happy new year!

 happy new year! i hope everyone had a great end of 2010 and a greater start of 2011. i, for one, had a spectacular last day of the year by pretending i'm 5 years old and seeing my favorite characters in toy story 3 on ice with 3 special people, followed by unexpectedly catching prettiful fireworks in philly, a delicious dinner at 5 guys, then dinosaur cupcakes and games with friendsies, and most importantly seeing the backstreet boys and new kids on the block perform on tv together, ending with a quick victory of a difficult level of wii's donkey kong.  heaven! i just wanted to write that so i can look back a year from now and remember how awesomely childish my year started.

i should probably be posting some artwork for my first real post of the new year, since that's the main focus of my blog, but this is so much better. dinosaur cupcakes! for new years eve and new years day, i baked and decorated some dino-shaped cupcakes. i spent far too many hours since i needed to use the dino pan in the oven multiple times and decorating took time to figure out the best way. not to mention my first batch was falling apart while trying to handle them. i was forced against my will to eat a triceratops when his head fell off.

for christmas, tim gave me tons of baking and cupcake decorating supplies and books, so i have a lot of decorating ahead of me. erik (chef erEEK) gave me the dino pan for christmas, so i decided to make them for new years in lots of fun colors. i'm a huge fan of excessive icing, but unfortunately in order to make these particular ones look good, icing was limited.  they still tasted delicious i thought, but could have used more icing.  i plan to buy more shaped pans so i can make even more different and awesome cupcakes so stay tuned!