Ugly brass lamps

I'm sure you all have been to goodwill before, if not, you should go! there is so much good stuff! (if you dont mind cleaning things up and giving them a new life!) so, because we are moving soon and are in need of things to make our space a home, I wanted to hop into Goodwill to check out what they had. (I tend to do that often..)

I found some ugly brass lamps, you know, the ones that everyone has at some point and can't wait to get rid of.. maybe something like this?

We paid attention to the shape of the lamps, not worrying about if they matched or not. oh! and make sure that you check the lamps before you buy.. luckily, they set up an outlet at the lamp section with a couple light bulbs. these were good to go!

We ran into walmart and bought some black flat spray paint (I love the flat because it makes it look modern, but not shiny). Also bought some nice lamp shades, they were also pretty modern and a neutral color that goes with the master bedroom idea (in my head).

and voila! new lamps! Andrew even mentioned how he liked that they weren't the same and were unique!

my shopping list:

• brass lamps:
• one for $7
• one for $4
• flat spray paint
• $2.40
• lamp shades
• 2 for $14 each
• TOTAL:  about $26 for 2 brand new lamps! and I must say, they look quite nice :)

Must be Magic!

Finally, here are the long overdue pictures of the magic cake!

now, if there are a few things ive learned from making cupcakes, it would be that I need to stop being so stingy with the batter and really fill the things up.

I planned on taking a picture of how puny my original cupcakes looked to the monstrous peanut butter ones, but forgot. so, imagine a small tiny, barely filled to the rim cupcake next to a spilling over with peanut-buttery goodness cupcake. ya, looks pathetic eh? therefor, i had to redo basically all of them.

the good news is that all the little decorations and icing turned out great!

another thing I've learned- do not try to dye your own icing black. I thought starting with chocolate might make it quicker, plus i needed the chocolate flavor for the icing. well, with my small little jar of gel coloring, i was not able to achieve my goal. so i tried with vanilla. (obviously), took much longer and still didn't turn out black black. I decided to run to publix and pay $4 for a pound of black black butter cream. that really makes things so much easier... 

here is the finished product!

if you are wondering how i achieved the top hat, i actually poured chocolate into a cake mold, one that releases with a buckle, and froze it. Surprisingly, it worked out great! Didn't even have to re-do anything! i covered it with the black icing because as mentioned before, i was unable to make chocolate black.

After i was done and let if cool, i added on the words for Brandon's 12 birthday! 

For the Oreo cake (SO easy!)

I took a yellow cake mix (helped bring out the oreo flavor), and added in about a cup of crushed up oreo.

 if you would like more oreo flavor, keep adding more! 

the icing was just vanilla icing, i made mine from scratch. typically you would crush up more cookies and sprinkle on top.

For the peanut butter cake

White cake mix

3/4C peanut butter (i use creamy)

for the icing, just a plain chocolate works great. I used dark chocolate for this one to be more black and it turned out delicious!

any other questions? ask!

oh, and p.s., Andrew is demanding I do a post about him or something at least interesting to him... (which is basically only motorcycles).  

...that post will come later.. :)