This proves I can do anything - sorta

Most of you may not know that I hate to cook. It's not that I CAN'T cook, I just don't like to. That's why the "Just call me Julia Child" post was my little brand of sarcasm. 'Cuz I'm the complete opposite of Julia Child.

There are like 4 girls that I work with & we always celebrate birthdays. We take turns making each other some sort of dessert. And it's a BIG joke at work about my (lack of) cooking ability. But that's ok - it's the truth - I can deal with that.

My turn has come around & I decided to really go all out. The girl whose birthday it is is a really good cook. She's creative & likes doing it. So I felt kinda lame just making her brownies or something ya know? So she had this book of decorating cupcakes. I'm talking Turkey cupcakes, spaghetti & meatball cupcakes, animal cupcakes, spiders & spider web cupcakes. Yea - hard stuff. So I stole, er I mean, borrowed her cupcake book & looked through it for something I thought she'd appreciate. After searching the book, I decided on sunflowers because: #1 - they seemed the easiest out of everything in the book & #2 - I like sunflowers. (Ya'll know I'm selfish...)

So I bought all the ingredients & borrowed food coloring from another girl at work & I was ready to go. I started by "practicing" the petals for the flowers. Yeah, um - not too good... Then I had to color the icing green & put it on the cupcakes. I started with 24 cupcakes to decorate. That's quite a tall order...

Then I had to add oreos for the center of the flower. And Brad laughed at me when I asked him, "Do you think I can do this?!" He answered, "uh...no...you're not patient enough!" Amen, B-rad, Amen...

There were regular sized oreos & mini-oreos. After I put leaves on the regular oreos, I didn't have enough room to navigate the leaves onto the mini-oreos.

So I decided to compromise from the instructions & just go with a regular sized oreo.

And after I did like 12 of them, I started to get the hang of it.

Remember how I told you I started with 24?! Well, I had to do an old-school, playground pick of the best looking, most presentable sunflower cupcakes.

The little red m&m's are supposed to be lady bugs. Cute huh?! But after all the work & food coloring stained hands, I didn't have the energy OR patience to mix black frosting & put little dots & lines on them. They're just plain red m&m's sitting on a cupcake. Use your imagination, would ya?!

And ya'll know I can't lie to you... so I must admit that I did make another dessert to take with me in case the sunflowers were a bust. They're peanut butter bars. And they.are.delicious. And they are a tad more difficult than throwing eggs & water & oil into brownie mix - so that makes me feel a little better about kinda going to some trouble to make her dessert.

Cook? No. Pastry chef? Nu uh. Master griller? Nope. Ability to weave an otherwise dull story about cupcakes into something amusing?! I hope so!