It’s Live!

My website is finally live. I still have a few pictures to take and post but the products will be great.
Check it out:

www.stickymonkeysweets.com

Catering Ups and Downs

Back in November my aunt and I started a catering company. My aunt is a decorating genius and works very hard at her business and her life. I look up to my aunt very much and think her knowledge of running her own business will help in this adventure of ours. We have learned a lot in the few jobs we have had. I think that larger parties are more fun but was excited to try this smaller birthday party for 60 people. That one was this weekend, it was another “probono” job because we are learning. I just wonder how long do we have to learn before we get paid.

The biggest things I learned this week is that if you are catering at a home you simply drop food off in disposable dishes so you don’t have to wait around for the minglers to eat.  The problem was, my aunt decorates better than anyone and we knew she could make the party so much better with her touch. Her touch is always nice and disposable doesn’t fit into that style of serving. Now we have to learn how to balance the two. Tonight worked out because everyone LOVED the decorations and the food and we ended up leaving everything there for them to clean up. Since it was for a family friend they will bring us our catering stuff all clean. Yeah for clean dishes.

The one pet peeve I have with this new job is that the party of 60 seemed to take as much work as the wedding for 325 people. Tons less to carry, tons less to make, tons less space to decorate… Why is the workload equal?

One thing I think we struggle with is we are both morning people and most of our jobs are at night. We get up early to make sure we have everything done perfectly and on time but by 6 we are exhausted and crabby. This makes me impatient and cannot be shown in a business setting if I want more business. I don’t know what to do. I was trying to think of how we could advertise to businesses that work normal business hours. We could do business meetings, parties, etc and still be done by bed time without wanting to kill anyone in the process. A new challenge for us.

Today was a success and I don’t think it was a waste of time, we learned so much about private parties and how much we need to adjust our style of catering for those types of parties.

Video’s For Lisa – Enjoy!

These are a few more videos of the dogs playing and the snow storm this weekend. I know you don’t get a lot of snow and thought you might like to see it falling.

The Dogs Making Noise As Promised

Here is the video of the dogs being crazy.

It’s Been Awhile

I will catch up and post pictures from graduation in the next few days. In the mean time here are some pictures from our Spring storm the last couple days. Billy and I helped my dad with snow removal last night and then today I played with dogs outside for a bit. Once everyone had enough of the snow we came inside and the dogs decided it would be fun to sing us songs, it was pretty funny.

Here is Mick, he likes to keep his butt warm by keeping it inside and the rest sitting on the ramp outside.

Taking a break from shoveling.

I can’t figure out how to convert the video file of the dogs barking and singing but when I do I promise to post it. Maybe one of my wordpress friends will know how to convert an AVI file to something wordpress accepts…

My First Tier Cake

Everything about this cake was new to me, except the cake part of course. I decided instead of the traditional yellow cake I default to, to try a german chocolate cake, my grandma’s recipe. The cake had a lot of ingredients but turned out great. The Coconut filling is a cooked filling, it calls for regular sugar and wouldn’t you know this is the day I run out.  I took a chance and used brown sugar and it turned out even better, I think I will change the recipe to always use brown sugar. I then put a very thin butter cream crumb coat on and freezed the cakes till it was time to put the fondant on. Fondant is expensive but looks nice because it is smooth, very popular for weddings now days.

Once the fondant was on I had to cut dowels to place in the cake to hold up each layer. This part was pretty much common sense, cut the dowels to the height of your cake and stick them in. I then had to pipe the borders which was a whole other issue. I am not great at piping and piping dark chocolate on white fondant is very noticable. The top layer was a bit shaky but I finally realized what I wanted my hands to do and the bottom to layers turned out great.

The sash is just marbled fondant. The flowers are made out of modeling chocolate (basically tootsie rolls). The flowers took me about 10 hours and over the 6 weeks of carrying them in and out of my car they got a little beat up but I think they still turned out nice.

My First Sheet Cake

The cake was a marbled cake which came out great, the filling was a Bavarian cream which I am not a fan of, the frosting butter cream which I like even less. If you like swallowing a stick of butter with your cake then this will be your favorite frosting. Chef made us use this frosting because he says it is the number one ordered frosting outside of fondant with cake orders. This surprises me but, whatever. Making the flowers was easier than I thought it was going to be but I still felt like a 5 year old learning to use scissors. Weird! I would say for my first one though, I am pleased!

Graduation

A few weeks back I asked the admin at school when graduation was, she said April 3rd. So I told a few people… then I go to a graduation meeting Friday afternoon and find out it is March 27th. How do the employees at the school not know when graduation is? Oh well, now I have to have my parents change their day off for a week earlier. The news of being done earlier is good to me so I was only slightly irritated.

While in the meeting we were given four packets, three forms to sign and four more papers on information. One paper is a sheet that I have to have signed by 12 different people. 12 people not at this campus so I have to drive downtown several times to get this accomplished. There is also a manditory portfolio review where I have to plan a menu and make a display out of sugar or chocolate for whatever I decide to make. I have to make 6 different things and fill a 6′x3′ table. Hmmm. Not real sure what to do. Along with that I guess there is a new exit practical where I have to make four desserts of my teachers choice in two days. Apparently they are going to be very challenging and are from 6-11 at night the week I graduate.

So graduation not turning out to be so relaxing, I felt more overwhelmed by that meeting than any other I have been to. Along with all the above I also have to schedule 4 different meetings with four different Chefs here in order to complete and get my portfolio review approved. STRESS!!!!

On the plus side I only have 5 weeks left, YEAH!!!!

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Baby Ford

Welcome to Baby Ford! My newest nephew. He was born on January 20th. He was 5 lbs 15 oz and was 18 1/2 inches long. I went to see him that night and he was a beautiful little baby. Some babies aren’t too cute but he really is adorable. His official name is Gifford Obney Seawright III. Because that is her boyfriends name I choose to call him Ford to keep them seperate.

I took this picture because I thought is was both funny and sort of cool that they put a lojack on the babies while they are at the hospital so no one can walk out with them.

His sweet baby toes!

I am hoping to go see him again tomorrow and I will take some new pictures of him, hopefully with his eyes open. I didn’t get a picture last time but his hair was thick and dark. So soft and sweet. What a little blessing.