Now that she has a three-year-old son, she's more nutso than ever about this stuff; she pretends it's for him, but we all know better. The other weekend we found ourselves in the same place at the same time, which is unusual for us, and I agreed to do some cupcake baking/decorating. She had bought this book:
At first glance, I assumed we'd fail miserably to re-create any of the decorations pictured in the book, but the author promised that all the cupcakes can be re-created by anybody, without special tools (just plastic baggies, canned frosting, and a lot of strange props). So we gave it a whirl.