An Artistic Birthday {the 'cake'}

As I mentioned yesterday, my little artist just celebrated her 8th birthday! It was a highly anticipated day, as it is for most children, and she had some high hopes for celebrating. We went out of town last weekend to visit family so that meant we'd be celebrating her birthday there with family and then again on her actual birthday. For the first celebration, I made an artist palette with cupcakes.

For the palette, I used foam board and just cut out a shape that resembled a paint palette. You can buy this at the dollar store or Dollar General - super cheap! An exacto knife or pocket knife will work just fine. I used a box cutter. Just be careful and go slowly. Be sure there is something underneath to protect your counter or whatever surface you are cutting this on.

The cupcakes were made with Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake Mix and a 15 oz can of pumpkin puree with a 1/4 cup water. Just mix it up and pour into cupcake pans about 1/2 full (3/4 full if you want a bigger cupcake). Bake according to package directions. {These cupcakes were dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free using all of these ingredients because my daughter is highly allergic to those 3 allergens. You can bake yours however you want, but these baked with pumpkin are so moist and delicious!}

For the icing, I used Pillsbury Vanilla icing {again because it contains no milk, egg or nuts}. Then, I added food coloring to make different colors for my 'paints'.

As you can see in the pic, I only put 8 cupcakes on the palette. The rest of the cupcakes were iced with plain white icing. My little artist was thrilled with these cupcakes. She declared me the best baker ever.

My job here is done.

Come back tomorrow and see what her second 'cake' looked like! She was just as excited, if not more. I even surprised myself with this one!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm sharing this with some of these friends.