Hello Cupcake Lovers,
I hope Santa was good to you all…even those who may have been on his “naughty” list. ;) We had a busy holiday season at the bakery. We packed up all the treats that remained when we closed on December 24th and made a trip to the Salvation Army to donate all the goodies. We do make regular donations to various shelters and charities throughout the year but the Christmas donation is usually the largest one since we will be closed for 2 weeks, pretty much everything we have is boxed up and donated so we can start fresh when we return. It feels great to give back and hopefully we made Christmas a little sweeter for some of the folks at the Sally Ann.
We also had a wonderful Christmas at home. Our 4 year old daughter had a good visit with Santa. She wanted nothing to do with him until she discovered he was handing out big boxes of Smarties and then she darted into the line-up! Her big present from Santa this year was a Barbie Dream House…however, Barbie now has a “Dream Town House”, which comes complete with an elevator. I must say Barbie has moved on up since I was a kid. I also don’t remember there being so many different “Ken’s”…hmmm…an elevator town house and lots of gentlemen friends… Anyways, in addition to her complete “Toy Story” addiction we were able to get her to watch a movie other than Toy Story 1, 2 or 3…Beauty & the Beast which was recently re-released. We had a wonderful family movie night with popcorn and hot chocolate and all was well…until the end of the movie. Chloe sat silently blankly staring ahead and then burst into tears…Say what? But why? The Beast turned back into a Prince and lived happily ever after with Belle! “But I didn’t want the Beast to go away!” she cried. Unbenounced to us, it is very difficult for a 4 year old to comprehend that the Beast & the Prince were the same person…to her, the Beast was dead. Oh the drama…and we are attempting to take her to see “Tangled” at the movie theatre tomorrow. Please tell me it has a safe, happy ending…??
So we are now enjoying our “time off”… Although we’ll be closed for the next couple of weeks, there will be no rest for the wicked. We are diligently working on getting everything in place for the new location. We have the first draft of the floor plan done so we are hoping to finalize that later this week so we can then apply for our building permit and also submit it for our landlord’s approval. The list of things to do is growing longer each day no matter how many things we get checked off…it continues to grow! I am also trying to get all of my big equipment ordered by the end of this week so there is sufficient time for shipping, etc. The signage is also in the works but it is proving to be a daunting task due to our design requirements and the complexity of our logo (primarily the curly font). So as if all this wasn’t enough to handle while on “break”, we are also going to use this opportunity to spruce up our existing store…moving some stuff around in the kitchen and re-painting some of the fixtures that are in need of a little polishing out front. So lots of balls in the air…just hoping I don’t drop any…
Thought it was time to share some photos of some recent work since it’s been a while since I’ve done so. Enjoy the pics and enjoy the rest of your holiday! 
North Pole Cake (for a customer visiting from Nunavut):
Gravedigger “Monster Truck” Cake (for some of our favourite customers little boy’s birthday):
Custom Logo Cupcakes for a cosmetic company’s product launch:
Custom Logo Cupcakes for Miller Beer:
Dragon & Castle Cake (for a repeat customer’s little boy’s birthday – last year was a pirate theme):
Cat in the Hat Cake (for Chloe’s best friend’s 4th birthday):
