Love Bug Cupcakes {Recipe}

A couple of months ago we made little Love Bug Cupcakes in honor of Valentine's Day. I thought they were so cute, took pictures of them, promptly lost them somewhere on my hard drive and then found them again and decided to write a post on how to make them! They were so cute, and so easy!

Start with a box of cake mix, the frosting of your preference, a bag of marshmallows, pull and peel twizzlers, red sugar crystals, and something for the eyes. We used Silver Dragees, even though you're not supposed to. It was what I had in my kitchen at the time.

 Make the cupcakes according to the boxed directions,and let them cool.  While they're cooling, go ahead and decorate the Marshmallows.  To do this, pour some of the red sugar crystals onto a plate.  Wet the marshmallow with water, then roll it in the red sugar crystals.  Then, just set them aside to dry.

While those are drying, you can go ahead and frost your cupcakes:

I didn't want to make them all into love bugs, so what I did was took a heart shaped cookie cutter, set it on top of the frosted cupcake, and sprinkled some red sugar crystals into the bounds of the cookie cutter.  Tip the cupcake from left to right to coat and then tip upside down to remove extra.

By now, your marshmallows should be dry.  Pull apart the Twizzlers, and cut them into small pieces for the antennae, and larger pieces for the wings.  All you do is stick them into the marshmallow.  Do the same for the eyes and the bug is done!  Now, stick a toothpick into the bottom of the bug, and then onto the cupcake.  Voila!  You have some beautiful love bugs!

My daughter just loved how cute they were!

I liked how they looked in groups alternating with the hearts.   I just thought they were adorable!  

Do you have any holiday crafts that you haven't posted?  Perhaps you should post them now!!!

I'm linking up here: 

St. Patrick's Day Crafts: Leprechaun Traps {Craft Tutorial}

This is our first year making leprechaun traps, and let me just say that Lily has been super excited to do this from the moment that we started gathering pebbles to make up our fake gold, to her drawing a schematic of what she wanted the trap to look like, to helping me design the trap.

We took up inspiration from several places, such as:

Root's and Wing's Leprechaun Traps
A Holiday Haven's: Leprechaun Traps that Work
A Holiday Haven's: How to Catch a Leprechaun
Disney Family Fun: To Catch a Leprechaun
Leprechaun Trap Photos

First, we started by talking about leprechauns.  I did a little bit of research ahead of time and picked and chose what our leprechauns would be like.   According to most Leprechaun folklore, any leprechaun, if ever captured by a human, the leprechaun has the magical power to grant three wishes in exchange for their release.  I decided this would be our reasoning why we should catch a leprechaun.  But why would the leprechaun be coming to our house anyway?

Well, Saint Patrick's day is an Irish holiday, and a darn good reason to dye rivers green, imho.  And while we're dying rivers green, why not invite the leprechauns in to our homes to steal our precious  gold?  Sounds like a great idea.  My four year old has been asking these sorts of questions, and I simply tell her that leprechauns are tricky like that.  So immediately, of course, she was on board with making the leprechaun traps.

First, we set out making a schematic for our trap:

Ok.  This was a great start.  It engaged her for a while, helped her practice her writing, and she had fun explaining what everything was.

We found a box that was perfect for the trap and she set about painting that while I prepped the stuff to paint our fake gold.  We had gathered some pebbles on our trip to the park the other day, I brought these home, washed them and they were ready to go.

I dumped them in a clean dry cottage cheese container that I had been saving to reuse in some craft projects.  Then I added a few drops of gold paint...

Then we shook them up, and dumped them on some aluminum foil to dry.

We built a simple cage made out of popsicle sticks and glued some poly fib*r*fill to the outside, and glued the rainbow on top of that.  We tied a string to the top of our cage so that the trap would actually work.

You can't really see the cage in this picture, and that's the point.  You don't want to give the trap away to the leprechaun, do you?

Overall, she and I both had fun with this project, and we both had fun making a working trap.  She thought it was hilarious that it actually worked when I made her take the gold and test it.

It will also be fun when we set it up on St. Patrick's day and see if we catch a leprechaun, or if he gets away and leaves us a special treat.  (Either way it will be cool!)

What are you and your family doing for St. Patrick's Day Crafting activities?  I'd love to hear about them!

I'm linking up to these St. Patrick's Day linky parties!

Link up here if you did something cool for St. Patrick's Day!!