Quiet

I don’t have a whole lot new to report. The good reason is that I have been working on applying for a ton of jobs. AND I am pretty excited, I have had 4 or 5 of the jobs be some sort of referral. Which is huge!! I feel like those might actually be warm leads, not just randomly throwing my resume out there – like I have with the others. I also was asked to answer some questions as the second step of the process for another position. I have to say, this round of looking for a job has been so interesting, I have been asked for plans, writing examples, to answer questions – I feel like I am back in school. Anyway… hopefully something will come of one of them.

I am also very very excited for Wednesday – I am working on a Habitat house with a group from church. I have worked on several houses before, but on Wednesday we are going to be framing and that is something I really want to learn how to do. So all day Wednesday I will be sharpening my home improvement skills.

Can you believe this weather? I have been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather!! Only in Michigan.

Strawberry Shortcake

I splurged yesterday - I bought strawberries. They were on sale and they looked so good. And now that I know how much it costs me to make Shortbread, I knew it was in my budget :)
I tend to get in seasonal food ruts. During strawberry season I live on strawberry shortcake, blueberries plain when they are in season, homemade applesauce all fall – you get the point. It is really too early for good strawberries – but it is not too bad.

Cookies

Here are the cookies I made on Saturday night. They are pretty good, considering I am not a big fan of chocolate cookies. These are Chocolate Chocolate Chunk - but I think they would be great with raspberry or mint. Lots of possibilities....

Tuesday

I went grocery shopping in a suit today. If you have actually taken the time to read through all my entries to this point I am sure you have had one hand on the phone to call pine rest on my behalf and this probably will cause you to dial. Stop – there was a good reason. I had to go to a meeting at one of the employment agencies I have been working with and needed to dress up. I realized I miss wearing my good clothes. I am so sick of jeans every day and having two closets full of clothes I never wear – there is no point to wearing them when I am just sitting around the house and I can’t afford to dry clean them right now, so they just hang there. But today it really hit me – it felt so good to get dressed, put on underwear that is not cotton and or denim colored, a shirt that is freshly ironed and had buttons. Dress pants, a jacket. It made me feel good – better then I have in days. I need to find a job. So anyway, after my meeting, I planned on stopping home, changing and then going to Meijer – but I felt so good in my suit, I wore it grocery shopping. I was also wearing my suit when I had my brunette moment and decided to start this blog. Not sure what that says about the baking business, but I do know I need to do some further investigating.

History Part - Am I still working on the history?

Sunday came as a much-needed relief – I needed some time away from myself. It was great to go to church and then to my Mom’s. I love spending time with the kids. Abby is at such a cute age – she talks all the time – most of it is still gibberish, but she gets stuck on a word and says it over and over again – today it is Emmy. Emily is in a mood – claiming she never gets any attention – funny she was the kid who had a friend spend the night on Friday – but her life is so tough. And Nick – we watched the beginning of the race together. Good times. Once I got home I decided to send out an email to 15 or so of my friends and acquaintances – all people who have either had my baking or Christmas crap at one time or another. I keep thinking that to really make this work I am going to have to have some regularity of business. So the point of the email was to see what people thought, if they would need things once in while or on a semi – regular basis. I have only gotten a few responses, maybe I need to re-evaluate who I bake for. JK – I do know a couple people are out of town. So what to do now? Monday is the day I scour the internet and paper for any and all possible jobs to apply for. So that pretty much took up my Monday – I did get some responses, and I do need to email people back – but I have just been so bad about that recently.

Saturday night, baking cookies

I remember seeing a recipe for some Chocolate Chocolate Chunk cookies – they looked like a good base. Lets see how they turn out. Threw those together now lets figure out how much those cost to bake. Interesting…. Now if I am going to make this successful I need to figure out how much I would need to make each day, each month. This first batch turned out okay – now for the next batch. I haven’t even thought about start up costs. Oh no the spinning starts. Website, I need to get online. I should check into domain names – imagine that Erinn’s Edibles is available – but who should I buy the domain from? Bigdaddy.com had several options – but what do I need? Maybe I should think about the financial end of things first – oh there go my timer again – this batch looks pretty good too – there might be some promise to these cookies. So do I want to set this up as a sole proprietorship or a LLC – I lean towards a LLC, but I can’t remember what all the tax ramifications are. Oh this is interesting the IRS views an LLC with only one partner as a sole proprietorship for tax purposes only. That is something to think about, now what is this – a section on small business vs. a hobby. There is the last batch – I am not a fan of chocolate based cookies, but these look like they have potential. How do I figure out for tax purposed if this is a business or a hobby. I guess that would come down to profits. If I were going to make this a full time proposition how much would I need to make a month? Okay – now that is how much each day? What time is it? 2 am – I’ve got church in the morning I need to jump in the shower. Back to the calculations – if I need to make X amount each day and I have Z amount of “profit” on each dozen cookies, I would need to sell 20 dozen cookies a day, wait I forgot about packaging material make that 22 dozen until I make a trip to Gordon’s. Did I just wash my hair or condition it? I can’t remember – Is making 22 dozen cookies a day even possible? Well I made 9 dozen in 3 hours, so I could do it in 7.5 hours, but wait what if I had to make a bread order too – that takes an hour to bake – I hate my oven. Okay, it is almost 3 I have to get up in less then 6 hours I need to go to bed!!!

Deciphering the data

Upon returning from my fact-finding mission to Meijer, the real fun began (and unfortunately, I am being serious). I started by setting up a spreadsheet and entering in all the information I had gathered. Then I need to convert it into usual methods of measurement. (Nerd Alert) Now 3 teaspoons = 1 Tablespoon and 16 Tablespoons = 1 cup. I can do this. Brown Sugar – 454 teaspoons divided by 3 divided by 16 gives me 9 cups – now how difficult would it be to put that on the bag? 9 cups goes into 2.99 how many times? Okay a cup of brown sugar costs .33 - this is fun. Flour, 75 ¼ cups servings gives me 18 ¾ cups of flour in a 5 lb bag – that can’t be right. 5 lbs of sugar which is pretty much the same size only gives me 11 ¾ cup – that seams like a huge difference. I know I will check the Tupperware I keep my flour in to see how many cups it holds. Hmm it holds that much, I guess it must be right – only .10 cents a cup of flour. Now the vanilla – how am I going to figure out that one? No information on the website. Hmm…. Well there is one ounce in the bottle and 2 Tablespoons equal 1 ounce, so that would make 6 teaspoons – no that can’t be right? You have to get more then 6 teaspoons out that bottle – for the amount you pay for it. I know, I have one bottle of vanilla that is almost gone, I will go put the vanilla aside, fill the bottle with water and measure it out. 1, 2, … 5, 6, so there really is only 6 teaspoons of vanilla in a bottle. That is .55 cents a teaspoon – outrageous!! The chart is completed, I now have all the basic ingredients broken down by price per normal unit. Next is to translate my recipes and figure out how much each one cost. Onto the next spreadsheet! (NERD ALERT) I am enjoying this all way too much. Holy Cow some of these desserts cost a lot to make!! I am going to have to watch for sales. I really need a chocolate based cookie in my mix. What time is it – not quite 11:00 pm – pleanty of time to whip up a batch – lets go do experimenting. I still can’t believe how much vanilla is… ***If you ever had any question why I majored in Econ - this should clear it up***

The Trip to Meijers

It was Saturday, about 4:45 pm, I have not been out of the house since late Wednesday afternoon and I admittedly was in a funk. I am not going to lie things have been pretty rough lately. But I am determined to do something. So here I am pulling into the Standale Meijer parking lot, list in hand for this fact-finding mission. I had literally sat down with several of my recipes and wrote out their ingredients so that I could price them out. So notebook in hand I enter into Meijer with my list of over 50 items to write down the price, volume and serving size with number of servings. I started in the produce sections. Bananas – my bread calls for 3 medium, okay lets weigh those and see how much they would cost. Now how much Zucchini does it take to get a cup of shredded? Carrots – no serving information on the package – how many are in each bag? This was just beginning of my purposeful journey. As I prodded along up and down the isles of the store I soon realized that I was completely unaware of anyone else and was solely focused on my mission. Did you know that the serving size of brown sugar is a teaspoon and there are 454 servings in a 4 lb bag. Who uses a teaspoon of brown sugar? Flour on the other hand has a serving size of ¼ cup and there are 75 servings in a 5 lb bag. Evidently McCormick does not find it necessary to put any serving information on their products – hmm will have to do some further investigating. Why can’t I find the cream of tarter? At least the milk label is sensible it reports the serving size as a cup. Oh shoot I forgot the corn syrup – I must go back to the cereal isle. Okay I am finished, I can leave now. Holy cow it almost dark out – what time is it, almost 7 - yes I did just spend 2 hours in Meijers and did not buy a single thing. Okay so now I am home, time to decipher the data.

History Part 3

I once had a friend tell me I worry about step Z before step A even starts and that comment is too true. I am a planner. I lack any ounce of spontaneity and my decision are made after careful thought and calculated risks. For example prior to purchasing my car, I researched vehicles for 6 months before I every took a test drive and left the car that looked the best on paper as the last to drive to make sure I considered all my options (remember certifiable). So I started spinning... what color should the delivery vans be? Should I trademark my logo? When do I decide to franchise? Okay, wait a minute Erinn calm down before you get too a head of yourself. Hello Kettle, Pot calling. (Yes I really have started taking to myself in the absence of other humans) So the first thing I decided to do was a trial run. Thankfully, I was in charge of coffee after church on that Sunday and cookies are expected. Great, I will make up a couple kinds of cookies. Interesting thing here, I have been baking for a good 20 years now and cookies were one of the first things I baked. But I have never really paid attention to how many cookies I get out of each batch or how quickly I can make them. It never crossed my mind. I bake for the enjoyment of the process and for the joy of giving it away. Those detail had never been important before, and most of the time I am doing a host of other things while I am baking. So I set out upon my task. I made a batch of Chocolate Chip and a batch of Oatmeal Scotchie. I discovered that after my “test” portion of the batter I grossed 4 dozen Chocolate Chip cookies and 5 dozen Oatmeal. Not bad, in all it took me about 3 hours. So now I a base for production and output. (Watch out here comes the econ terms!!) Things went smoothly at church and everyone enjoyed the cookies. But then reality hit. What am I thinking? I have no idea if this will even be profitable. So the next few days I pushed the whole idea to the back burner. Plus I had a interview and found several jobs to apply for – and that continues to be the most important thing. I decided that the next step was to find out how much it really costs to bake each recipe. So until I went further I needed to take a trip to Meijer.

History Part 2

So I am unemployed, living a hermits life and desperately trying to find a job – sounds fun right? Not really. But that alone did not shape my decision. I have toyed with the idea of having a bakery/coffee shop/bookstore on and off for years, but never got much past the thought stage. (and it may not get any further this time – my first choice would be to find a job!!) This time things started after a recent job interview, I hope to hear next week if I will be called back for a 2nd interview. This job would be interesting, but it would only pay about $20,000 less then I was making – which is not quite enough for me to live on (believe me I have done the math over and over again). So I would need a second job, which I am not opposed to this route – it is a job and in this economy one can’t afford to be picky. But with this particular job the hours are very random, which would make finding a second job difficult – no regular schedule. So I initially put out a few feelers to see if there was something I could do at home, 10 – 12 hours a week. I didn’t have much luck. So I began thinking – what am I good at? I thought and thought :) Painting walls, making fleece blankets… not too many marketable skills (see previous post on frame of mind) Wait what about baking. Hmm… that might have some potential. Maybe I will look into that. So thus began my mission. ***Now for those of you who know me well – this might not come as too much of a shock, but for those who don’t , well, enjoy and remember I have been laughing at me too.***

History Part 1

Starting a business tends to be a major decision – so how did I get here… Well things started back in November, the day before Thanksgiving to be exact. I lost my job – yes timing was great – happy holiday. Obviously I was not happy about the prospect of not being employed again (it is beginning to feel like a chronic problem) But I was not overly upset about not having the job I had, it was just not a good fit. So I began the search of finding another job. Between the holidays and several major events that occurred in December and January, I kept pretty busy, but was faithfully looking for employment. I did have a few interviews, but no offers. Then February hit. The first week or two it was fine, I set up my dining room table as job search central and found myself engrossed in daytime TLC. But very soon the novelty wore off. On top of that, I have done everything possible not to spend any money – this includes using as little gas as possible – which means I often go days with out leaving my house – which is not as nice as it may seam considering I live alone and if I do not go out I have no human contact. Now I have always considered myself pretty much an introvert – not a big people person. Thankfully most of my previous jobs have forced me to engage the public on a pretty consistent basis. I saw this as a good balance and was thankful to come home to a empty house. Well after six or seven weeks of very little human contact it has totally gotten to me! I have included this tangent to clue you in on my frame of mind. Hopefully it is an explanation for some of the craziness, but taking into account I consider myself boarder line certifiable on a good day I am not sure that is the reason. I figure we all have a little crazy in us and my hope is that you will find my stories to be entertaining and humorous. Unfortunately they are true!!

Brunette Moment

I am not sure what the opposite of a blond moment is called, but in this case, I am going to refer to it as a Brunette Moment. I would like to blame my frequent blond moments on the fact that I was blond (naturally) for the first 1/3 of my life, but I have a feeling that is merely an excuse. Over the past week or so I have been on a bit of mission. Trying to figure out if I want to start my own baking business, I will get to the history on this in my next entry, but during this time I have fretted over web exposure. I really need a website, so I start searching around for costs and possible domain names. Of course, it helps to have a name for your business before you go out and buy domain names, but I just can’t decide. I like the sound/feel/look of Erinn’s Edibles. But that only starts the big debate. Do I use my name as it is officially spell – incorrect in my opinion – better then the common way, in my mom’s opinion, or do I spell it the proper way. Now to most people, my Mother included, this would not even be a debate, but after 30 years of dealing with all the confusion, is that some thing I want to exaggerate? It is bad enough I constantly have to spell my name for everyone (and tell every new form of spell check that I do know how to spell my name) and while I generally have a policy that I only correct some once, there are times I have to insist – like mortgages, insurance, legal documents – all of which I have had to had redone. People just don’t take notice (over the years I have found it very interesting to see who pays attention and who doesn’t). So back to the big debate do I make it easy on myself and pick another name, do I use Erin’s Edibles and make my life much easier, or for the first time in my life should I be happy that about the spelling of my name because Erinn’s Edibles is readily available. (The Red Wings just lost again!!) I have yet to decide, but at some point this afternoon the brunette moment kicked in, and I realized I could start a blog – that way I don’t have to spend money yet and can still be “online” So here I go. :)