Happy Monday, friends! It’s been quite hectic around here while we try to get some photo shoots and projects done for the holiday season, all while my two little ones are home on Fall break! I pinky promise that the new FREE Thanksgiving collection that I teased about last week will be ready for download very soon! In the meantime for Cupcake Monday, I thought I would share the Thanksgiving cupcake photo above and a little story behind it.

When I designed the new Thanksgiving collection, I was focusing on designs that our readers could use when hosting Thanksgiving dinner. For whatever reason, I didn’t design “party circles” (the term I coined years ago for my 2″ designs to be used for cupcake toppers) and didn’t plan on using any cupcakes for the shoot. As we were at my house shooting, Molly (my design assistant) freaked out that I didn’t design the one item we ALWAYS include (and that I usually design first) in the collection. I don’t think we’ve ever done a shoot without cupcakes, if it was party related. She was right. It just wouldn’t be a TomKat collection without them. So, I whipped up the cupcake topper designs (the perk of doing shoots at home) and luckily I happened to have a leftover cupcake sitting on a cake plate in my office. Here comes the funny (or gross, you might think) part. Go back and look at the cupcake photo above, now look below….recognize the cupcakes?

Confession: I’m a cupcake hoarder. I actually keep a few cupcakes around after shoots JUST IN CASE. The photo on the left is from our HGTV Halloween shoot (July) and the photo on the right is from one of our DIY Halloween shoots (early August), and the Thanksgiving shoot was in early September. Sometimes, people come over and want to eat the cupcakes I’ve saved and sometimes kids try to stick their fingers in them, but they quickly realize that won’t work. If you’ve ever saved a cupcake and left it out, you know that it becomes petrified. It becomes hard as a rock, but maintains its look. Kinda gross, I know, but this is something I’ve done for a long time, starting with time that I left one of the prettiest cupcakes ever sit on my side table for months. I just couldn’t throw it away.

Hye, give me some slack, I’m super busy! I know, I know….cupcakes are so easy to make (especially when you use a boxed mix like I do most of the time), but you never know when you’re going to need one on a whim for a photo! So, with that being said, guess what’s sitting pretty in my office still…

…the cupcake I baked in July! 

Have a sweet week!