Well, here we are. The Cupcake Rehab 2nd Birthday Giveaway officially ended on October 12th, but things have been a bit looney here what with Breast Cancer Awareness month, Halloween coming up and all the baking and stuff I’ve had to do, so it’s taken us a while to choose a winner. It was decided that to avoid any bias or favoritism, I would select a panel of judges to help me choose the winners of the giveaway. My panel of esteemed judges are:

Myself; owner & founder of the esteemed (ha!) Cupcake Rehab, therefore a pretty good judge since I know what I like Admittedly, I may be biased, but I pride myself on being honest & fair.

Jay; my boyfriend, a police officer by day and wanna-be Food Network star by night who loves stuff like this and happens to be a totally un-biased judge since he knows none of you. He also bought me Cupcake Rehab (the dot com) so he has to have a say in  the winner of this giveaway!

Samantha; my very, very good friend, fellow F.I.T. alum, a soon-to-be-bride, cupcake lover and interior designer by trade. Also, another totally un-biased judge. And mom to Zoey, one of the cutest puppies ever… next to Indy, of course! (Proof? Why certainly, click here)

Terrilyn; my mother. Cupcake expert and longtime baker and cook. A somewhat un-biased source, seeing as how she reads a few blogs that I favor, she’s not completely un-biased. But like Fox News, she’s fair and balanced, not to mention trustworthy in her decision making. *wink*

But my vote was only ¼ of the vote as you can see. We looked at each entry and voted based on the following: creativity, unique-ness, relevance and presentation. None of us knew what any of the other 3 had planned on voting for or voted for, I only knew once they finished and told me and I compiled the results. And they still don’t know who won, they’ll be finding out right now the same as you all. As you know, there’s a Grand Prize and a First Prize, but there’s also a new twist that was decided on last minute (more on that later). For a refresher on what each of those consists of, please view the original giveaway post. The prizes were pretty freakin’ cool so I suggest if you haven’t seen them, you check ‘em out.

Every single one of you who entered should know I love what you came up with, and the fact that you took time out of your lives to do this is awesome to me. If I had enough prizes to give you all one, I would. Thank you for entering, really. And a HUUUUGE thank you to my prize contributors: Yoyo, Lyns, Chrisie and Anna. You guys are the best ever.

Now on to the winners!

The winner of the GRAND PRIZE is…

AMANDA!

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http://testone2three.blogspot.com/

Amanda created an absolutely amazing cupcake that’s an almost exact replica of the one in my Halloween logo (click here to view it)!  And more importantly, it was a turtle cupcake- and if you know me, you know if there’s one thing I love more than vanilla cupcakes… it’s caramel. Particularly turtles, I mean caramel + chocolate + nuts? Heavenly. And skulls combined with “rotting corpse bones”? Forget it.  Jay said that part totally won him over, and I have to agree. She nailed this 100%! The frosting color is practically identical to the color of the frosting in my drawing. Every aspect of it was just perfect for my site. And, every one of the judges was equally impressed by her efforts, so trust me, this isn’t favoritism just because she’s my blog daughter. She definitely earned this. Congratulations Amanda!

The winner of the FIRST PRIZE is…

SUSAN!

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http://doughmesstic.com

Susan made an absolutely adorable cupcake that was inspired by my blog header up top- complete with chocolate chips, flowers, sprinkles and skulls. Susan also totally nailed it, she made a devil’s food cupcake (because of the skulls it’s true, a devil’s food cake was appropriate, aside from the fact that I myself have been referred to as devilish more than once in my life) with vanilla buttercream (my favorite) and to top it all off, a pink cupcake liner!! Pink is my favorite color. And that skull looks a bit like Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas to me, so that adds points right there!! It’s just a beautifully done cupcake all-around, it’s so cute I wanna just look at it, but yet that frosting makes me want to dive into it headfirst and inhale the entire cupcake. Excellent job, Susan, everyone thought it was fantastic, congrats on winning!

Now here’s where things veer off from my original concept. Originally there were only 2 prizes. But the response was sorta overwhelming that there be an honorable mention. So I decided since Lyns was so super generous with what she contributed, and there was more than enough to go around, that I’d send the honorable mention winner a little something as well. So here we go…

And the winner of the HONORABLE MENTION is…

DOREEN!

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http://littlesweetiescupcake.blogspot.com/

Doreen made french toast cupcakes and let me just say how adorable this little scene above is. A sprinkles line on a mirror? Handmade pills? A little syringe? Incredible. Totally cool and appropriate, awesome job Doreen!

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CONGRATULATIONS LADIES! I’ll be in contact with you via e·mail later on tonight or tomorrow to get your addresses and other information. And again – to everyone else who entered, thank you! This was really exciting. And I’ll be teaming up with Lyns to do another (much simpler) giveaway for the holidays, so keep an eye out like a pirate for that.

Also, all the photos above belong to those ladies and their respective blogs, please don’t use without their permission, ’cause that’s rotten. Thanks.