Working from Home

Dear Sugar Diary....

Hi there! I took a couple of days to get back here but here I am!=) My sleep pattern has been CRAZY lately. Like a baby that stays awake all night and wants to sleep all day...yup..that's me! Bakers and decorators have the craziest hours don't we??(...the sleepless nights and long hours) But I love decorating my cakes at night. When the kiddos are all asleep and the house is all nice and clean and all is quiet and calm. (I guess sleeping in the day time while my monsters are at school is a perk of choosing to stay home and I realize that not everyone has that option=(.  I usually click on Netflix....find my shows(Grey's Anatomy or I.D. or Man vs Wild)...make coffee and turn on all 7 light bulbs in my kitchen...throw on my reading glasses and get in the zone. ;) This is my actual work spot:(click on the pic to enlarge)

Welcome to my very regular kitchen.....in a house that was built around the 1950's....and I am quiet content here. And SEE my laptop is right there too...I spend most of my day in here.....doing a whole lot of caking and keeping up with clients and a lot of YOU on Facebook. It's my space...and while it may not be state of the art...it is mine and I love it.=) I am sitting in that chair now....in front of the laptop..typing this. An Argentinean Tango is playing on Spotify....and I am typing this while trying to calm all the crazy scattered thoughts of cake ideas going thru my mind....I don't think it matters what your kitchen looks like at all....and I have said this before...It is the heart and passion you throw into your work....the sleepless nights....the nerves...every tear you have ever let escape because a cake isn't turning out or every happy tear because it did. I don't have a dishwasher...look again...see? No dishwasher...and a regular old oven...but where there is a will there is a way and there is SO MUCH will in this kitchen!....=) When I got into this wonderful world of cake...my intention was never to own a store front....I just wanted to bake and create while wearing my slippers....make cakes like the ones I saw on TV and online....I am not trying to be a bakery...and that is why I haven't purchased a banner or created a menu (even though I have like 23 different menu layouts saved but not completed) I don't have a pricing chart because I don't make cakes like a supermarket....I DO have a basic per serving price and cupcake prices...but my cakes are all mostly custom and novelty....and pricing is very unique to each one. I have my flavors and am always coming up with new ones...so a menu would always be changing....I have ordered business cards and I hand them out or deliver my cakes with them on there...but even that makes me feel weird...lol...does handing a card to someone seem like I am full of myself? lol....I kinda think it makes me look that way. I bake for fun and am in love with this form of artistic expression....it makes your eyes happy and tummy even happier....I started charging for my cakes when demand grew and I needed more ingredients but a lot of my cakes have been free....especially in the beginning when I just wanted the excuse and free artistic reign over a cake ;)
I have been asked to provide weekly menus of cupcakes for the week as other fellow bakers do but having 4-5 cakes a week makes that hard. I really don't know how bakery's do it! lol...but then again  they have employees...I don't.
I don't know....I think that all this rambling is boiling down to the fact that I am content baking at home...I really am....I know I get friends saying " I wish you had a store front Shey" but a store front isn't what I want....I want to be home with my kids...bake ...be a mom....and one day when they are all grown up I am pretty sure they will have these memories of a mommy always covered in sugar and a color stained apron....answering homework questions while holding a rolling pin or kneading fondant...or of a mommy asleep on the couch because she was too tired to go all the way down the hall to her bed...They will look at pictures of past birthday cakes and reminisce...and their friends will say things like " I remember when your mom made me a "blah blah" cake for my 13th birthday!" I want them to look back and realize I stayed home for them...but also that I was motivated enough to DO something with my time...after all where else can these be my rules? xoxoxoxoxox