But first, let me bore you with the latest at HappyJack Bakery. Last Thursday, I had so much going on, I couldn't find the time to bake for the market. So I skipped it, but ended up baking chocolate chip and PBL Dreams on Friday night. Both Saturday and Sunday found me up at 6:15 am, but done baking by Noon-ish. On Saturday, we still had time to go out for lunch, and then spend the afternoon with our friends. Sunday, we had time to do some shopping at IKEA and Target. I met Franklin at IKEA. He's a lovely, folding bar stool.... tall, low back, and footrest—exactly what I needed to keep me company at the market.
So today was market day. I did really well. It started off, only 30 minutes in, when this very sweet woman stopped by, and told me she was going to call me earlier over this past weekend. She had a fundraiser that she needed to take cookies to this week, and was going to call to see if I would bake them for her. She couldn't find the time to call, because she's been taking care of her husband, who has been in and out of the hospital recently, and is recovering from surgery. She ended up buying my only apple pie that I made this week, plus four packs of cookies. Next came the mom and son team who really like my Cinnasnappers. She asked how many I had today, and I said "Five packs that are here on the table, but more are in the truck." She said, "I'll take all five here." Sweet! I had a few other people that came and bought four or five packs of various cookies, as well. At one point, a nice girl, perhaps late twenties-early thirties, stopped by and was having a hard time deciding what to take. She ended up buying two packs of cookies, one pack being my A-maize-ingly Lime Cookies. About 10 minutes later, she came rushing back to my table from the parking lot and said, "I just had one and they are fabulous! I need to buy another pack!" She bought my last pack of those.
One woman stopped and bought some chocolate chip cookies. She's been to my table before, and as she was leaving, she said, "You have a really good product here." Another regular commented on how lovely my packaging is. And another woman, who bought some PBL Dreams, ended up coming back twice with two different women, trying to get them to buy some of my cookies. She was a great promoter of my bakery, and for that, I'm very, very grateful. It really is an unexplainable feeling when total strangers come back week after week because you make something they really like. It really makes this adventure so much fun!
So you're probably wondering what's up with the $40 that was lost and found, right? Well, when I got home, I counted my cash, and counted what I had left over. I calculated that I should have brought in $40 more than I had. I was getting pretty anxious about it. Forty dollars is a lot of money, especially when it's your own sweat and tears that are behind the work. Anyway, I counted, double counted, then triple counted. The money was just not there. Then I was starting to get super sad about it. I felt defeated. How could I have made such a big mistake? Did I drop it? Where could it have gone? Then Jack, trying to help, starting prodding me with questions. Fortunately, one of the questions he asked was, "Are you sure you started out with the same amount of change as you always do?" Well, that sparked my memory. I had gone to the bank last Thursday, and got some $1s and $5s that I knew I would need to replenish for my change pouch. And I kept telling myself last night that I should do my paperwork from my banking last week before I start sales for this week, but I was too tired, so I didn't do it. Well, sure enough, my $1s and $5s ($40 worth) were still sitting in an envelope up in our office. I had never added them back to my change envelope, although I was counting the money today as if I had. So there it was. My $40 was found almost as quickly as I discovered it was missing. I was so grateful to jack for helping me solve that problem.
Before I leave you for the night, I'm now perplexed with where to go next. My new friend, Deanna, has invited me to sell my stuff at her table at another farmer's market on Tuesdays. But I still have a pretty full-time part-time job. I'm not sure how often I can justify taking another hour or two of vacation time each week to go selling my baked goods. But I'd like to try it, even if it's just to see how well my products sell at other markets. She also sells at another market on Thursdays. I don't work on Thursdays, so this one might actually be a good one for me to look into getting a table at, even if was just for a week or two, again to just see how my products sell at other markets. But selling more means having to find the time to bake more, and right now, with only having weekends to do it, I'm not sure I want to give up more family time in order to bake more. It's so hard to figure out the right balance between personal life stuff, my regular job, and my passion. I just keep trusting that God will guide me in the right direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment