Easy (but look hard) Christmas cupcakes

I was lazy this year.  We had so much going on leading up to Christmas this year, the last thing I wanted to do was come up with a desert for supper.  Enter Betty Crocker Cherry Chip cupcakes!  I wanted to decorate them pretty, but like I said, I was lazy.  I started by whipping up a batch of fluffy white icing.  I then grabbed a random icing tip from my box, plugged it into a pastry bag, then painted a stripe of Kelly green Wilton gel coloring up one side of the inside of the bag, and a stripe of no-taste Red Wilton gel up the other.  Then I filled it with my plain white icing and just piped a spiral on each cupcake.  Adorable, no?

Tomato cage Christmas trees!

I saw on Pinterest a while back a few assorted ideas for making tomato cage Christmas trees so I figured "hey, I've got some tomato cages and tons of clearance Christmas garland and decorations...I'm gonna try this!"  One day when a friend was over, we wrapped the lights around, then wrapped the garland, and added some balls and snowflakes. (If I do it again I will buy more greenery so I can fill it in more densely.  It doesn't look bad, but it could look better) It didn't quite look finished so I went back and added some ribbon later.  I'll have to try for better pics some time, but I think they turned out great!!

Christmas Lantern

A while back I bought this plain old black outdoor lantern on clearance at WalMart for $3.  At the time I had no idea what I was going to do with it. Well, 3 months later I figured it out.  I filled it full of assorted Christmas balls and stuck a couple peacock feathers in for good measure, tied some ribbon on top and....Voila!  Christmas decoration!  (and I only ended up bleeding on one ornament after I dropped one and it shattered)