Candy Apples: Owl Cupcakes

I've been staying up late for the last couple of nights making last minute birthday cake orders for some family members. I've found that I actually really like working late at night. It's only me and Bobby (my honey) up most of the time so it's quiet and peaceful and I can really loose myself in decorating a cake without thinking about what I'm gonna cook for dinner or the laundry that needs to get done. I might start making every cake in the middle of the night from now on. Only problem is that I had to get up early because I guy was coming to buy our bulldog, Turtle. This is Turtle ---> I know it's a silly name, but she was our oldest, Dolores's, dog so she named it. She actually wanted to call the dog Boobies and then Tom and nobody wanted to call her that so everyone just kind of called her whatever they wanted to (I called her Pudgy) until all the kids sort of decided to call her Turtle. She was a good dog, but Dolores didn't take care of her and we have 3 dogs and decided to cut back to just 1 and she's not the one we picked. So I got up early to meet this guy and he ended up getting lost several times trying to make it to our house and ended up having to go to work and wait until he gets off to get her. So I made the mistake of going back to bed at 7:30 this morning, so here it is noon and I had to drag myself out of bed.

^^ This is Rocky, the dog that we kept. He's my sweet furry baby and I would never get rid of him. (:

But back to the cakes.

So this is the cake that I made for my, sister-in-law, Priscilla's 5 year old sister. All they told me was that she liked princess stuff, so I went to wal-mart and got 4 little tiaras for $0.97 and 8 little rings for the same prices and threw together this last minute cake. You know bakeries charge extra for a border of roses? It takes FOREVER! But, I got it done and a princess was happy and that's what matters
Last night, another sister-in-law, my bff Colleen, asked me to make owl cupcakes for her coworker's birthday.

I googled owl cupcakes because I only had a few hours to get this done. The original was on flickr.

This is the one I found on the net. This one was mad with chocolate fondant, white candy melts, and m&ms for the eyes, almond chips for the wings, purple piping gel for the feathers, and and orange sprinkle for the nose.
I love cupcakes and cakes that are easy for anyone to make and don't require any special decorating skills. These are pretty easy to figure out, so I'm not gonna layout step by step directions but here are some pics to illustrate the process. You'll need a dozen cupcakes, one batch of buttercream, a bag of reeses pieces candy (I bought a big bag and used the left overs to make cookies which I'll share soon as well), almond slices, oreos (I used both chocolate and vanilla ones), black or brown food color and a toothpick to draw on the wings.