I’m so excited because today we get to spend the afternoon with two of my oldest and dearest friends and their families. One of them I see quite often because she lives just an hour away in Northfield, but the other one I only get to see every couple of years because she lives in Atlanta.

We’re having our happy reunion at the Minnesota Zoo, and since it’s China Week and we’re celebrating three of the girls’ birthdays this week I decided to make panda cupcakes.

As usual, we had only a small window of opportunity to make the panda cupcakes so I had to use whatever we had on hand or could find at our local grocery store. If our panda seems a little bug-eyed, I think it’s because I bought the candy eyes at Target right before Halloween. Personally, I think they make him look interested.

I’ve seen very elaborate panda cupcakes in magazines, but if you want to make something simple like ours all you need are cupcakes in whatever number and flavor you’d like, white frosting, mini Oreos split open for the ears, Junior Mints and candy eyes (with a little frosting to make them stick) for the eyes, and a tube of black gel icing for the nose and mouth.

If you’re like us and can’t get enough of pandas, you’ll enjoy China: The Panda Adventure. The film, which tells the true story of Ruth Harkness, a socialite who brought the first panda to America and launched a new era of wildlife conservancy in the process, has gorgeous scenes of China and the cutest baby pandas you’ve ever seen.