Imagine the possibilities.........

I started this journey with a strange belief that there would be time for at least a few long days at the beach and a couple of yoga classes.

Instead it seems that 4am is a prime time to be wide awake thinking about phase 94 of my business which I will execute when I have completed phases 2-92. Oh after I have done a full days work, need to get up at 6am and somehow fit in general life.

Work life balance, now thats just an urban myth.

Don't get me wrong here, I am completely in bliss, totally loving the sheer loveliness of being far away from the watchful eye of the corporate machine and my creativity is thriving. But there are times in life when thriving is just not appropriate. Like bed time.

My brain seems to have figured out that the world is quiet at that time for one reason only. For it to THINK!

Think, function and go into total overdrive when it should be ASLEEP!!!

Can I please have an off button?? Just for one night, that is all I ask for. Just a few wee hours in which to have uninterrupted sleep. Because I can only do so many things at once. I would like it if perhaps my brain could pace itself, perhaps saving some of these ideas for, I don't know....RETIREMENT??

However, the one true lovely thing about not working for the machine, which may indeed be the root cause of abovementioned overdrive (besides being able to say no whenever I damn well please, ignore the phone if I choose and take a day, week or month off without counting the days, asking permission and submitting a form that calculates my holiday to the very last hour.....oh and getting excited over an idea knowing that the only thing that can limit me is me as there is noone sombrely telling me there is no budget, legal won't approve and its not in the plan)

Yes besides all that; the one true lovely thing is literally having time to smell the roses. My brain may not be switching off but perhaps that is because it is so stimulated by a bit of rose smelling.

I had forgotten what it was like to take the time to appreciate the little things. A sneaky hour spent in the florist, a morning at the library, a good natter and brainstorm with a friend (over lunch and coffee of course and then my friend summed the afternoon nicely with.... "we are like a man and a woman......it was only a matter of time before we got down to business").

I wonder if my brain is just confused.

Maybe I forgot that it was ok to smell the roses and so my brain has decided, now that it is sniffing it won't switch off??? Ever!!!!

I am excited by the possibilities of life, if not a little overwhelmed by what a mind can do when not limited by the constraints of a structured work environment.

It begs the question then........Imagine the possibilities if only the machines could harness the possibilities that come from freedom and excitement ? Imagine..........

Saving my world one cupcake at a time......

I read the other day on someone's facebook page that endings are actually beginnings in disguise.

How true this is. Today marks the end of my first week without 40 hours of paid work. Yet somehow I have this unnerving feeling that I have probably pulled an 80 hour week this week.(I refuse to add it up) It has been a bit of a roller coaster actually. It went lilke this....

Monday was a public holiday so I was still in very strong denial about my decision, in fact I think I was just ignoring it altogether and possibly still recovering from the hangover from Thursday after having just one too many drinks with the work crew. (Yes it takes me this long to get over such occasions a fact that possibly contributed to below crisis)

Tuesday bought about the "I have no job, what have I done, I am nearly 35, am complete single spinster who retrieves the mail in her apron with flour in her hair and chocolate on her face wearing flip flops, OMG am actually worse than Bridget Jones as am not even having affair with dashing Hugh Grant as much of a nasty bastard that he is to Bridget he is very handsome and in true Bridget form am going to consume wine at 2pm and eat at least a kilo of chocolate until I realise I have run out of chocolate as chocolate was intended for my cakes this week and now I have to go to the store pull yourself together Bridget" crisis moment.

(Um...Apologies to those of you who recieved panic stricken soul searching, universe questioning emails from me that afternoon. You know who you are, please continue to ignore them)

Wednesday bought about a flat panic with a call from the newspaper who wanted to come and do a story on me at MY HOUSE (note here that crisis day on Tuesday was not remotely conducive to clean tidy house) which resulted in me madly grabbing everything in sight from downstairs and chucking it upstairs, praying the journalist didn't ask to use my toilet in the vain hope that I may come across as a mildly sane, hygenic and in control professional who you would definately want to purchase your wedding cake from!!

Thursday......another mad panic as the two previous days of crisis and mad flap panic had not resulted in starting any of the cakes (there were 3) that I need to have completed by OMG TOMORROW!!!!!

Friday ......the final run of the week.......a full day to myself to finish my cakes and you guessed it Poppy pulls a sickie and can't go to daycare. Delivery to do in Southern Highlands EEEEKKK!!
Friday night....Hmm have no job, yet still working into the wee hours.........IT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY

Saturday brought about a full class of students for our first class at Balgownie and publication of the above mentioned article. Which on the upside was the most relaxed day of the week.

Sunday....managed to surface long enough to take Poppy and Peekay to the beach for a quick breath of air before returning to the couch for some much needed recovery time.

So endings.....yes they are actually beginnings........and they are never quite what we expect them to be :-)

PS All cakes delivered safely to all the correct destinations at all the correct times and on all the correct days

Is this the most awkward place ever?

Is it just me or does anyone else find the morning elevator ride up with the most awkward moments on earth?

I could think of any number of preferred uncomfortable scenarios that I would happily endure, turning up to work with my clothes inside out, having my boss walk in on me in the toilet, catching a collegue kissing the boss…..rather than endure another morning with strangers who stare at the unopened silver metal door, silently willing it to open and praying that no one else enters the lift so they don't have to endure the slow, steady disembarkation of more strangers at every level on the way to their small grey cubicle where they will spend the rest of their day.

When standing for the lift on your carparking level, I have been known to will the doors to close faster to just miss the entry of the General Manager or any other superior whom, I may not quite be able to face at 7.30 in the morning.

Today though, I was enjoying watching this stange ritualistic event and I almost burst out laughing.

In an effort to stifle it, possibly in a hysterical involuntary response to the air of uncomfortableness, I produced what could only be described as a very inappropriate snort, on my own journey from undercover dark car park to my small grey cubicle when two men entered the lift after getting their morning coffee.

I see these two men regularly getting their coffee, and these meetings downstairs are met each day with looks of guilty pleasure and almost a delight at having escaped the office for a few stolen moments in which they can discuss the latest football drama, the wife's unreasonable demands or perhaps a hushed exchanged slander of a colleague.

Upon entering the elevator, they entered the silent world of elevator rules and regulations.

1. There is to be no talking between strangers.

2. Any words exchanged are to be brief before one is to recommence staring at the silver door. Nervous coffee sipping is acceptable but this must not impact your ability to maintain one's eye gaze on the door.

3. It is definitely not appropriate to look at anyone else in the elevator, even if the eye contact is just admiring a particularly stylish handbag or snappy pair of shoes.

4. If any brief pleasantries are exchanged, they are to take place quickly before both parties are to return into an awkward silence to allow time to ponder if another pleasantry will need to be exchanged upon ones departure from the elevator.

These two men abruptly finished their conversation as they entered the stifling box, and proceeded to conform to the door staring, mindless ascent to face the work day. What made me almost laugh, strangely enough, was the nervous sipping at the paper coffee cup that is held onto and sipped at as almost a support for the uncomfortable, awkward ride that seems never to end. The funniest part of this is that each, sip, slurp and gulp is magnified in the deafening silence.

What is it about western society and in particular westerners, that creates this spacial uncomfortableness and fear of interacting with strangers in small confined spaces? Having been packed on the trains on Tokyo and faced with a whole new dimension of spacial issues, I wonder if the trip to the grey cubicle may be made that little more enjoyable by breaking down some barriers and perhaps commenting on those snappy shoes you were eyeing off or making the effort to ask some questions of the person you have been standing next to on your daily ascent for the last three years.

Who knows maybe even romance could ignite in that small silver box?

How exactly do they do it?

Have you ever had one of those weeks that has just left you reeling? Conferences, interstate travel, the loss of a memory stick, doing things on the wrong day...twice!!! And well just getting yourself dressed in clean clothes everyday for work. (I wore the same clothes two days in a row this week, although it was in different states so I figured that was perfectly fine)

I went on holidays a few weeks ago and had the most wonderful time, however I feel like I got back and was hit by a bus. Or rather hit by my life....and slapped in the face a few times just for fun!!!!

I have always thought that sometimes it is almost better to just not have holidays. (note...I did say almost)

Somehow the not knowing what life is like on the other side, makes dealing with living this life, just that bit easier.

Over the past few years, people have often asked me, how I manage to juggle it all, how I manage to get up, go to work, drive hours to work, look after a child, start a business and my response has always been that "well you just do what you have to do and when you have a bigger goal in sight it makes it that bit easier"

However after I have returned from my holiday and spent time on the other more relaxed side, I just want to make it clear I have absolutely NO IDEA how I have been doing it. Not only that I have no idea how stay at home mums do it, how working mums do it and I have even less idea how single mums with more than one child do it. Anna Bligh (first woman elected in her own right as a state premier in Australia, mother of 2) and Dr Fiona Wood (WA's only female plastic surgeon, Australian of the year, mother of 6), how you do it is completely beyond me.

I count myself as pretty lucky, I have an adorable little girl (well mostly perhaps except for that moment this afternoon when she told me I wasn't her mum any more and threw her food on the ground and did everything that I asked her not to), I have a supportive family and I have a new business to focus on and daycare three days a week.

Still I am left wondering, if I don't know how I have been doing this, this where someone was telling me what I had to do for 40 hours of the week, how on earth do I know how I am going to do this next bit?

The Thrifty Kitchen

Perhaps it is my fear of being self employed and facing a strict budget in the early days of the transition from employee to full time cake decorator that made the title of this book catch my eye but yesterday I purchased one of the loveliest, homeliest cookbooks I think I have bought to date. This is the sort of cook book I would aspire to write if I was ever to write one.

Now I have so many cookbooks and cake books that recently I had to buy a seperate bookshelf to be dedicated for the storage of books of this persuasion (and it became full shortly after being erected!). But this book, I think, is destined to be one of my favourites.

This book is written by the daughter and granddaughter of the Grand Dame of Australian cooking Margaret Fulton. In the introduction her daughter Suzanne recalls her youth "We didn't have alot, but you would never have guessed it from the food that we had at our table"........and later, when talking about her family today; "We eat simply, the way I always have , and every meal is special. We cook together, set the table, share a bottle of wine and relax as we talk over the days activities, not unlike generations of our family have always done"

The book is a gorgeous insight into the way this family live complete with a pizza recipe contribution by Kates most adorable fiancee. (He does give credit to the woman who taught him this one, Kate's grandmother; Margaret Fulton, Lucky him to learn from the best!!)

I think particularly when we become parents we start to question what we do, the way we live and what our children will take out from their childhood. One of the things I have always wanted for Poppy was to have a childhood filled with an appreciation of the most delicious fresh produce, wonderful baking aromas and an understanding of how important food is not just as a sustenance, but as a healthy, wonderful pleasure that has the ability to bring people together.

Whilst I was on maternity leave with Poppy and living in Jurien Bay, three hours north of Perth, I loved having the chance to pickle crayfish, make tomato chutney from the abundance of tomatoes in season that our neighbours would give us and to make masses of fig jam from the absolute glut of fresh figs that the 90 year old man from down the road would bring me in his white fishing bucket from his tree. I would borrow books by Maggie Beer from the local library and furiously make preserved lemons and every sort of jam with the local produce available.

Most of this produce was excess, donated by a neighbour not wanting it to go to waste and I found that food cooked this way with shared produce connected people. It may have been destined to rot on the ground as it fell from a tree, but this donated fruit would be returned as a jam as a thank you, and in this process created the relationships that form communities.

In the past few years, I have lost my community. I have lost the grounding that home cooked, shared food gives me. We have become too busy, life too complex and too many take away meals have been eaten. I can feel my soul craving the simplicity of a meal created with shared produce. The simple pleasure of collecting eggs from my chickens or the satisfaction of giving scraps to the chooks, knowing that nothing in the house is left to waste.

Books like The Thrifty Kitchen remind us of the power that food has. The power in its simplicity and freshness, of ingredients combined and shared, the unprocessed kind, that brings people together, the power that can bind communities and most importantly creates the memories that are the foundation of families everywhere.

The Beginning of the end.....

1st September 2010

Today I have 30 days until I am self employed. Its funny but I have been wondering to myself all day if "self employed" is just actually a nice way of saying "unemployed".

For those of you who don't know me, I am 34, a single mother and I work in a corporate environment (read corporate machine) for a large multinational food company. In dog food. Glamourous? No, but it does mean I travel alot and get home late alot. Which is really hard with a three year old and on old boxer dog.

My typical day consists of getting up at 4.45 am, getting ready before the wonderful lady from around the corner comes at 5.45 to wait till my daughter wakes up to take her to daycare, I then drive 1 hour and 45minutes to work, work, then leave around 3.30pm to get to daycare to pick up my daughter before 6pm, feed and shower her, put her to bed, maybe do some washing, watch tv if I am lucky and then sleep. That is unless I am travelling interstate or at a conference.
Well that is all it was until about 18 months ago, where this story really begins.........

Poppy was turning 2 and I had decided to make a cake. I had made a few attempts prior to this and well lets just say you won't see the photos here :-) So I had decided that Youtube was the answer. I googled, I purchased, I baked, I YouTubed, and then I decorated. I stayed up un til 2am that night creating what I had planned to be a show stopping cake. It was.....what can I say.....to say that it was not show stopping is an understatement of sorts :-)

Clearly to make any sort of progress as a mother, this infernal cake decorating business needed to be mastered. So, I enrolled in a class.

That class was quite fun, it was like something creative that had been hiding somewhere deep inside started to wake up. I had this feeling that creating something was actually giving me a little bit of me back. So I enrolled in another course and then another. Soon I was making more cakes than I could eat. My parents had more chocolate mud in their freezer than they could eat and started to question if this was my way of doing them in!

So the cakes made their way to the office. And then people actually wanted me to make cakes for them! And then they wanted to give me money!! I don't think I have ever been so surprised when a collegue approached me and asked me to make his son's birthday cake for him and he wanted to pay me. I was quite chuffed but secretly, quite bloody petrified!

Finally, in December last year, http://www.cupcakesforpoppy.com.au/ was born. Only as a hobby.......of course!

Now my day consisted of all of those things I described above and more.......

Once Poppy is in bed, the fun begins. Chocolate Ganache, Caramel Swirl Cake, Fondant, Sugar Flowers......it is all on until the wee hours of the morning, when miraculously something that resembles a birthday cake or even a wedding cake appears on my kitchen bench before I dragged myself off to bed for a few hours of precious sleep praying that Poppy wouldn't wake up during the night.

This all seemed ok, perfectly reasonable in fact, and I thought I could do this, you know have a full time job, run a cake business, drive 4 hours a day, travel a few times a month.

Oh and then there was that other little thing I do..........be a mum to my little Poppy.

Poppy has been good, she has been very patient with her very hectic mum. She hasn't given me too much of a hard time about making batches and batches of cupcakes and bowl after bowl of buttercream, (I did let her have the beaters!!!), or being at daycare 5 days a week for long long days. But then one day she stopped.

"Mummy, I don't want you to go to work anymore" and then the next day "Mummy, Why do you have to go to work?" Then the day after that "Mummy, please don't go to work. Just hang out with me"

The day after that I walked out of the office, got in my car, drove across the road, into the medical centre, onto an ECG machine and was informed that I was in the throws of a panic attack and quickly prescribed some nasty little pills.

2 weeks later, I dumped the pills and resigned. So here I am....30 days to go......self employed or unemployed?

I have started this blog to document the transition from Corporate to Cake, to share some of my experiences and thoughts along the way, the good, the bad, the recipes, the cakes, the classes, the ups and downs of being self employed and operating a home based business and lastly but certainly not least, the moments that make being a parent the best thing ever and the moments that make you wonder how on earth you ever ended up here.

This is my journey and I hope you will come along for the ride.