All I Want For Christmas

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'  Acts 20:35

Everybody knows that getting presents is one of the best things about Christmas. The one thing that's even better though is to be able to give them.  There is nothing better than seeing someone's reaction as they open up a surprise at Christmas. This year Ryan (my husband) and I got the chance to give a Christmas gift to someone who otherwise might not have had a Christmas at all through a program called Operation Christmas Child. This program sends gifts to under privileged children around the world. We got to pack a shoe box full of gifts to send along with the message of Jesus. We already can't wait to do it again next year!

In honor of all presents given or received this year I decided to create some "present" cupcakes. I decided to make 4 different present cupcakes. A red present, with a white ribbon, a green present with white ribbon, a white present with red ribbon, and a green present with red ribbon. I first started with the icing and mixed all the colors I needed and covered the cupcakes in icing. Then I began rolling out the fondant. I tried not to roll it out too thin because then the loops on the bows wouldn't stay up very well. I created two piece of equal length fondant and then crossed them on top of the cupcake. Then I started on the bow. I used two more equal lengths of fondant and I looped them both and then pinched them together in the center. Then I took a single shorter piece and wrapped it around the center of the two loops. Finally, I used two more equal lengths of fondant to create the tails of the bow. I made sure to cut the ends to look like ribbon as you can see in the picture. To assemble the bow on the cupcake I first used icing to secure the tails of the bow on the crossed pieces of the fondant. Then I used a little more icing to secure the bow on top of the tails. This might seem a little confusing but you can look at the pictures to follow.

These turned out so cute I almost wanted to put them under our tree, but then I remembered they were just cupcakes :)

Days till Christmas: 17 days