reindeer cupcakes - day 4 of the 12 crafty days of christmas

this fun activity comes from the 2010 december/january issue of family fun.

aren't they so cute!

ever since my kids saw these cupcakes, they have been begging me to do this with them. 

and i thought it would be a great craft to share with you and your family.

here's what you need:

cake mix and icing, pretzels, mini nilla wafers, m&ms,

tootsie roll midgies, small tubes of black and white icing, and cupcake liners

we really love a traditional yellow cake with chocolate icing in my house, but you could make any kind of cupcake as long as it has brown icing to make the reindeer faces.

also, the directions say to use white m&ms for the eyes but i couldn't find any so i just used white icing.

yummy cupcakes coming out of the oven! i could eat them just like this!!!!

while the cupcakes were baking i set up an assembly line of sorts. i cut the tootsie rolls into thirds (reindeer ears), broke the pretzels into antler shapes (this proved to be quite tricky), and set out the right amount of m&ms & nilla wafers.

here are the little elves ready to go!

i showed them an example and let them go for it. they all did a great job and it was really fun to do together as a family.

here are they are with their creations!

i gave them each three cupcakes so we could make each of the 8 reindeer plus one for rudolph, but of course they ALL wanted to have a rudolph so we had 6 regular reindeer and 3 rudolphs. 

whatever makes them happy!

they really enjoyed them!

(of course, the little boy elf scarfed his down before i could get a picture...)

you can find all the instructions here.

lots of cute yummy goodness for the holidays!!!