Happy Christmas in July: Day 1

It's here, Christmas in  July. The heat of the summer is setting in and that means, I'll be spending a bit more time inside working on projects. I've got lots of ideas in my head for Christmas in July this year, I just hope they can all come to light. It's always a busy month in my household, so my post tend to be early in the day or late in the evening. Just depends on what's we're celebrating that day, but I will be here daily to bring you ideas, share some laughs and bring you a little Christmas cheer. I've also got several decorating and "Upcycling" going on, so I'll be posting those for my decorating and craft friends as each project is completed.


Today I started my 1st day of celebrating, by opening my CIJ Swap Gift. My partner Patsy, sent me this great chalk set to use while making cards and scrapbooking. I currently have a set that's very, very old and all primary colors. This set, has lots of pastels and the little poof balls to go with it. I'm looking forward to using it. I also received this Scrapbooking with Cricut book and hope it will help me learn even more about that machine of mine. I can cut out letters, but I've still got a lot to learn when it comes to other projects.

My first baking recipe of the month, is sorta inspired by "Semi-Homemade".  If you have some Christmas favorites, why not stock up a bit after the holidays and enjoy them later down the road. Today I'm baking Gingerbread Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. The gingerbread cupcakes come from a box, but the cream cheese frosting is homemade.

My cream cheese frosting is very basic. The original recipe called for 1/2 of these ingredients, but I wanted to make sure I had enough frosting for these 12 cupcakes, so I doubled my ingredients and that's what I've listed below. 


4 TBSP Butter
4 oz of Cream Cheese
1 1/3 cup of powdered sugar
1/2 tsp lemon extract 


I added these fabulous seasonal Gingerbread Marshmallows to the top

And here is the final product....a yummy gingerbread cupcake with cream cheese frosting. If you don't like the strong taste of gingerbread cookies, the cream cheese on this recipe really does cut that down and blend well together.