jewelry, makeup, handmade soaps, crocheted critters, clothing, stationery, posters, and so much more. We didn’t take too many photos {we were so busy shopping and chatting!}, but we grabbed images from the websites of our favorite vendors to share with you here.

I don’t know how we didn’t go really broke buying everything from New York Couture. We were obsessed with all of their handmade garments and flashy accessories, especially the birthday cake dress, cupcake shirt, and panda dress {worn by Audrey Kitching!}. We decided we need to sign up for sewing classes — anyone have any recommendations?

Verameat was another great discovery. She seemed to be as obsessed with vampires as we are, and we swooned over her vampire teeth necklaces and rings, like the one shown above that Mish bought. Plus, Vera was a total sweetheart.

We were really excited to finally meet Luca, the mastermind behind Lollibomb Beauty. Even with her glasses on, she exudes what Weezer would call raditude. Luca gave us great advice about making your own cosmetics and how to use packaging to really stand out. With her neon cheetah patterned bags and pink Chinese takeout boxes, she should know! We also loved her strawberry margherita lip balm and cupcake bath soap — yum! We wish we could have grabbed drinks with her after, but we were all wiped out. Next time, Luca!

Pinecone + Chickadee was Stan’s favorite vendor. Even though none of us have babies, he wanted the blue owl onesie “for the future.” Their simplistic approach yields many adorable items of clothing for adults, kids, and babies, plus supercute tote bags and nifty cards.

For all of you crafty folks or fans, we will be attending BUST Magazine’s Spring Craftacular held on Sunday, May 23rd {the day before my birthday!} at The Warsaw, 261 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY from 11am – 7pm! This is our first Craftacular and we’re totally pumped! We’ll be taking lots of photos, talking to fellow crafters, and, of course, shopping!

What’s a Craftacular, you ask? It’s pretty much the best craft fair this side of the Mississippi, featuring over 50 crafty folks/sellers, DJs, drinks, and even dancing! This year’s vendors include Lollibomb Beauty, Kiva Ford, and tons of other local crafters, selling handmade cosmetics, glass sculptures, recycled notebooks, handmade jewelry, clothing, and so much more. For a full list of vendors, click here. This year’s Craftacular is sponsored by ModCloth, whose indie/retro clothing and accessories we can’t get enough of.

We saved these cupcakes for Easter, and they were a big hit! We still have a few left over, but I’ll tackle one or two tonight after I eat the leftover honey ham. My family may not be religious, but we LOVE Easter. I love getting together with my family and I love honey baked ham, and Easter is the only time we eat a honey baked ham. This year, Suzi, Stan, and I did all of the cooking… and we’re still not sure how my Dad got away with that. Probably because he spent all day Saturday replacing our water heater. >_< Though there were definitely too many cooks in the kitchen, we had a good time and, luckily, we made the cupcakes the night before.

We used a recipe from Hello Cupcake again, and Suzi was excited to learn that they have a new book, What’s New, Cupcake?, which I’m sure she’ll be picking up from the book store soon. If you end up trying this recipe for next Easter (or just for fun!), we do recommend making the cupcakes the night before you plan to serve them. Because the frosting grass is all done by hand, it takes a while to do and it’s a good idea to let the frosting sit and harden a bit overnight so it isn’t runny when you try to eat it.

I somehow got stuck making the feet again and I helped dip a few cupcakes in the “dirt” {do you think Suzi is trying to tell me something?}. Scarlett {Suzi’s 7-year-old daughter} and I also helped decorate the grass cupcakes with eggs {Whopper’s Robin Eggs} and flowers {okay, they were really stars, but no one could tell the difference!}. And yes, they tasted just as yummy as they looked :)