Happy Sunday! Today brings Garden Party Cupcakes! With so much Spring in the air (finally IS in the air for those on the East Coast of the US) there are lots of outdoor parties being thrown. Parties for Birthdays, Bridal Showers, Baby Showers and even for our upcoming Mother's Day on May 12th. We figured this was a great time to point out how you can use after holiday sales for something other than the holiday!

 Forgive the cell phone photo here. This was taken at my local Raley's Superstore. I looked at this adorable kit a week before Easter and thought, "Wow, that's SO cute!" Then I looked at the price...OUCH! $12.99! That is when I thought, "hey, the day after Easter these are going on sale for 50% off! I'll come back then and see if they have any of these kits left." Sure enough. I went back on Tuesday and they had a whole bunch of them in the 50% off bin! 

Every holiday has lots of cute things you can use for parties at other times of the year. Valentine's day Heart candy for wedding favors for your Spring wedding. Pumpkins for your Harvest themed wedding.  Beach themed decorations after Memorial or Labor Day Weekends. Even sales on twinkle lights after Christmas. You can take total advantage of these sales and save lots of money.

The other idea behind these cupcakes was to show that you don't have to be a master cake artist to have something pretty to eat on your table. I have a weakness for pretty plates. I have a whole bunch of single plates that I now use as dessert serving plates. None of them match but they are all loved. This one looks like a big pink flower so I though it was perfect for today.

For some reason I seemed to remember that I had paper doilies somewhere in my stuff. Turns out I was wrong. So I took some paper coffee filters, scalloped the edges with my scissors to make them decorative and smaller, and lined the plate with them. Yes, paper doilies would have been easier but this worked in a pinch.

Part of the decoration was also the liners. There were two types of liners with this set, the ones with the green zigzag lines and the ones with flower. Because they didn't have an Easter Chick design on the outside edge, though the green ones did have bunnies on the bottoms, I knew they would work well for our theme.

Sadly, purple doesn't photograph well. The icing on these is actually quite dark and vibrant but I just couldn't get it to photograph that way. Anyway, I used a large open star tip and piped "roses" on the top of each cupcake. For the video tutorial of this just click here for the Rose Tutorial Video.

Finally I used the pretty picks that came in the kit to decorate and finish the cupcakes. Everyone loved them and not one person mentioned Easter!

I'll be putting up a Garden Party Plan tomorrow on the Cherry Party Blog so I hope you take a few minutes to see how easy throwing a Spring Themed party can be!

Also, check us out on Facebook. We are giving tips and tricks for Brides and Grooms for the next two weeks!

See you next week when I bring you a very Disney Themed Party Cake!

Cat