Cursing CupCakes

Its 1am and I am in my kitchen covered in flour, powdered sugar, and red food dye. I am not a baker.  I am a seamstress.  I am a designer.  I am a writer.  I am many many things.  I am not a baker.  I am also not perfect and if anyone reading this believes me to be and wishes to retain that image be warned and stop reading now. 
Caleb's Razorback party is tomorrow, scratch that it's today,  and in an effort to not be rushed I decided to make his cupcakes today.  Lately, we've be having cupcakes for birthday parties for a number of reasons.  Well let me just number them for you. 
1.  I'm frugal.  There are a couple of bakeries in Fayetteville that I adore but I do not adore their prices.  It's cake people! We are going to eat it and then it will be gone.  I don't care how cute it is or how much my guests will ooh and ahh over it.  It's cake. period
2.  My favorite stay at home mom baker made some well earned changes and isn't doing birthday cakes anymore.  I would be bitter but I love you anyway :) and believe me I understand like no one else could.
3. Cupcakes are easier to decorate than a whole cake.  Well in theory anyway.
4. Did I mention I'm frugal.  Cheap, tight, call it whatever you want.  I didnt want to spend money on the cake when I've already spend a small fortune on the gifts, food, and party essentials.
5.  I am a creative, talented girl,  I can make cupcakes-  ha!

Okay that's enough numbers.  So anyway I found a picture online of some darling Razorback cupcakes and Caleb loved them.  I made the cupcakes from store bought cake mix, yeah yeah I know cheating- whatever.  I found a recipe online for a simple buttercream icing I thought would work well and then was worried one batch wouldn't be enough so I doubled it :). 
I quickly realized I had enough icing to cover Baum Stadium.  Oops, oh well I calm down and eat a cupcake using some of the extra icing. One had to be sacrificed for quality control purposes.
     So I divided my icing to make red, black, and white.  Mix in my red paste....... pink.  Mix in more red.....dark pink, hmmmm.  I've mixed icing before with this same paste.  At this point I probably should have thought a little harder but it was getting late so I calmed down, ate another cupcake and  just dumped in the entire new container of red paste.... still sorta pink.  Pigs may be pink where you're from but around here they're red- dark red! Curse--- not an actual curse that would be wrong and I would never do that (except in rare skiing accidents and I apologized profusly for that) After taking time to think it through and eating another cupcake (true) I added a little black and came up with a color I could live with but its still not right.  At this point my kitchen looked like this and I was thinking very bad thoughts about my cupcake skills. 

I'm not even sure why the salad dressing is on the island?? I didn't use it in the frosting, promise :).  Its late I'm tired and I realize there is no way these are going to look right.  I start slappin icing on cupcakes all the while making plans to make a trip to the bakery in the morning and pay whatever they want for whatever they have.
Calm down eat another cupcake-  just kidding.  by this point I was about sick and I figured I should save one for breakfast. 
I decided I should just put on the base layer and add snouts, tusks, and such tomorrow.  But I had to make finish a couple just out of curiousity and I'm pretty darn happy with the final results. 

    

I don't think I'll be getting a job as a cupcake decorator anytime soon but that's okay by me. I think my birthday boy is going to think they are awesome and that is all I need! Well that and maybe some bleach to get all the red off my hands.  Come by tomorrow and help us celebrate.  I'll send you home with some pink icing :).