The Good Shepherd

Oh my craziness! There has been so much change going on this last week!

It hit me that in 10 weeks. That’s right. 10. I will have a little bundle of joy that relies on me for his every need and whim.

Scary cool.

We are moving! 

Whose idea was it to move at 8 months pregnant, so I get to pack up my entire life at 7 months pregnant? Oh right. Mine. 

Yay! for more space? 

However I am so looking forward to getting to decorate a nursery now…

In addition to packing I am suffering from some sort of cross between nesting and panic to get all my projects done before said bundle of joy arrives. 

So that I can bask in the bliss of his presence. 

An you know, take a lot of naps. 

I have been more productive this past week than I think I have been since college and I had a 20-page class thesis due in 12 hours.

More change, I’m not teaching my adorable class of 4 year olds at church anymore. Last Sunday was my last time as their teacher. 

Good, because chasing them around, as my belly grows ever bigger was getting to be something of an Olympic feat. 

Sad because I have seen them grow up so much in the last year and watched their little personalities just explode with character. Love those kiddos.

For the last 4 weeks (or longer) the kiddos have been asking me to bring cupcakes for the class.

I brought Ding Dongs once as a treat. They were on sale and I didn’t want to eat the whole box so I thought sharing was a good way to go. Didn’t realize I was setting up some expectations on treats…

So for our last class I made cupcakes decorated like sheep (it fit in with our lesson).

I had seen a ton of cute ideas floating around pinterest, but not really any good directions. 

So I decided to just kind of wing it.

This is a little what I felt like at first:

Though mine turned out cuter I think! And let's be honest... I was decorating for 4 year olds who are more concerned with the sugar content than how professional my cupcake skills are..

What I used:

Box cake mix (and accompanying ingredients according to package)

Normal size marshmallows (Think s'more size)

Mini marshmallows

Wilton's black decorating icing (The kind used for like, writing names an stuff)

Chocolate frosting

1 Tooth pick

For packaging:

The widest little clear solo cups

Gallon size zip lock bags

Curly ribbon

I made the cupcakes according to the box. Let them cool completely. You do not want to attempt this with melting frosting. Trust me.

Once the cupcakes are cool, you can frost them, but just one at a time! You want the frosting to still be nice an sticky so that the marshmallows stick nice.

I cut the normal size marshmallow in half and used that as my “face”. I colored it with the decorating icing so it would stand out from the “wool” marshmallows. Then I just cut a mini marshmallow in half on a diagonal (corner to corner), and stuck the center sticky part to my “face” at the top corners. Voila. 

Ears. 

I colored those with the decorating icing too. 

(It’s kind of like coloring using a glue bottle, and just about as messy.)

Then I filled in the rest of the frosting with mini marshmallows to make the sheep fluffy!

They still looked a little off, and Hubby pointed out that they needed eyes. He was right.

So I smushed around a little pinch of marshmallow in my fingers and then tried to stick it on the face. 

It much preferred to stick to my finger. 

This is where you need the toothpick. Use it to stick your eyes down. Then use the other end to dip into the chocolate frosting and then onto those little smushed marshmallow balls. This makes the “eye”.

This process was a little time consuming, so I only made as many as I thought I would have kiddos in my class. Even with Hubby’s help (he was commissioned to frost and do the mini marshmallow “wool” – though I think he ate almost as many marshmallows as he used…) It still took us about 45 minutes to do 8.

Then I packaged them in the little solo cups. 
It's scary, but the only way to get them in is to just kind of drop em in. 

They’ll be fine. 

And it even pulled the decorations in a little so they looked more put together. Ha!

Then I cut the zip part off of the zip lock bags and put the cup inside, tying it Easter basket style with ribbon at the top.

Sadly, I forgot to get any pictures of the finished packaged cupcake. Oops.

But here they are halfway packaged!

I think they turned out pretty cute!