Getting Real

It's always hard to know how much personal to share on business oriented blogs, and how much to hold back. I'll be honest though, I generally just lay it out there. I say what I think (often to a fault) and believe in being real. I don't do much fake.

That being who I am, I'm just going to put some of who I am and where I'm at on here and hopefully not offend too many people in the process.

Life is changing for the Kelly family right now. Not only are we adding a baby girl to our numbers but my oldest son has started kindergarten. Honestly that's been a pretty rough transition in of itself for him and for us and we're still working through a lot of it.

We have also been following God and where we feel He has us. Right now that is to a new Acts 29 church plant called Emmaus Church. In the process of really praying for what God has for our lives through some crazy chain of events, my husband is currently leading worship each week at this church plant. On top of his 50 hour a week full time job and assistant coaching baseball.

We are really excited about what God is doing in our lives right now, but once you add baseball games and practice, a molar cutting two year old, cupcakes and one tired mama it makes for a pretty crazy mix.

When I first started this business a year and a half ago I was looking for ways I could best serve my family. At that point one of the biggest ways I could serve was to help bring in extra income. God graciously allowed the opportunity (literally, I was asked by someone) for the start of CupKates. It was perfect timing and was a way I could serve my family while still doing what I felt was my primary calling.

I've often been asked if I would ever open up an actual store front, and unless life throws any crazy changes my way the answer will be no. While I love my job, it's not where I feel called in life. I've always felt called to ministry and eventually hope that can be my full time (although potentially unpaid) job. Right now my main ministry is my family and hopefully raising children that love Jesus and want to serve Him. I try to serve in our church as much as time will allow, and have lots of areas that I'm passionate about, mainly teaching.

All that said, times are changing. While a few years ago the biggest way I could serve my family was financially, right now it's with time. My oldest needs all the love and attention I can give him when he is home from school. My husband who is amazing around the house and has always helped clean, do laundry and watch kiddos while I kept up with cupcake orders now has more demands on his time. Not only can he not do as much as he previously could, there are lots of ways I can help him in order to allow him more time to be with our family instead of working.

And that is what I'm feeling I need to do. Give our family more time.

I have a few weddings the remainder of the fall and no more bookings after that. I for sure will not be taking on any more weddings until at the earliest May (an even then we'll see where life has us). Other than that, I'm not entirely sure. I'd love to give more specific details, but I think it will just depend on the week and where we're at. If it's been a low key week without much drama then I'll be able to take the time to do orders. If it's a week where we've been going nonstop and I'm having to schedule pick up times in half hour increments because of my crazy schedule, I won't be taking orders for that weekend. Y'all will probably be hearing "no" a lot more.

I also don't think I'm going to be doing any large orders (like over 100).

All of this will be reevaluated come this spring and I may very well be back in full fledged cupcake mode (for the sake of supporting my desire to buy baby girl all the pretty things out there!). But for now, what I and my family need most is time and rest and cupcakes are making that a bit difficult.

That was a lot of me you just got : )

I still have lots of cupcakes to blog about and will blog about the weddings as well. I also hope to get some more recipes up for y'all in the coming months. Something fewer cupcakes will allow me the time to do!

Here are some cupcakes and cookies I did for a wedding shower a few weeks back:

These are caramel apple cupcakes (cinnamon apple cupcake with dulche de leche frosting)

I forgot to take pictures of them in the box before I packaged them up so these are actually the "mess-ups". They still taste great though!

These are monogrammed sugar cookies with tags on them that say "thanks"

These were actually a new request for me. Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting. I had never made chocolate cream cheese frosting before, I'm not sure why. As soon as I tasted them though I was kicking myself for having thought of it myself, they were amazing! I'm not normally the biggest fan of cream cheese frosting, but add the chocolate...goodnight they're delicious!

Originally when I thought of writing this post I was really intimidated and a bit anxious. But then I reminded myself how awesome and encouraging all of my clients have been about happenings in my life so far and realized it was all in my head. Not to mention, the majority of you are moms as well and I think most moms are pretty sympathetic to wanting more time with their family and giving their family the best.

I'm so grateful for such awesome clients that allow for me to be flexible like this! Thanks for being awesome!

General Announcements

So since we had a brief glimpse of fall weather last weekend (unless you are up about 7am each morning, and then you may still be getting a bit of it) I thought I would remind you that along with the Pumpkin Spice late now available at Starbucks, so are my fall flavors.

Caramel Apple:

Cinnamon cupcake with bits of fresh apple in it topped with a dulche de leche frosting

Pumpkin Spice:

A pumpkin spice cupcake topped with your choice of cinnamon buttercream or cinnamon cream cheese frosting

I classify my snickerdoodle cupcake as more of a fall flavor, but it's available year round so not quite as special.

These as well as mini pies, and regular sized pies are available. The pumpkin, pecan and apple crisp pies get pretty popular around Thanksgiving. Warning though, I have a wedding the weekend before Thanksgiving so I will have very limited availability.

While speaking of availability I have a few openings available the end of September and the last few weekends in October.

The fall flavor cupcakes are great to take to class parties and fall festivals that are starting up in a few weeks. I admit I already have a few debuts planned for them along such lines.

One more announcement, and it's more of a personal one so you may not be all that interested (but I have awesome clients, so I think you may). As most of you know, and have heard me talk about I have two wonderful, handsome boys. And while we love our boys we both admittedly were really hoping for a girl this time. Well we were very excited to find out a few weeks ago that is what we have been blessed with!

So amidst cupcake baking I will be painting and decorating a baby girl nursery! The boys are pretty excited over having a baby sister and already ooh and ahh over all the little girls they come in contact with. They're going to be great (maybe to her dismay at times) big brothers!

Hope y'all are not going too crazy being knee deep into the school year schedule yet!