What a week

This past week has be a busy one. Not a long one, or a hectic one or even a frustrating one, just a busy one packed with the usual daily grind of owning a business but with several extra things thrown in just for fun.
Well, I say fun. It was fun, if it were all I was doing. Regardless.
On Wednesday, I got a call asking if I could be on a local morning TV show the next day. They needed some chef-inspired dessert toppings that could pair with a local ice cream brand. I said sure! And started working on my recipes. Having watched entirely too many hours of Food Network, I knew I needed to have a finished product ready to go, plus all the ingredients to recreate them while live on TV.
LIVE ON TV.
No pressure there.

I made Bourbon Pecans (they make awesome toppings for ice cream, other desserts like pie, or you can just eat them. That's what I usually do.) and the recipe is versatile so you can swap out seasonings, liquor or nuts and make several different flavors. Possibilities are endless. And I had planned on saying all of that.
Instead I nodded very vigorously and looked like a maniacal bobble head doll. Eh.
*I hesitated sharing this, but I figure it's funny. I laughed. I can laugh at myself, so you can feel free to laugh at me too.* The syrup for the pecans needs to cook something like ten minutes or so to get up to the 240 degrees, so I started cooking it before the segment so that they would be close once the camera was on me. The studio has a gas stove.
I use electric.
No problem, just watch it closer.
And then I watched the inside of the pan catch on fire.
Bourbon.
Whoa.
No biggie, just blew out the flame, keep cooking. And then it caught on fire again.
I started to freak, what if it caught on fire during the segment? I blew it out again and kept going.
Fire again.
I leaned down to blow it out and was met with a smell.
The smell of my hair on fire.
Did you see that coming? I didn't. Thankfully, I just barely singed my bangs and the producer assured me that another local chef burned off some eyebrows when making a particularly tall flambé.
After that, it cooperated, having gotten its dig in on me. No more flames. No disaster on live TV.

Then on Saturday, I participated in a gingerbread competition at Holiday House (an event that is attended by thousands of local ladies plus some not so enthusiastic husbands).

Last year I had grand plans. Like crazy grand. Like I constructed a 3 story doll house that needed 38 base pieces to construct.
And it did not go well.
At all.
So this year I went simpler. I still went with the dollhouse approach (dammit, I was going to make this work). But went with a smaller house and just kind of winged the layout and ignored things like stairs. Also they allowed us to construct the house ahead of time and simply come in and decorate.
That was a huge help. So I knew that I didn't have to worry about crumbling walls and structure. Just pretty. Also, I wasn't in it to win, just to finish a cute house. And thanks to Audreya, we did!

Hello twinkle lights!

I did not win. Honestly, I don't know who did. Although I would suspect it was the castle right next to me. I would have voted for it too! But people seemed to think ours was cute and liked that there was an inside/outside to it.

After finishing that, I delivered not one, but two wedding cakes. I will not recount the story leading to how these raspberries ended up red and airbrushed gold instead of 'golden raspberries.' I will not talk about the phone calls and the trips and the begging and the migraines or the general desire to try to have a child to simply trade for said golden raspberries that were one week (one week) out of season.
Nope.
Not going to talk about it.
Instead, oooooh, pretty.

Then I delivered this wedding cake an the accompanying dessert table. 

 
Hello panoramic on the iPhone 5! I do love you! Ignore that the table gets a bit wonky in the middle. I kept walking trying to get the whole thing. But the caterer was doing a 'team meeting thing' a few feet from me and after two attempts at getting the whole table I decided they probably thought I was crazy and I left it be.
Wonky table and all.

So that was my week. Very eventful. So much so, I decided at the last minute to close for Veterans Day. Yes, I totally used a holiday meant to celebrate those who have fought for us in war for my own benefit of sleeping late. 

I would do it again.