Flowers and art in progress

When I went to the grocery store a couple of days after Valentine's Day, they had flowers on sale for like $2...but when I got to the register the manager decided to just start giving them away. So here are my free Valentine's flowers.
Up close daisy, my favorite.

I started getting back into doing artwork also. So here is the first drawing I made in charcoal. I love the look of charcoal, but hate that it smears...don't know how to fix that. The heart kinda looks like a turkey too.

One of my clients told me that I should start doing Peter Max drawings, so I looked him up. He is a psychedelic artist and is famous for doing the Beatles Yellow Submarine album. I took a lot of his techniques and put them all together to make my interpretation. Here are the first few shots of the progress...

The finished product and more artwork will be coming soon.

Strawberry Cupcakes and Beefy Jalapeno Bake

Here are the cupcakes I made for Valentine's Day. I got a bunch of strawberries on sale...although I only used one pint.
Mix strawberries, eggs, white cake mix, strawberry jello and oil...

And you get the batter.

Fill the cups...

All done!

Make buttercream and add mashed up strawberries...

Get the strawberry frosting.

The frosting was a little too liquidy even though I added more powdered sugar...so the recipe needs adjusting.

Garnish with half a strawberry..

These were really good and everyone loved them, but you do need to eat them within 24 hours or the strawberries dry out....plus the buttercream was too runny to last very long. This recipe was from Pinterest.

Here is a recipe that I got from my friend Mary. You mix up some corn meal to make a cornbread base....

Cut up some jalapenos...

Brown the beef...

Layer half the cornbread mix with cheddar cheese...

Top with beef and jalapenos...

And top with the rest of the cornbread mix and cheese.

I didn't really like this although Mary loves it. The cornbread was too oily or wet for me and it was kinda bland with not very much taste.