🍫🎂🎁❤️🧁🍪👩‍🍳Mommy's Mental Health- Chapter 82- Taking The Giant Leap & Starting My Own Business

What started out as a blog, four years ago, has finally blossomed into a physical business where I bake and box and decorate from home.

When I say blossomed, that's quite a strange term to use. On the positive side, I have had so many people have my back - Specifically @zakludick but also friends who have supported me and family, who out of the blue, contacted me and donated enough money for me to buy a whole new oven. Which I am still absolutely floored by. Just wow.

It's incredible how life does that. It knocks you down but also picks you back up. Life has a funny way of helping you out. Sounds like an Alanis Morrissette song!

I was feeling down as I literally worked myself into a frenzy of blood, sweat and tears, sitting up till 4 am every night for almost a whole week...

I totally burnt myself out, literally crying into my chocolate that I burnt the crap out of because I was so tired that I didn't notice that all the water had evaporated. Like 4 liters of it: I'd been there so long. I was using the gas stove here because there us no way I could have stood for 7 or 8 hours dipping biscuits in chocolate. What tipped me off is that I ran out of gas too, so I got a bit if a gas smell since there was no more flame.

And I didn't even make a quarter of the sales I had hoped for. I guess I got caught up in potential profit margins and forgot that these things take time.

Even if I did not make the sales I wanted to the first time around, I learnt a shitload, about baking and business and I created a name for myself on social media as well as a following. I even got my first cake order last week which I am SO excited about. It came from one of @merenludick 's school teachers, which is a massive deal. If I can impress her, there's a whole enormous high school that I can get business from.

It was also totally meant to be as her request was right up my nerd alley, with reference to one of my favourite authors, along with Terry Pratchett. I just loved it. I wasn't going to take on custom cakes, but this? Yeah, maybe I can make a few exceptions!

I somehow made it through all that Easter baking by using a mini kitchen, which is meant for emergencies, and was only supposed to be a temporary solution to what we thought was a wiring problem in our "old" but excellent quality oven. We Thought we could fix it. Honestly though, after approximately 15 years of service, it has kicked the bucket. I didn't really have a solid plan. I thought maybe I could make enough money to buy a new oven, or at least a second hand oven because fuck knows I couldn't afford ZAR5000.00 / +/- USD300.00. So I was looking at ovens for sale on the Facebook sales platform, and you know... there's just no recourse if you buy a bad egg. Back in the day, I used to use Gumtree a lot, but I believe that's not really a thing anymore.

Anyway, this two plate tiny little soldier, made it through baking 300 cookies, an 8 layer cake and 96 cupcakes in 4 days. I certainly take my hat off to it and have the utmost respect, but seriously. Waiting for one tray or cake layer at a time, because that's all it had space for, was definitely not ideal.

Also, I didn't realize it, but the timer on my big oven, which I was relying on, also broke and this lead to me wasting/ burning/ drying out trays of biscuits, cupcakes and cake layers. That's money we're talking about. It also meant that the products I was creating were not up to my usual standard and that stopped me from taking samples into restaurants, where the real money lies. Getting regular customers to buy my whole cakes would be amazing but I need to develop a proper pricelist that I can distribute along with samples that are excellent to convince businesses I want to target to purchase my goods.

And this would all be impossible, really in that tiny little oven.

And then, after I felt deflated, sore, exhausted and disappointed at my Easter sales and with imposter syndrome setting in, do I really have the skills to run a business? (despite running several top notch establishments) And were my products any good (despite feedback for my Easter products and my baking in general - especially the double dipped chocolate biscuits- and my previous baking being so positive).

So, in my kitchen, is a brand new Defy oven, with enormous baking capacity. We just need to plug it in!

Look at me, reading instruction manuals and shit!

Let's hope this is a sign of success and positivity because god knows I need that.

Thank you, Universe, and the special people in my life including my husband @zakludick @aimeludick @merenludick and @matthew-williams for running around the kitchen for me, helping me in every way you could and to my babe for sitting up with me till 4am while I cried into my chocolate disaster... 🤣🤣🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️😍😍

Thank you for believing in me ...

❤️❤️😇😇