A Festive Fourth

Last week was my first full week of summer, since I finished summer school the week before. Let's just say I went a little crazy with all the time on my hands. Stewart's family was having a big Fourth of July get-together, so I decided to make some decorations and desserts. I'm not normally very crafty, so I pretty happy with how my star garland turned out. (Directions on Martha Stewart's website.)

I even managed to find some uses for the leftover paper:

I had been holding on to an picture of Corn on the Cob Cupcakes that I ripped out of a magazine a while ago, and decided that this was the perfect occasion to try it. I'm somewhat of an overachiever when it comes to baking, so I refused to just make the cupcakes from a box. Instead I spent way too much time searching for the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe and spent $5 on special turbinado sugar, only to have the cupcakes come out heavy and bland. But it didn't really matter, because noone really ate them! They probably didn't want to have to pick off all the jelly beans before eating a cupcake, but I just told myself that they were too cute to eat. Luckily I had also made my Strawberry Cupcakes, which were much better received in terms of taste. But you can't beat these Corn on the Cob Cupcakes when it comes to cuteness!

The 'kernels' are Jelly Belly's (lemon, coconut, and buttered popcorn flavors), the 'butter' is lemon Starburst, and the 'pepper' is black decorating sugar. Cute, huh?

I'll post some more pictures from the day soon!