Good Morning ATC Community! and welcome to the official start of crunch time.  These are the days that we second-guess whether we did enough of everything and end up doing too much!

If you’re like me, you’ve baked a fair amount of holiday treasures.

But holiday week is a bit like a marathon and, in the home stretch, who isn’t looking for fresh ideas to keep inspired?  The challenge I set to myself is whether I can come up with a week of images, recipes, and instructions to keep us all – myself included – at 350F from now through next Saturday.

These Baked Ideas images are cookies, but so fresh and original they will inspire your cupcake decorating ideas. Here’s a smorgasbord of cookie decorating ideas from “Baked Ideas” by Patti Paige, along with the Baked Ideas’ Facebook page  and the video on the Baked Ideas mini gingerbread houses.  3,000 each season!

If you’re still looking for last minute gifts, Baked Ideas even sells yoga cookie cutters.  How did she do that?  Here’s her video on piping royal icing onto each one of the yoga posed gingerbread men and here’s the Baked Ideas gingerbread recipe.

Ah-ha!  My Muse gripped that one!

Today, I’m going to springboard those Baked Ideas into spice cupcakes with yoga shapes drawn on the top, including some Sandskrit symbols, such as “Namaste.”  And I know just who is on my list for these yoga cupcakes…

Now that’s what I mean about taking inspiration and giving yourself permission to be creative at the holidays!  What’s your idea?

Countdown:  6 days.

I just love these Christmas tree cupcakes from Cupcake, located in Glasgow, Scotland!  There is no limit to how you can decorate your cupcake tree.

This would even work great with a cupcake bar.  Just give guests a Christmas tree cupcake and they can add the “lights” and “ornaments” and “glitter”.

Check out these cute cupcake jewelry options from SweetPetiteHI on Etsy! How about a scented orange cupcake necklace? Or red velvet? It’s hard to choose! Items are $12 each or you can get a set for $20!

Australians may be celebrating Christmas with barbeques, but they’re eating lovely snowflake cupcakes with their ribs and potato salad! Check out more lovely pics from Piggley’s Flickr photostream.

I’ve known Claire’s as a store full of bling for young ladies, but it wasn’t until I just took my daughter in for some Christmas shopping that I realized Claire’s is also a cupcake shopper’s paradise. (It also happens to be a Justin Beiber shopper’s paradise!) From jewelry boxes to cupcake lights to earrings, check out all these cupcakes from Claire’s!

 I mean, every girl needs a cupcake-scented notebook, right?

As I was browsing Pier 1’s website, I came across some fun cupcake items that would be appropriate for a New Year’s Eve party. Both items are on clearance now; the wine charms are $3.98 for a set of 6, and the apron is $9.88.

Christmas stollen is such a favorite food at the holidays, who can resist the notion of converting it into a cupcake?

Here’s one recipe for Christmas stollen cupakes from The Cupcake Project.

Raisins, dried cranberries, dried currents, dried cherries…we’ll let that negate the bit of pleasure we’ll take from a bit of cherry liqueur and brandy.  And, of course, we’ll only pour those into the recipe, won’t we?

Just in case you have some cherry liqueur left over, here’s a companion recipe for Black Forest Cupcakes.  Well, if I’m on that theme, let’s be sure to have on hand a recipe for White Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes.

Now there’s a cupcake trio that deserves a Ho-Ho-Ho!