Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Cupcake Clutch Review

As a part of my Cupcake Craze Giveaway the girls and I were privileged to receive a Cupcake Clutch from The Orb Factory.

This cute accessory comes with the shiny cupcake shaped clutch, 2 sheets of sparkling sprinkles and the instructions. The girls worked together to decorate this pretty cupcake. They needed to follow the legend to place the jewels on the correct spaces. Not only did they work on their matching skills, but they also gave those fine motor skills a work out (those jewels are tiny).

The girls were so excited to get started.

The Stick 'N Style Cupcake Clutch comes with the cupcake shaped clutch pre-marked with the numbered shapes for the children to match the jewels to, two sheets of jewels and the instructions.

The instructions are really self explanatory. The girls followed the legend to match the jewels.

The thing is, Hannah wanted to join in and she has no knowledge of what a legend is, so the jewels would end up in random places on the clutch.

The gold bottom did not show any specific place to put the jewels. Unfortunately the girls started putting some on before finishing the top numbered section so they ended up running out of gold jewels.

I would recommend making sure your children finish the numbered section first, then using the additional gold jewels for the bottom. The picture on the box does show how they should go, but because it is not marked I am assuming you can be creative on the gold "wrapper."

There are plenty of jewels to complete this project. In fact, the girls had a little fun with the extras.

I was impressed by the stickiness of the jewels, they seem like they will stay on really well, unless you have a daughter like Hannah who seems to enjoy taking things apart. She was able to get several off of the clutch. Yes, mommy was a tad upset, but she was trying to match them on the legend.

The one thing I wish, and I know this is a clutch, but I do wish it had a strap with it so it could be used as a purse.

You can check out the Stick 'N Style Cupcake Clutch and all of The Orb Factory's fun products at

the Orb Factory Website.

You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.

If you would like a chance to win a cupcake clutch head on over to my Cupcake Craze Giveaway Post.

Disclosure: I received a copy of Cupcake Clutch at no charge as a part of my Cupcake Craze Giveaway. I received no further compensation. This did not in any way influence my review. This review is my honest opinion and I only recommend products I use personally and feel will be a good products for my readers.

Cupcake Race Review

My girls and I had the pleasure of reviewing another game from Endless Games.
I thought the Cupcake Race would be a great fit with a Birthday Celebration for Tabitha, and I was right.

I love the general principle behind Endless Games.
"The general principle of Endless Games is to produce high quality entertainment in board games and puzzles that are quick and easy to learn, but offer “Endless” play value."

In the Cupcake Race game players take turn spinning the spinner in a race around the board. As they race to the party they stop along the way to make their cupcakes. When a player reaches Mix It, they get their cupcake wrapper and pretend to mix the batter. Then it is off to Bake It where they receive their cupcake which they put in the wrapper and pretend to put in the oven. They continue around the board, stopping at Frost It to get their frosting. The last "stop" before they reach the Party is the Top It area where they get to put on their sprinkles they have been collecting as they journeyed around the board. Oh, I can't forget to mention that when they reach the party they get to top the cupcake with a cherry.

I love that this is a fast paced game. It is straightforward in that you spin the spinner, move your party hat pawn and land on 1 of 4 kinds of spaces. If you land on a blank space you do nothing. However, if you land on a "+1" or "+2" space you get to choose sprinkles to hold onto until you reach "Top It." In order to find out what color sprinkles you receive you spin the spinner 1 or 2 times and take the color sprinkle the spinner lands on (note the different color spaces on the spinner). You can also land on spaces that will send you forward or backward a certain number of spaces.

The cupcake corner spaces are the "fun" spaces where you actually get to put your cupcakes together.

The girls loved acting out the different parts of putting their cupcakes together.

Amelia mixing her cupcake.

Tabitha pretending to frost her cupcake.

After hanging out on "Top It" until we made sure we had one of each color sprinkle we were able to continue on to the party where we put on our cherries.

Once everyone reached the party we pretended to eat our cupcakes. Yummy!

I did want to mention you do not need to wait until you have one of each color sprinkle before continuing on to the party. This optional rule is for older children. In fact, you may think it could take forever and the children would not want to stay on the "Top It" space that long and would get bored. Our children wanted to stay on the "Top It" space until they had ALL the sprinkles possible. I convinced them to move on to the party and just continue spinning when it was their turn in order to get the cupcake fully sprinkled.

Another optional tip for younger players is for them to contain their sprinkles in the frosting top as they receive them traveling around the board. They just hold onto their frosting until they arrive at "Frost It" then put it on top of their cupcake as usual. Unfortunately this tip doesn't help contain all the sprinkles in the corner, so we decided to use a bowl.

And yes, this game is also educational. Most board games where you spin and have to count one to one to move around the board are educational. Plus the children need to match colors to get their sprinkles. I never give the children the sprinkles, I let them pick them out, even Hannah. Children also work on improving their fine motor skills by placing the small pegs of the sprinkles in the tiny holes of the frosting. I did help Hannah with this a bit.

A couple of notes of concern.
I would love to see something included in the game to put the sprinkles and the cherries in on the game board. As you can see, we used a bowl for the sprinkles. I didn't have an extra one for the cherries and it got very frustrating for them to roll around the board while we were spinning or if the table got knocked.

Speaking of spinning, I don't know if we got a defective spinner, but our spinner was either too tight to spin or too loose it would fall off when spun at any decent speed.

Other than those couple of things that caused us frustration, we absolutely enjoyed this game. Tabitha liked "the whole thing because it was very very fun. And because we get to make the cupcakes and put on the sprinkles too." Amelia liked it because "we get to spin the spinner and the youngest goes first." (Of course this happens to be her if Hannah is sleeping.) She also enjoys going to the party and getting a cherry on it.

You can check out Cupcake Race and all of Endless Games' fun products at

Endless Games website.

You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.

If you would like a chance to win a copy of this game for your own just head on over to my Cupcake Craze Giveaway Post.

Disclosure: I received a copy of The Cupcake Race game at no charge as a part of my Cupcake Craze Giveaway. I received no further compensation. This did not in any way influence my review. This review is my honest opinion and I only recommend products I use personally and feel will be a good products for my readers.