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.......
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.
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.
Good on you Louise :) You are going to do so well and we shall embark on this crazy new journey together!
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