Clicking right along!

 The new bakery space is quickly taking shape! The shelves are up, the door screen is up, but due for a paint job before opening day. Baker's rack painted a nice pretty shade of pink, and sometime this week I'm off to Joanne's to see if I can find a match/compliment for the hot pink leopard print.

 

Next week, stuff goes up on the shelves (We hope!) and we should have a nice new backdrop for the shelf wall, as well as a few more things. Still have to paint W's door black, he didn't care for the idea of it being pink, for some reason!



Paint that mother pink!

So, everyone has been asking if I was going to use something other than white in the shop, and yes, yes I am. 

Pink!

Raging hot pink!

The bakery boxes I use are a great shade of pink, and I was able to find a very close shade in spray paint to use on this old metal baker's rack I've had for years and years.

I'm going to paint the old 3 of Cups shelves the same color, I think Breeze would like it. And maybe even one of the floor shelves, altho I think that might be just a hair too much pink overload. I think it is going to look great against the ultra white walls. W's door that leads into his apartment was a temptation, but I will be a good mom and paint it black, to satisfy his teen Goth leanings.


 Still trying to cover the blue paint, if it bleeds through the last coat, then it'll just have to stay. I figure no one will be looking at the walls anyway, they will be blinded by all the pink!

Second coat

Here's the second coat of primer, looking much better.

We'll put the top coat on today, and start painting the shelves if the rain is done.

 So far so good!

No more blue!

The first coat of primer is up, and it is much brighter already. It does look totally different with the blue gone.

 

 

Hopefully I can get another coat up today, then I can paint tomorrow.



 

 

Once the paint is done, we can move the shelves that I got from the Three of Cups, I bought them off Anthea when she closed down. (Miss you always Breeze!) 

 

More pics tomorrow!

Kitchen ceiling, Day 2.

 So, after much profanity and wasted tiles, the first round of ceiling tile is up. It looks SO much better already, and there is more light as well. Not sure how much insulation benefit we'll get, but considering the entire ceiling was ripped out, and there is NO insulation up there at the moment, any is a good. thing. (Insulation being next on the list of major upgrades.)

  

 There has been an issue with the Elfa shelves. The Container Store guy kept harping that we HAD to use their toggle bolt system for the shelves, they were designed for them, yadda yadda. They looked a bit flimsy to me, but the guy sounded good, so we bought the overpriced things. Sure enough, the bolts are pulling out of the wall. So it is off to Lowe's to get some heavy duty ones like I wanted to use in the first place.

 Next kitchen project will be the window. It needs a major cleaning and upgrade, all the old blind hardware removed, old paint/caulk removed and replaced, that kind of stuff. Once that gets done, then I'll sew a cafe curtain for the window, that then on to the really scary part............the SINK!

 Luckily that's not for a few weeks. (Yay!)

Next up: The Ceiling!

 So today we start the kitchen ceiling. here's the before pics:

 

 

Finally I won't have to look at raw sheetrock any more! Yay! More pics tomorrow after the first round of work.

The bakery and some scary life decisions

 So, the bakery has been slow, and to be honest, I haven't been putting in the hours I should. The kitchen remodel is moving quickly along, and the ceiling gets started tomorrow! *Yay* We've been extremely happy since we moved the living room back to Walker's old bedroom, it is great for watching t.v. Expanding the kitchen into the old "living room" space has opened up all kinds of possibilities.

 S and I have been talking alot, since our son is rapidly approaching adulthood, what to do with our lives post child rearing. There were some discussions on being gypsies and traveling, but realistically, neither one of us are much of travelers, we like to stay pretty close to home, and only travel once every couple of years. S is rapidly approching 40, which is near death to start a career in the computer industry. He has a good job with good benefits, so we have been casting around for ideas for extra income/second job kind of thing. I don't want to close the bakery, I love doing it, but we needed something S could do as well, and he didn't want to try to juggle a part time job working for someone else.

 Back in the day I had a funky little occult shop called Inner Sanctum, we sold nearly all handmade (Mostly by us) cool Pagan and occult items one can not buy locally. I love little cool funky hand made shops like that, so we have decided to wall in the weird little part of our front room and go ahead and turn it into a bakery/shop/art kind of place. Our part of town is fast becoming the Bohemian area, as the yuppies and neuvo riche/cool people push South Austin (SoCo) into a downtown Los Angelosy/New Yorky/San Franciscoy kind of overpriced big city/tourist trap/condos.  

  This does mean the bakery gets an overhaul, and I will no longer be doing catering/personal chef gigs at all, unless there is an insane amount of money involved. Also, no more deliveries, unless extra $$ is involved, and I will have a tiny walk-in bakery space where someone can stop by and get a cupcake or a cookie or three, w/o having to order a huge mondo amount.

 We have set our tentative opening date for November 1st, 2 years and one month after I opened Sugar ³.  This is a life-altering decision, and kinda scary, but I think it will be a good thing, and will increase bakery business, as well as get the Etsy shop things out there as well. The wider the audience, the better the business!

Veggie Invasion!

 Made a haul on produce today at the HEB! Fall, such as it is this far south, has brought a bit cooler temps, and the fall veggies are arriving in the stores.

 I was able to pick up enough to process for storage. The pantry has been pretty bare for the last several weeks with the drought and the craptacular economy. For the first time since the 1970's, I am seeing gaps on the grocery store shelves. Lots of them. Time to get busy and get the fall garden planted.  Makes me want to get chickens again when I saw the HUGE open spots in the egg section today. If my urban homesteading friend makes good on her threat to learn poultry processing, I will be raising chickens, quail and ducks for the table, no reason not to. I suspect meat will go on sale big time in the next 3 months, as there will not be enough feed to overwinter the livestock, and more than usual will get slaughtered. I'm hoping that I will be able to restock the freezer, or I see much beans in our future, not that it is a bad thing! Too bad I don't eat fish, I would so aquafarm.

 Food prices continue to rise as well. With the economic downturn, many people are going quietly hungry. The bad thing is, when they can't take their children crying any more, they will rise up, and there will be a revolution. Like many revolutions, there are those of us working behind the scenes to try to change things, if only in our own small sphere. I have not had much luck gardening the last 2 years, weather has been against us. I did a small scale experiment last year and grew tomatoes, squash and basil hydroponically in the house. The small scale worked beautifully, and I am going to set up a light and bump it up this winter. I miss having a greenhouse! One thing I really liked is there is little in the way of insect problems, and what there was I controlled with food grade diatomacious earth and one application of organic bug spray. Even being able to produce a small amount of your own food is good all the way around, for you and the environment.

Happy Laboring Day!

 Happy Labor Day! Many of you are off work today, sleeping in, catching up on all those little projects that seem to take more time than you've got these days (My day today!), charring some animal or veggie flesh on the grill, that kind of thing.

 

 However, others are working, like EMS, law enforcement, hospital workers, power linemen, computer programmers, Starbucks employees, wireless/Internet workers, hundreds of people who make sure that you can spend your day enjoying not being at work. Take a moment and give these people a huge thank you, and if you know someone working today, do something nice for them, they did watch things while you were taking the day off, after all!
 

 

Thank You!