Ramblings never sounded so good

As a way to inaugurate this first blog posting I'm going to go ahead and admit it right now, this blog will most likely be a whole bunch of ramblings. Ramblings about children, ramblings about grocery shopping, ramblings about... well you get the idea.

I'd like to begin my introducing myself to you, as I feel it may be important somewhere down the line. I'm 25, have been married for 7 years (well in a few days it will be 7 years), I have a son who will be 5 in December, a son who will be 2 in January, and a newborn daughter born in September. Together my husband and I co-run a tree service, and I am in the beginning stages of opening a wood milling business. I'm also an art student (though am on leave right now for above stated newborn). I have to pause now and admit I have no idea why I'm going to art school. It was something I so badly wanted. I did. I wanted, no I needed to be an art teacher. With a sub-specialty in stop motion animation, and a degree from a fancy sounding, i.e. expensive, place like the Academy of Art University where could I go wrong?! How about having a business that can't run without me (tree service) and one I'm starting that needs babying in order to function, oh yeah, and living in the Midwest which really, I couldn't even tell you where the nearest studio for stop-motion is. So yeah, dumb idea. I should have gone to culinary school. There I could learn how to create more/better recipes. I love baking. I've been known to bake up a storm. As a matter of fact I actually have 3 ovens, which I do in fact on occasion get running simultaneously for the sole purpose of covering my kitchen in baked goods and making my house smell like a slice of lemon meringue pie. 

I am fortunate enough to get the opportunity to sell my precious baked yummies on occasion too. This is something I wish would happen far more often. I bet if I made a little menu of items, it would. Right now I have two orders on hold. One is someone has commissioned a cake for an auction, so once the auction is won, I will converse with them and make the cake/deliver it. And the other is someone has on order a batch of my danishes.

Yes, I mean real danishes. I mean, takes 2 days to create the perfect airy, buttery dough, followed by creating my own pastry cream, assembling everything gingerly and bake to perfection pastries.  Are they worth it? I think the jury is still out on this one. I certainly love making them, people certainly love eating them. I've even heard compliments such as "I don't think I've ever had a pastry that good before," but at the end of the day, each batch of dough weighs 10 lbs, and does seriously take 2 days to make. I love doing this, my only problem is that 'orders' come in singles, so when I make all 10 lbs, I've got 8lbs left over just sitting there. Then I feel compelled to bake the rest of it, and end up with a few thousand calories to run off on my elliptical thanks to cherry-cheese baskets (picture to come). Oh who am I kidding, it's so totally worth it!

So back to where I was headed with this, I should have gone to culinary school. I'm sure if I did I would have been done long ago because I would have actually been motivated to finish, and could have started my own bakery instead. Course I'd probably weigh an extra 30 lbs if I did that. 

Yeah, that would have been worth it too.