I'm a liar

So, the last time I blogged, I swore that I wouldn't talk about the bakery anymore. Well, at least as much, anyway.
Yeah, I'm a liar. A big, fat, pants-on-fire-liar. But not because the bakery is SOOOOOOO awesome.
No, because I'm spending about sixty hours a week there and outside of showering, eating dinner and watching about one show per night, it's the only interesting thing in my life at the moment. (Unless you want to hear about the showering. You know what? Don't answer that.)
Since I can't really create any coherent thoughts right now, I'm putting together a list of funny things from my first three weeks (!) at the bakery:

• Opening the door (because my air conditioning is broken) lets the 'yummy smell' out and lures people in. I may continue doing it even after the air is fixed. 
• Also? Really? Air conditioning in February? I'm scared for July.
• My hands are currently pink. Completely 100% pink. But the cake was super cute, so it was worth it. 
• Somewhere in my brain I thought I was going to have time to just sit out at one of the bistro sets and write. (Try not to laugh too loudly at that one)
• No matter how old your child is, you have had at least a minimum of one year (365 days) to order the cake. I mean, it's their BIRTHDAY- same day it was last year, the same as the year before. Please order your cake in a timely manner. :) 
• In the book of "Stupid things I do" that I could write, there would be an entire chapter dedicated to "Burning myself on things that I know are hot, but touch anyway." Today, it was caramel. And it blistered. 
• According to Brad (and my part time help Jon) sugar free Red Bull is not lunch. I tend to disagree. Whatev.
• If I thought I was a messy person when I baked at home, having a 'designated' messy area AKA the bakery has made me way worse. Like waaaaaay worse. And? I have 1,500 square feet in which to strow about my mess. 
• I do not want to speak ill of any competition, but I might have giggled inwardly when a little girl smiled and said, "Yeah! No more [insert name of another bakery type establishment]!"
• Speaking of competition, I was scoped out by just about all of them. But everyone was super nice, and introduced themselves. But I had to laugh, they all tried the "We just love sweets! We will be in frequently! We're foodies!" I wanted to say, "Look, I know you're scoping me out. It's OK. I did it to you before I opened!" Because, lets be honestly, I love sweets and all, but I NEVER get dessert at a restaurant. What would I? I can make all this stuff at home. Either way, they were nice, so that was cool. 
• Boxes are expensive. Especially my cute pink boxes. Packaging. Ugh. I mean, I thought about it and all, I guess I just didn't really think about it. Actually, up to a certain size box, it's not a huge deal, they're all about the same price, close to 20 cents. But when you get to a dozen, you add the dozen divider. So it's 40 cents. But the cupcakes are $27, so it's not a huge deal. BUT when you do a single cupcake and sell it for $2.50 and the box is 20 cents. Well, that's something entirely different. It makes me want to be ghetto and charge for the box. WHICH I WILL NEVER DO. This is small business, people. It all comes down to a 20 cent box. 
• Speaking of boxes and random crap, I know who reads my blog because you guys spout random facts back at me that I forget I even wrote. So three months from now someone is going to be all, "You can keep your 20 cent box, I know it's going to break you." And I will laugh. And then squish their cupcake! (Fine, I won't squish the cupcake.)

So, yeah, after that last random tangent, I realize that it's after nine p.m., AKA my bedtime and I have officially used all of my available brain power today to make cupcakes and decorate cookies. So I bid you all a fond adieu. 

My biggest before and after

So I wrote this post today while at the bakery and clicked 'save' about a billion times.
It did not save. And as any blogger (or writer) knows, the second time around is not nearly as fun. Either way, here goes.

I can't believe that we managed to take this:

And turn it into this:

And I big puffy pink heart it. I love that it's well, pink. I love how new and pristine it is.

I love how wonderfully the pictures turned out. The ceilings are so tall that you can't tell those canvases are three feet tall. My friend Kyle did a wonderful job shooting my cakes, and Scott at Poster Boy did a great job on the canvases. They're so pretty.

I love the register area and my cloche jars. So pretty. Brad and I built that register/display area in about five hours (not sure if that's good or bad) but I had a migraine and was exhausted.

This is the side view of my window display. I love that display.  (Obviously, I love all of it. I'm a bit biased.) I love that everyone who walks by stops and I can hear them ooooh and ahhhh over my cakes. It's rewarding, to say the least.

And aside from the cost of getting everything up and running, it's all going well. I had a great grand opening day (despite opening at 2 that afternoon, instead of that morning. I'm not going into it.) and that night we had a ton of friends stop by to support me. It was pretty great. So, that's it for now. While I'm excited to finally BE in the bakery, I'm kind of tired of talking about it. So, this will probably be the last bakery-related post for a little while. I'll just have to find something else to bore you guys with.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the mixer is at home in the bakery and it works. (And, I can't even smell the garlic on it anymore.)

Guess what you can ask me now?

How's the bakery?

That's right! I open Friday! But, because of the constant last minute stuff up there, I've been far too busy to blog about all the stuff I've done. This past Sunday I hosted a small preview party for some blogger friends. They got to see the progress (not nearly what I had hoped) and sample some of the treats I will be carrying.
I have to go get some sleep because tomorrow? I have to bake. So, in the mean time, go visit my friends' blogs and show them some love for, well showing me some love.
(It's just one big love fest over here.) And with typing that, I am officially too tired to be writing, so I'll leave it to them.
In no particular order (maybe in the order that I found them, or something.)
Kyran at Planting Dandelions
Kerri at Damn You Little Rock
Greg  at The Dad Thing
Katie (and part 2) at (Not) Coming
Melissa at Run Melissa Run
Kat at Kat and Karl
Gina at Desperately Seeking
Jessica at Adventures in Futility and knitting
And Tonya did a really cool piece using Storify.

AND, an article in the Arkansas Times Eat Arkansas blog.

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to come out on Sunday, it was a fun event and the 'oohs' and 'ahhhs' were much needed encouragement to get through the rest of this week! Hope to see everyone for the Grand Opening on Friday! And I'll be back to blogging soon. You know, after I sleep.

Obligatory End of Year Post

I miss writing, I do. I miss the feel of the keys beneath my fingers. I miss the way I would tap on the bar on the 'F' and 'J' buttons on the home row when I couldn't think of the right word. I miss going back over something and feeling the sense of pride of knowing I created that. That I had written that and chosen those words all by myself. I love what I get to do now. I love that I get to create ephemeral art in the form of baked goods. I like that despite being surrounded by pounds of butter and sugar, that my business clothes sag around my hips.
There was such a draw with advertising that I could touch many lives, that people saw my work and knew my ads. But let's be honest, if given the choice between eating cake or looking at a magazine ad, people would choose the cake. Every. Time.
It's a different kind of joy.
And it's a different kind of stress. Where once I grumbled about my boss and hated the rigors of the 8 to 5 life, I miss the security it provided in the form of a steady pay check and health insurance. But in it's place, I have a kind of freedom that most will never, ever know. The ability to be my own boss, to set my own rules, and to have the last say is something that I can't put a price on.
This year has been a crazy one, to say the least. I've been here before, but hopefully, never again. It wasn't as crazy as the last time I was unemployed for a year, but it was close. Instead of uncertainty over where my next paycheck was coming from, it's just been a matter of when.
As I type this, I'm noticing the paint splattered on my hand that I totally missed in the shower. In the past week and a half, Brad and I have finally been able to get into the bakery to do our work. We laid wood floors in the lobby area, painted the walls a bright pink and orange, hung bead board and painted it white, laid tiles in the bathroom and have begun the enormous undertaking of scraping down the concrete floors in the back kitchen area. I should have a timeline for my opening soon. I should know after tomorrow the formal opening date and I'll pass that along.
While 2011 has left a sour taste in my mouth, it's a year that led me to the point I'm at today and for that, I'm thankful.
If what they say is true and the best things take the most time, this bakery will be an adventure that I will never forget. I hope the few of you who are here hang around to join me on it.
I hope 2012 brings joy to each of you.

Bradversations

Brad and I have long argued over music. It's one of the few things we completely disagree on. This conversation took place after he turned off an LMFAO song off.** 

Me: What are you doing? That's a good song. 

Brad: I don't like to bump out with my rump out. I like to rock out with my cock out.* 

Me: Really? Well I like to bump out with my rump out.

Brad: You can use that if you like. 

Me: What?

Brad: "Bump out with your rump out," I know it's awesome, you can use it.

Me: {rolling eyes} Oh, thank you. 

Brad: That's not a sincere thank you, I'm taking it back, you can't use it. 

Me: Oh, are you going to trademark it? 

Brad: No, I'm going to Brad Mark it. Boom. Brad Mark the Brad Mark.

*In his defense, he had watched American Wedding the night before and was channeling Stiffler. 

** And please, don't judge me on the LMFAO, I really do like to bump out with my rump out.

Here's the deal

I have a ton of people who are super enthusiastic about my opening a bakery. For that, I will forever be thankful. BUT, I've reached that point.
That point where I've actively been struggling to open this bakery for over five months now. I've been without a job for close to seven months.
I've encountered multiple speed bumps. OK, fine, ONE GIANT SPEED BUMP that is my landlord. Regardless, I wanted to open in September. I didn't really tell him I wanted to open in September, but since we were having this discussion in July, I thought surely a few months wasn't that difficult. We discussed October as the open date (with me secretly thinking September could happen).
Nope.
They started dragging in drywall back in September. Good sign. "Woo hoo, this thing is going to happen!" I thought.
No.
It didn't. We didn't have a building permit.
That finally happened sometime toward the end of October.
Goodbye Halloween. I didn't want to make any desserts for you anyway.
So I was told that I would get a 'schedule' of when/where/what would take place. (I still don't have that.)
I asked if I could be in by Thanksgiving. I was told 'maybe.' OK, maybe sounds good.
Nope.
Adios Thanksgiving. I didn't want to make any pies or cakes for you anyway.
So then I said, "CHRISTMAS???? Can I make it by CHRISTMAS???"
Sure! Was the hearty response.
And then I realized that when I say 'Christmas,' I mean "Hi, I need to be open the weeks before Christmas so that I can be providing desserts for all the parties that happen the weekends leading up to Christmas."
But the guys in the bakery working hear, "I need to be open Christmas day, maybe sometime in the afternoon?"
So, no, at this point, I won't be open by Christmas either.
They are lying liars who lie.
Do you know what it's like to not have a job for 7 months? While concurrently dumping what money you do have into a business? Do you know what that's like when you also pile on the fact that some people refuse to pay you? Do you? Do you?
Sorry, didn't mean to start yelling and get all fired up, but I just wanted you to feel the pain that I've been going through.
SO THEN...
You're walking through Target, minding your own business, staring at the spatulas and you bump into a well meaning friend that you haven't seen in a month or so. And then they casually ask,
"Hey! How's the bakery coming along!?"
They're excited for me and totally want to come in and buy a cookie once I'm open.
Instead?
"Clean up on isle seven! Crazy girl just bit her friends head off!"
Le sigh.
To say that I've become certifiably insane is an understatement.
So, with that in mind, (if you're still reading) I ask you a small favor. I teeny tiny favor, if you will.
Please don't ask me if the bakery is open. Just don't.
If you love me (or even just like me a little), and you value your life, you won't do it.

When these guys get their shit together and finish my bakery, I'm going to have a party. And not just a grand opening party, I mean a party with booze. (There's a liquor store in my parking lot) I'm going to celebrate. I'm going to shout it from every single social media platform I have access to. Hell, I will join Pintrest and create some kind of crafty poster with cakes and the saying 'My bakery is open Bitches!' and it will be repinned no less that three hundred times. I will call you and say, "Guess what!?!?" (And you will think, 'Thank God, it's about bloody time.') I will post it on my Facebook -both on my page as well as the bakery's page. I will dance around and start harassing you as to why you haven't stopped by yet? and why didn't you order anything? And do you want me to have to sell my house? Do you hate me? Why do you hate me?
So I guess what I'm saying is:
When my bakery is open, you will know.
I promise, you will know.

Marathon

I've discussed my disdain for running before. I've gone in depth on how crazy I think the people who do run are. No need to revisit that. But, some friends have recently started running. Hell, even dooce ran a marathon. Yesterday two friends ran the St. Jude marathon. One did the half marathon, the other finished the full one.
That is not my style. The only time I will ever run like that is if I were being chased and honestly I'd probably try to take the 'hide somewhere until they're gone' tactic. So, no the marathon I did had nothing to do with running.
It was a cookie marathon.
Arkansas Children's Hospital is celebrating their centennial. An amazing accomplishment. 100 years of hope and healing. I spent many summer days there myself waiting on appointments with my youngest sister. We knew where all the best waiting rooms where. We knew which ones had the best toys and the coolest stuff. So when a friend approached me to put in a bid to make some cookies for their centennial kick off event, I was intrigued. They wanted each employee to have a cookie with the logo on it.

How many employees, you ask?
Why 4,000.
Yes. Marathon indeed.
I knew I couldn't pipe a detailed logo on that many cookies in a short amount of time, so I opted to use edible images 'glued' down with icing on sugar cookies. I bought a printer at Staples and edible ink cartridges from KopyKake.
So, how much stuff goes into making that many cookies?
Glad you asked.
My typical batch of dough yields about 75-80 cookies, depending on the size. Meaning I needed to make about 48 batches of dough. I ended up total making 53 batches.
That's:
- 53 pounds of butter
- 265 eggs
- 100 pounds of sugar
- 140 pounds of flour
- a gallon of vanilla and almond flavoring (for cookies and icing)
- 112 pounds of powdered sugar (for icing)
and a few other ingredients in smaller amounts.

105 pounds of the powdered sugar

It took about 6 hours just to mix all the dough. (Would have obviously been much faster if I'd had access to my giant mixer).

It took about 14 hours to bake them all.

This is only 800 of them.

And another 20 hours to decorate and box them.

Granted, I did not do this all alone. I had several friends (and future employees) come in and help me. Plus my awesome husband. I seriously could not have done this without them.

Boxed and ready to go. Only half would fit in my car. Brad didn't think
we would actually finish.

From what I understand, there are two ways to put an edible image onto a cookie. You can use the KopyKake edible 'frosting sheets' (similar to the Wilton Sugar Sheets) or your can print on rice paper (fun fact: it's not actually rice). I opted for the frosting sheets as I had heard they tasted a bit better. BUT I found that for whatever reason, they just didn't dry well. When we stacked the cookies, the butter from the next cookie melted the sugar in the icing sheet and it then stuck to the back of that cookie. Basically the picture started peeling off. I did some looking around the internet trying to see what I did wrong, but I couldn't find anything. Apparently I'm the first person to encounter this problem. Really, I was looking for a blog post titled "I tried to stack 4,000 cookies with edible images on each other and they stuck, this is how I fixed it." Let me tell you, no such blog post exists.
Until now.
There is no fix. Or the fix we decided on was just to lay the cookies flat so they didn't really touch each other. This resulted in the use of several more boxes than originally planned, but also no sticking. So I call that a success. Because of the large scale of the order and the EXCEPTIONALLY difficult nature of the awful KopyKake frosting sheets, we wasted a lot of them (and they were expensive). One entire package of 24 sheets was so thin and sticky that we couldn't peel them off their backings. They rolled into balls of goo when we tried to cut them out. Another half package was so dry that they broke off in the printer and cracked while printing and would fall off, printing on the backing page instead (and wasting my very expensive edible ink). Since so much of it was wasted, we needed more paper but can't really get any locally (outside of one page at a time at Kroger or Walmart), I opted to try some of the rice paper for the rest of the cookies. I had no choice.
O
M
G.
Can I say that was ridiculously easier. So much so that I wanted to cry. They cut out like a dream. I could cut up to five sheets at a time. They printed beautifully and didn't rip. They didn't stick together like the frosting sheets. They didn't stick to the other cookies and peel off making me cry. AND? They were so much cheaper. Like 40 cents/sheet instead of $1.25/sheet. And, if I'd had time to buy them online, you can get 100 sheets for $20. And, Brad said they tasted the same. Completely.
So, cookie conclusion: Buy the kopykake ink refills for your [new] printer and find some rice paper.

This was a crazy learning experience for me. I didn't get much sleep. I believe Monday I got about 6 hours (before the madness started, I was just unable to sleep). Tuesday and Wednesday nights I got 4 hours, Thursday I got 3 hours. And then Friday night I was finally able to sleep for 12 hours straight. They say you can't catch up on lost sleep, but they lie. You can, so if I don't answer my phone or reply to an email or tweet quickly it's because I'm still catching up. Until next weekend, when we will be painting the bakery and laying the flooring!
I'm beginning to think I'll never sleep again.