Long Weekend/Mentoring/Business Fail
A four-day weekend, without a trip to California, without being on call but, still lots to do.
The highlights…..
Christmas Eve I had a couple cake orders for Baby Cakes. They were both Pineapple upside down cakes and were pretty easy. I also went out to Freddies and to the cake store, clearly just to experience the Christmas Eve madness because neither trip were necessary.
Christmas started out super low-key. I slept in, made coffee, walked Missy, talked to my aunt in California and kind of just hung out with the dog for the first half of the day. Then I went to Katherine’s for dinner. She had purchased a lovely organic meal from PCC and as we sat and visited and waited for her mom and the mom’s boyfriend to show up and our friend Steven and his mom. After everyone got there we realized, the dinner still needed to be heated. We had talked right through her schedule. Dinner was about an hour later than she had planned but it was still perfect and everyone had a lovely time.
When I got home that night I should have put together all the baking gear I would need to take with me the next day, or perhaps Christmas morning in my self described “low key” morning but I did not. That meant Saturday morning I was showering and doing my hair since this cute little cut requires more maintenance that I am used to and I was also pulling together decorating tools, cooling racks, fondant gear and recipes to take up to Chars. Of course I took the wrong exit AGAIN and was lost in the crazy windy roads up in MountLake Terrace and I have got to remember its exit 145 from now on!!!
I was up there all day to help the high school senior with her class project that she must complete to graduate. She had emailed me months ago and asked if I would be her mentor for a cake project. So yesterday was the day we baked a cake and logged hours for her project. We had a good time making the cakes and the icing them. It takes quite a while when making a three tiered cake and each tier has two layers and they take about an hour each to bake. Just oven time was over four hours only because we were able to bake the two smaller layers at the same time.
They fed me and kept one libation or another throughout the day. Also Katherine had picked up Missy and taken the dogs to the park and then back to her house so when we were having fondant issues and I realized I was going to be there until midnight I was able to text her and ask that Missy stay overnight with them.
We had major fondant issues. We used the same recipe I had used in the past but when we rolled it out and tried to put it on the cake it would just tear. We made more, we put in the fridge, we tried several different things before changing her design all together and we rolled and cut out stars and she painted each one onto the cake. I am thinking we should have started the day making the fondant so it would have had eight hours or better to rest.
At about hour fourteen, she put the final stars on the cake and I showed her how to dowel and stack the cakes. She gets an “A” if I were grading the class. There was a party tonight and the people there were going to rate the cake on appearance and taste and she will log more hours for her class. Luckily Char is a photographer and she took a ton of photos throughout the day and will help her put her presentation together that she has to give to her teacher and graduation panel.
So in other news Reverie is currently dead. We have lost the space we were building the cafe in. Looks like I’ll be out the time, energy and money I’ve put it so far but in the long run it isn’t all that much considering everything I have learned. I also still have Baby Cakes small business going even if I am only getting a few orders a month it is a lot of fun.
Even with four days I still didn’t finish getting my house cleaned. It is better than it was yesterday and I got the yard picked up but I really think I work better under pressure. I have another four-day weekend coming up, granted I am on call but maybe if focus I can get some chores accomplished before then.