Cupcake Craziness...

So I am one week away from the biggest cupcake adventure ever!  Well so far, anyway.  I got a referral from a co-worker, one of the people that have benefited from all the practice I have put into my cupcakes in the last six months, to bake 600 cupcakes for a bike rally/wedding over Labor Day weekend. 

The idea has sunk in, I have bought all my supplies except for the milk, strawberries and blueberries, and have a plan laid out.  I am more than a little terrified and have been loosing some sleep over the whole thing for the last couple of weeks.  I wake up in the wee hours of the morning and my mind starts racing, thinking about all those cupcakes.

The hardest part for me is that I like to make all my cupcakes from scratch, but for this I am doing what the bride has asked me to.  She wants 200 pineapple upside down cupcakes, which create an interesting problem since you don't actually bake them in a cupcake holder, but actually should save me a little time because there is no frosting involved.  There will also be 200 angel food cupcakes, with a frosting made from cool whip and cream cheese fruit dip.  Who would have thought that?  She also wants a slice of strawberry and a blueberry on all of these.  Both of these will be made from a box mix.  Oh no!  Again, she's the bride and she has hired me to help make her wedding all she wants it to be so that's what I'll do.  The final 200 are half devil's food with peanut butter butter cream and half red velvet with cream cheese frosting.  So I get to get my cupcakes into the mix.

It's going to be a busy weekend.  I am taking off Friday to start baking.  My plan is to have everything baked on Friday so all the frosting will take place on Saturday.  I am also planning to squeeze in a 5k, the Brookhaven Run.

And make time for Hurricane Hannah's pool party for her birthday.  

I am lucky that I will have Josh, who is also taking off on Friday, I am thinking he will be on dish duty and helping to keep me on track.  The girls will be out of school Friday as well, so I'll get to throw in some free child labor.  Camy is so excited and really wants to help me ice the cupcakes.  We'll have to see about that.

It should be a stressful, exhausting, fun filled weekend.  Who knows I might never want to see another cupcake in my life, but I doubt that.  If I can do this, I can do anything.  I am thankful that my friends have been so supportive of my new business venture.  I do already have an order for cupcakes for Thanksgiving, pumpkin with cream cheese frosting.  Sure hope they get that pumpkin shortage worked out this year!

My Grandma...

This is my grandma.  This picture is from a few years ago, but this is her.  This is the woman that took four little kids and took care of us in what was probably the hardest year of our lives.   We lived with her the year after our mom died, she had planned that we would be with her for three.  She made room for us in her every day life.  She bought us bunk beds, we learned how to swim in her backyard, she used to read at night. 

I so love the woman that she was back then.  She was so strong for all.  I thought I'd list a few of my memories...

• The first time we visited her in Florida, Billy walked right in the house and yanked the chain on one of Grandpa Ralph's clocks that hung right by the door.  Grandma took the fall for that one, and I wonder if he ever knew that Billy was the one that broke it.
• She used to make us eat all sorts of foods that I would never make my kids eat today.  Mangoes, grapefruit to name a couple.  I still can't eat grapefruit.
• When we got head lice, she stood in the sun for what must have been hours combing through our long hair with a little black comb because she refused to cut our hair off.  I think she even washed my hair and Jen's with what could only have been motor oil to try to kill them all.
• I remember a story she read us about a great redwood tree, I have no idea how that has stuck with me all this time but it has.
• I remember walking to the grocery store for her, something I would never have my 10 year olds do now, but at 7 in the early 80s it must have been okay.
• The bunk beds that I remember as taking up almost all of the tiny room that Jen and Karen and I shared.
• I will always remember how much she loved my mom.
• Cornbread with syrup.
• The pool in the backyard that we learned to swim in.
• She used to yell at Uncle Frank for playing his music too loud in his car when we were with him.

In the last ten years or so, we had not seen her often, and the visits were always difficult for us.  She was no longer the grandma that we remembered from our childhood.  Her life wasn't easy after we left, and it was never the same for her.

She passed away in her sleep last night.  I am very lucky to have had her in my life.

My Desk...

So, there was a slight mishap in my office on Friday afternoon, and I must say I have not laughed that hard in a really long time.

My desk is U shaped, and a co-worker (we'll call him Ramsey) was sitting being me partly on the side partly on the bottom of the U as we were looking at a new software program we are launching this morning.  I got a call from downstairs, apparently Kaiser's, a nearby restaurant/soda fountain, was going out of business this weekend and some other co-workers were going on an ice cream soda run.  I placed my order and hung up the phone. 

Ramsey decided he couldn't live without an ice cream soda and as he was reaching for my phone moved a little further on the bottom of the U that was my desk and that's when all hell broke loose.  That part of my desk came crashing down, one of my candles broke, my water spilled everywhere and everything that was sitting on that section of my desk fell to the floor.  It took a second to realize what had happened and then I was laughing so hard I could barely speak.

I called our warehouse manager and could not get the words out that I was going to need a broom, I had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard.  We did manage to get some help and removed the top part of the broken portion.

So here is my desk after the broken piece was removed.  So we decided that I wasn't really gonna need the back part since the top part wasn't going to be returning.

We did have to completely shut my computer off at this point because everything is plugged in through the hole in the part that we were going to remove.

So this is what my desk looks like now, it's no longer U shaped, it's two parallel pieces. 

On a positive note, we are in the process of remodeling our area and in a few weeks I will no longer even have an office.  I use the term office loosely here, it's more like a shoebox.  If you shut the door that's about what it feels like.  Don't even get me started on how the door won't slam, that really made me mad one time.

What more could you ask for on a Friday afternoon when you are trying to wrap up the month, except a whole lot of comic relief from a co-worker!

Ah Ramsey, you crack me up!  Your timing was absolutely perfect on that one!