Baking from Childhood
It could go all the way back to the 80's when I got my first Easy Bake oven. I just loved making Jiffy cornbread, chocolate cake, and vanilla cake (or marble!). I loved the smiles it brought to my family's faces. These smiles are still a driving force behind my baking.
Photo by Penny Ralene Photography
The Legacy of Baking
My mother gifted me my first Kitchen Aid as a wedding present in 2000. My sister-in-law gave me cake pans, tools, and a whole set of gel colors. This fueled my desire to bake cakes. My mom has always been a from-scratch baker, which she learned from her mother, and she her mother, on up the family tree. That Kitchen Aid means so much more than simply a piece of equipment. I have added three more Kitchen Aid sisters, but none are as sentimental (except for maybe the one my husband got me for my birthday).
Wife and Mom and Baker and Student and Teacher and… and… and…
Just a couple years after our wedding, we began our family. I was so excited to bake our childrens' birthday cakes. Most of them consisted of sloppy buttercream and plastic figurines. It didn't matter. Those first cakes made my kids so happy, which filled my heart with so much joy and great memories!
Photo by Penny Ralene Photography
For years I talked about taking cake decorating classes some day. Life was too busy though. Little children, finishing up my bachelor's, and then working full-time as a kindergarten teacher with a growing family made some day seem like it would never come. Then one day my husband came home with papers for a Wilton cake decorating class at JoAnn's for which he already paid. While it wasn't super sophisticated, I loved every second of it. It taught me basic skills that set the foundation for so much potential.
Finding Purpose in a Passion for Cake
I started posting pictures of my cakes on Facebook and pretty soon friends were asking if they could pay me to bake for them! Once again, my cakes were making smiles. This time, they looked a little better. I loved my new hobby and continued to learn through online tutorials, blogs, books, and anything I could get my hands on.
Fast forward several years (2018) and my husband (I'll call him Cap. Hey, if Pioneer Woman can call her husband Marlboro Man, I can call mine Cap.) and I embarked on the difficult and rewarding journey of building our home (lots more on that later). While it was a long process, we saved a ton of money by doing things ourselves. We were able to build a much larger house because of this also. Enter the new mortgage. Cap and I are coordinators of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, which is how we became and remained debt free, including our previous mortgage, for many years. The new mortgage seemingly put our finances in reverse until I heard about Dave's rising star, Christy Wright, and her book Business Boutique.
Pursuing the Business of Cake
Photo by Penny Ralene Photography
The week I was able to spend immersed in Christy's book has pressed itself into my memories as a pivotal moment in my life. I had a feeling God was nudging me to pursue caking more seriously. Any doubts I had before that week turned into extreme motivation and confidence in the direction He was leading me. Not only was that week life changing, but magical too. I followed Cap on a business trip to an amazing resort. I haven't read a book that didn't have pictures for years. But on this trip I could read uninterrupted, under palm trees, by a pool where people bring you anything you want! The sun shone so brightly it was as if Heaven itself was pointing with neon lights to pursue this path.
Business Boutique gave me practical information on how to turn my dreams and passions into a legit way to contribute to our family's budget. With her encouragement I turned my hobby into a business. While one of the goals of my business is to get out of debt again, my motivation is still those smiles and the joy I can bring to the lives of others through cake. So this is where I am now. I am so excited (and a tad scared, but that's ok!) to see what the future holds for me, my family, and Homestead Kitchen. I am looking forward to making so many more smiles with my cakes.