Life Changes

A lot of things have changed since the last time I did a real post here.  I have a lovely lady named Jes to thank for that.  She commented on my frustrated post with some really warm and genuine advice.  It was just the kick in the pants that I needed to stop whining and worrying about it and make it happen.  So thanks!

A week or two ago I decided that it was time to stop waiting for my life to change itself, and to start doing what I really wanted.  To be happy I needed a large project, something to keep me busy and motivated, something that I really truly enjoyed and had a set metric for progress and goals.  So one day I woke up, looked at Chris, and said, "I want to start my bakery".  He did not miss a beat.  He automatically started thinking of the techological aspect, bought my url and started designing a server for me on his old desktop.  He began researching rules and regulations for small businesses.  We went to the library and I took out a stack of cook books and small business ownership books.  We went to the Sam's club and I priced out all of the ingredients and found the unit price so I could get a ballpark for my materials cost.  I started talking to Elise about a logo and theme and she jumped up to the task.  I collected all the oddball ingredients I would need from Wegman's and started testing recipes or multiple recipes every day.  I started making adjustments and modifications, feeding people brownies, and getting really excited.  I bought a lot of tupperware and organized the kitchen.  I started writing a menu of offerings and organizing my recipes.  It feels amazing.

It's going to be difficult.  I can't really afford to rent a commercial kitchen or anything until I begin to turn a profit.  I can't take any orders until my website is active.  My website won't be active until I figure out what I'm selling and for how much.  Until then it will have to be classified as a "hobby" and I'll be feeding the people at Lauren's homeless shelter desserts until they beg me to stop giving them chocolate.  It's pretty time consuming.  Luckily I have a job that allows me to fill my day with other things, but you really don't know where the time goes when you're baking something every day.  My to-do list is out of control.

Chris was away this week so I tried to keep myself busy so I wouldn't be depressed.  I may have overdone it a tad, because now I feel like I didn't get anything done, but I did spend a lovely week with my valentine Cynthia.  We ate take out and watched Watson on Jeopardy!  We saw reruns of Big Bang Theory and watched the dvds of the fabulous BBC show she has introduced me to: Sherlock.  Seriously, it's amazing, go watch it, and try not to imagine Holmes and Watson having sex.  I dare you, try.

Another bit of my massive to-do list centered around cleaning the house and nesting.  I've been in serious nesting mode ever since we repainted the second bedroom and put the guest furniture and my desk inside.  We have so much more space and room in our closet.  I have my sewing machine out on my desk at all times and I can use it whenever I want for all of my sewing projects.  My stacks of magazines and notes to myself have a home that is somewhere other than out in the open of the condo.  Baking all the time means that the kitchen always needs to be cleaned.  In school, every day after class we would sweep the floor and then spray it down with water and disinfectant.  Then squegee the water into the drains on the floor.  Sadly, this cannot be done in my home kitchen, and if you walk in the kitchen you will inevitably track bits onto the carpet and throughout the rest of the house.  So we also need to vacuum and clean both bathrooms. 

Chris fixed up the TV cabinet and rewired everything so that it was nice and neat (I begged).  Put up a new towel rack and toilet paper holder in the second bathroom, put new hinges on the chest, and repainted and moved the furniture into the second bedroom.  All is going rather well.  I had so much energy on super bowl Sunday that I also organized the laundry room and our closet.  I placed everything strategically in the second bedroom closet, and my next plan of attack will be the coat closet.  Also, hanging the curtains in the second bedroom and  making a cushion for the chest so people can sit on it, and throw pillows for the couches.  Did I mention we have new couches?  My boss very kindly gave them to us when his wife was redecorating.  We have a like new, blue microsuede reclining 3 seat couch and love seat.  They are a bit too big for the room and carrying them into our place was among one of the most difficult tasks I have ever completed (so heavy that my arms literally gave out and I fell down a few times), but our place looks so much more like a home now.  We pulled the dining room table out so that we could actually eat on it. 

I actually got myself to a meetup from meetup.com and met a group of lovely ladies from all over the Baltimore region.  I will hopefully be going to another meetup soon to get to know them a bit better.  I reconnected with my friend Hannah from college which also feels AMAZING.  I am so incredibly happy to be talking to her on a regular basis.  We are emailing pretty consistently right now and I am going to try to do the same with Morgan and possibly Matt (who is currently recovering from heart surgery in the hospital). 

Wedding plans are going well.  I'm talking with our photographer now about when to schedule our engagement shoot and what our theme/ideas are going to be.  Elise's NY shower is booked, I have a flight booked for her NH shower and great ideas to help Amanda with some of the stuff she has planned.  Her bachlorette party is also booked and will be super fun!  We are going to the 80s prom in the city and getting all crazy 80s dressed up.  Heat up your crimping irons, this is going to be epic.  It feels like our calendar is filling up very quickly with all of these things.  So glad that we have a vacation booked for April.  We will be going to New Orleans and then on a few day cruise to Mexico, then back to NO.  I'm very excited to hang out on Burbon street and eat some bignets. I'm helping Elise book her hair stylist now.  We are going to my house on Long Island this weekend to help her put together her invitations.  Laura and Jason will be there as well, and hopefully I'll be able to catch up with Jaclyn and Jamie as well. 

I have a lot of pictures of things that I have been baking and a before and after of the kitchen organization to post next.  Hopefully I will get those up tonight.  Thanks for reading!

Julibean <3

Holy Crap Frosting to the Max!

Today my sister and I decided to make all of the cakes and frosting needed for all of our future Wilton decorating classes at once. We ran to Michael's, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and the Supermarket to get all the necessary supplies, which included 16 pounds of powdered sugar and 4 huge canisters of shortening. We made 3 - two or three layer cakes each and threw them in the freezer. Our teacher explained to us the proper way of preserving cakes and frosting in the freezer to be defrosted and decorated at a later date. Apparently freezing things keeps everything wet and creates nice moist cakes, but refrigerating dries everything out so it's not really useful for stuff like this or bread, etc. Who knew? We used boxed cake mixes because it really doesn't matter what the cake is like, this is a decorating class, not a baking class. Then we had to make 16 batches of butter cream frosting.




We needed to make stiff consistency frosting for when we do our decorating. When I say stiff, I mean stiff. We nearly broke our mom's professional stand mixer. It got seriously overheated and made this awful noise and we had to turn it off and figure out another way to mix it all up. Long story short... we were in the kitchen for about 7-8 hours today while watching the Super Bowl here and there as things were baking. I think if I'm actually doing this for a living I'm going to need one of those squishy floor mats so my feet don't feel like they're about to fall off every evening when I finish working.

My dad gave me one of the old digital cameras we have lying around the house and I plan on taking pictures of the things I bake and decorate and posting them up here. Once I have something worth taking a picture of, I will figure out how you actually get photos up on here. My CALI classes start in two days and I'm so excited. My syllabus sounds amazing (and delicious) and I can't wait to get started.

Tomorrow I will be de-Christmasing the house some more. Our house has a serious clutter/mess problem. My mother is a bit of a hoarder and we have trouble getting things organized or throwing anything away. The house is always covered in papers, books, magazines, laundry, shopping, coats, etc. We consider it an achievement if our Christmas tree is down by Super Bowl Sunday, I think the longest we ever made it was Valentine's Day, possibly even St. Patrick's Day, I really can't recall. So Elise and I took it upon ourselves to de-Christmas the house this weekend. There's only so long into February that you can look at a nativity scene, menorah, and ornaments without wanting to kill yourself. Also, the sheer amount of Christmas paraphernalia we have in the house is astonishing. Crates and crates, and tupperwares and boxes galore. I would estimate that half of the attic/basement is full of decorations. Not only that, but my mother has an entire set of Christmas china, glassware, serving dishes, etc. The set has a billion pieces and takes up a hell of a lot of room, and there is quite a production of switching the china in the cabinet from regular china to Christmas china so it can be on display during the season. I shit you not.

This Christmas things got severely out of hand. I don't know if I've seen in this bad in a really long time. Mom has been trying to clean out as much of her classroom as possible since the school she teaches will be closing this year. This means that there is even more junk that we never even knew existed infiltrating our current war zone of a living space. As Elise and I went through all of the boxes, making sure to label everything and match the labels up with the corresponding boxes as to make the process as easy as possible, I came upon a box that said "outdoor icicle lights and garland". Inside I found: unopened packages of Thanksgiving plates and napkins, fourth of July place mats, red white and blue lights, two ceramic pumpkin dishes that were being stored inside a Christmas bag, an Easter faberge egg, and a Snoopy figurine with bunny ears and an Easter basket. There has been an explosion of holidays and it has to stop.






Mom has been dying to get a puppy for about two years now. I still maintain that we should only get a puppy if the house is entirely cleaned so that there is nothing on the floor in any room that a dog might eat or destroy. This has probably not happened in my home since my parents moved into it in 1983. If you ever wonder why my siblings and I are so anal about organizing or frequently spout sonnets about how clean our future houses are going to be, you need only take a look at our family home around the holidays. It is a nightmare of epic proportions. My brother barely bothers to come home for Christmas any more because he mentally cannot handle the mess. So here's to finishing the de-Christmasing process tomorrow... for once and for all.

Julibean <3