I’m getting ready for St. Patty’s day today.

My Guinness corned beef has been braised and as soon as it’s cool, I’ll be attempting those reuben-stuffed cabbage rolls I asked your opinion about on my Facebook page last week. I have green on the brain.

So I’m not sure why, exactly, I felt compelled to make these Easter cupcakes. Today. In the middle of my disheveled kitchen with pots and pans strewn about.

But once these cute easter cupcakes got into my head I just couldn’t get ‘em out.

It didn’t help that Katie’s cute little friend Bella was coming over today and that the two of them together are just about the sweetest thing you’ll ever see. Both complete and total girlie-girls, they are all lip-gloss, fancy dresses and ponytails.

And so they need to have cupcakes!

I’m so not a cupcake decorator. But I had some cute pink paper baking cups, white basket easter cupcake wrap-arounds and plenty of sprinkles, peeps and candies to put on top. How could I not at least give it the ol’ college try?

And just for the record, this had absolutely nothing at all to do with anything resembling a cupcake craving on my part.

It was all for the kids.

I didn’t even use a from-scratch recipe for the cupcakes.

I know…gasp!!

I used a box and instead of the oil I used melted butter. Makes all the difference. Then I made a cream cheese frosting & added the peeps & candies. I had a few chocolate chicks, too, so on they went!

Both the pink paper cups and the paper basket wrap-arounds came from Michael’s. The wrap-arounds were fun but they only fit around regular-sized cupcakes (not the pink paper baking cups). And while I like the look of the paper cups I’m not sure I’d use them again. The cupcakes pulled away from the edges while cooling so there were gaps between the paper and the cupcake. An easy fix to fill the gap with frosting, but as a lover of cake and not so much frosting, it sort of skews the cake-to-frosting ratio I typically go with.

But they are pretty, aren’t they?

I’m off to finish those reuben-stuffed cabbage rolls. If all goes well, the recipe will go up Friday!