The Cupcake Tower Blog

I am so inspired by the vibrant yellow and fuchsia colors in this photo submitted by Carrie from Sucre’ Dolce Bakehouse.  She made it for a belated Valentine’s Party and stated ‘It’s the only time of the year I get to use pinks for anything to do with my boys, so I take full advantage! They were white chocolate cupcakes with organic raspberry preserve swirls throughout, topped with White Chocolate buttercream, heart sprinkles and the most beautiful plump organic red raspberries!’  Ohhhhh, yum.

Perhaps it’s my cabin fever (oh HURRY UP already Spring), or it could just be my love for dramatic colors but I’m inspired on several levels here…inspires me to want to decorate a room, throw a party or the most dangerous - go shopping.  Well since my budget this month is dedicated to blue, green and everything else that says ‘baby boy’ on the way I’ll just do some “window” shopping online here… 

I recently redecorated my daughters ‘nursery’ to convert it to a gender neutral ‘kids room’ using bright, bold colors and I LOVE the results.  However, I’m tucking this in the back of my mind for future inspiration (given that I get her approval…miss independent that she is at a wise old ‘2′).  I found this on ‘How Stuff Works’ in the article ‘How to Design Children’s Room’s’.

I found this Rosette Bobby Pin in the Etsy store Brydferth.  If these are your wedding colors this is so simple and pretty, what a cute bridesmaid gift idea.

The ‘Bridal Bar Blog‘ recently posted some beautiful photos (flowers by Peony & Plum, photos by John Martorano Photography) of a wedding done in Peony Pink, Pale Yellow, Fuchsia and Red.  Just gorgeous…

On a more whimsical note…these pinwheels found in Etsy shop Rule42 are a creative alternative to traditional bouquets.  How fun!

Now for one of those ‘just for the heck of it’ purchases check out this keychain from Etsy store ‘SewMuchDetail’.

It was just a little over a year ago when the idea for The Cupcake Tower was born over a glass of wine and a delicious cupcake from a local bakery.  Granted it was another 3 months before the product launched and we sold our first Tower but hey, I like celebrating multiple Anniversaries!  For instance, my husband and I love to celebrate our ‘almost’ wedding Anniversary which is the day we were supposed to get married in Mexico before Hurricane Wilma decided to crash the party and lock us in our room for 4 nights…sigh – I digress.

Anyway, today we want to mark our 1 year ‘conception’ Anniversary with a nod to Lindsey, our very first customer who purchased her Tower from our Etsy store for her wedding.  Lindsey chose red ribbon detail which is still one of our more popular colors today.  Lindsey, you did us PROUD!  Thank you for sharing this photo.

Happy Anniversary to The Cupcake Tower.  I think I’ll go have a cupcake…

Ever since I received this photo of a Medium Tower from our customer Selah, owner of Nomelie Cupcakes in Parker, CO I seem to be noticing giraffe themes popping up everywhere (you know, the same way you buy a new car and suddenly everyone else on the road has one too!).   I love how she combined mini-cupcakes with regular.  My thought process of course is that one cupcake is never enough yet two cupcakes beg for heaps of guilt.  If the 2nd is a tiny though…1/2 the guilt!

Other guilt free indulgences might or might not include these adorable paper lanterns from World Market.   I first saw them on the phenomenal site ‘Hostess with the Mostess’ as she blogged about her ‘Mod Menagerie Baby Shower’

These giraffe sandwiches would surely evoke several ‘ooooh’ and ‘awwws’ just as they did from me.   Found on the site ‘Funky Lunch’ I couldn’t get enough of the gallery of cute creatures they’ve come up with.

Last but not least are these pacifier clips I found on the Etsy shop ‘Dots and Dashes Designs’ :

or these giraffe rattles, also on Etsy, by ‘Bundled’…SO CUTE!

I was so thrilled when our customer Carrie sent us these photos of the first time she used our Cupcake Tower.  Carrie is a cake artist and the owner of Sucre’ Dulce Bakehouse in Waldorf, MD and her creativity transformed the Tower into this elegant display seen below.  Her client wanted beaded ribbon so Carrie used glue dots for scrapbooking to adhere the ribbon knowing it would come right off with no problem after the event.

The Tower is just stunning once stacked with her gorgeous cupcakes and cake topper.  She offers flavors such as Vanilla Bean Buttercream (made with Sucre’ Dolce Bakehouses own homemade organic Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla extract  and organic Tahitian Vanilla Bean caviar) and Peanut Butter Cream (bestill my pregnant beating heart)…among many others, yum.   Thank you Carrie for sharing..and keep up the gorgeous and equally delicious work!

My daughter Grace turned two a couple of weeks ago (she and Oprah have the same birthday, how lucky for Oprah ) so we threw her a ‘colorful’ birthday party topped off with what else?  Cupcakes!  I drew inspiration for the decorations from some of my new favorite addictions…blogs!  I know I’m a bit behind on this bandwagon – I admit for awhile I was slightly anti-blog, just give me an old fashioned magazine.  But recently I’ve discovered some great sites that I can’t stay away from so be sure to check them out as I give them ‘props’ below.

One thing you’ll learn about me through this posting is I’m a bit cheap.  Well, ask my sister Joy and she’ll say ‘A BIT??’  Okay, okay – I’m CHEAP!  Like, when I order something online I save the packing paper that comes with it to recycle and use to ship your towers out…like, I pulled out all of the tissue paper from Grace’s gifts to re-use – TISSUE PAPER folks.  Shameless, I know.  But sometimes my ‘thrifty-ness’ just forces me to be a bit creative like with the ‘Happy Birthday Grace’  balloon banner pictured above.  I bought the balloons at the Dollar Store (the kind where everything really truly is $1).  I barely blew them up (by the way, for a quick laugh picture the very pregnant ME blowing these puppies up).  I printed out the letters on  my computer, cut them out and taped them to the balloons. Voila.  Super cute colorful banner for $1.

For ‘favors’ I had to consider that the kids would be ranging in age from 1 – 12 so any ‘toy’ idea was out.  Luckily my recent addiction to blogging exposed me to these Dipped Oreo Cookie Suckers on the fabulous site ‘How Does She’.  They were a HIT and I’m pretty sure the adults were jealous.  The bags were another Dollar Store find (my memory might be off here but I think they came in packs of 3) as were the pinwheels (also packs of 3?).  I filled the bottom of the bags with multi-colored jelly beans and that was that.

For decorations I wanted pom poms which you can buy on Etsy, or I think the craft stores sell kits as well.  Orrrrr, you can buy some tissue paper at (drumroll please) the Dollar Store and make them yourself!  They are time consuming but otherwise fairly simple.  Here’s a great tutorial I found on Casasugar.  The idea for the juice boxes with crazy straws (Dollar Store and Dollar Store!) just came to me and wound up so cute and colorful.

Last, but certainly not least was The Cupcake Tower.  I chose the Turquoise Ribbon, one of our newer selections and definitely one of my favorites.  It was an accident that the pom became the ‘topper’ as I literally set it there for a second to get it out of the way and decided it was too cute to take it off!  I made 4 different kinds of cupcakes (chocolate, gluten-free chocolate, lemon and vanilla) and spread them with various flavors of frosting (chocolate, chocolate peanut-butter, lemon buttercream and vanilla buttercream).  It was a full day of cupcake baking with perhaps one or two meltdowns along the way but let’s face it, I’m very pregnant so it wasn’t torture.  My favoite part was using our new pastry bags to decorate them with, I need a lot more practice than the 100 that I frosted here but they were by far my prettiest cupcakes to date!

Overall – the day made for one happy two year old and I had a blast putting it all together.  Happy Birthday Baby Girl.

I think we’re all starting to get a little anxious for Spring, so why not live a little bit in denial and go with a spring themed party for Valentine’s Day or for a girls’ birthday party featuring the cutest bug out there…ladybugs!  Start with some cute party supplies at Baby Shower Stuff.com. Paired with our ‘ladybug’ ribbon on your cupcake tower it’s a complete package:

Our customer Brianne says “Thank you so much for creating and selling the exact cupcake display that I had been wanting and searching for, for weeks. I have plans to use it for EVERYTHING.

 The first event that I used my cupcake tower for was a ‘Sugar and Spice’ baby shower. The table was covered with jars of different candy and the tower was like the crowning jewel in the center. I don’t know what people liked more, the cupcakes or their display!

And at the end of the shower, all I had to do was unstack it, put it flat in a shopping bag, and that was that. I LOVE IT!”

Thank you Brianne for sharing, what a beautiful, mouth-watering table you created!

We’re super excited to report that we were featured on Mom Invented last week. It’s a great article talking about how we started The Cupcake Tower, our inspiration and drive, and some of the challenges we’ve faced along the way.

Please check out the full article on MomInventors.com

If you are considering starting your own business we highly recommend exploring the Mom Inventor’s website, Tamara’s books, and other resources she recommends. They are a wealth of information and super helpful!

You know those women who throw a party and you harbor a tiny bit of spite for them because it looks as though it was staged for a magazine?  Yep, we’re pretty sure that’s our customer Lea Smith who recently shared some photos from two events that she hosted.  WE, by the way, harbor nothing but fuzzy warm feelings towards Lea because we get to see how fabulous the Tower can look when it falls into above said woman’s hands
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We’re back to blogging!  And we’re excited to start sharing some new ribbon choices as well as some great photos that our fabulous customers have been sharing with us. Stay tuned… we have some big plans for The Cupcake Tower in 2010 and it’s allllll good news!

For now, check out this Small Cupcake Tower decorated for ‘Hadley’s 1st Birthday’ by her mom, Heather. So Cute! Thanks Heather, and for submitting the photo you’ll get a ribbon pack of your choice for FREE!
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