27 posts tagged “work”
Here's my poinsettia from Wal-Mart. It seems to like this sunny window location. It only gets this full sun treatment for a short period of time each morning. And it is proof that we had a mostly sunny day today, and a high temperature of about 50. I should have taken my camera and gone outside, but I was busy with indoor stuff today. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, bills, wrapping, mailing, etc. I even got my dental insurance issues resolved and made a dentist appointment. Yeah! If you walked in the door, you might wonder if I had accomplished anything, but I feel pretty good. I even cleared most of the clutter off my desk.
I am supposed to be off again tomorrow, but I am going in so I can take off on Saturday. My hubby continues to eat well. I cooked a lot of different things today: blueberry applesauce, brown rice, creamed tuna with peas, cheesecake, mashed cauliflower, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and turkey pot pie. I made extra sauce for the pot pie so it wouldn't be so dry. Then I combined the pot pie, some stuffing, and some leftover cream gravy from last night, and blended it until it looked like baby food. I alway lick off the blender attachment to taste the "meal" my hubby will be eating. It's not that bad. There are some things that I've learned to like better when they are blended than the way I used to make them. I rarely have issues with heartburn or indigestion anymore, so perhaps this soft food diet is a good thing for me, too.
I did get started wrapping presents today. I finally got the one wrapped that has to be sent to Texas, but with priority shipping, they should get it in about 3 days. Priority mail postage printed on the computer was cheaper than parcel post from the post office.
Still no decorations or tree. And no cards yet either. I need to do the cards first. Tomorrow!
This is a more aggressively edited version of one of the Christmas cactus pictures from last week. Somehow, they don't look the same here as they do in my photo editing program. Is it because I have to reduce the number of pixels to get it to upload quickly? Nothing really happens quickly with dial-up, but you know what I mean!
Today was a better day at work. I wasn't by myself, and I didn't have a dozen or so orders to do. I did do a couple of the big signature cakes for orders for tomorrow. It isn't that they are so hard as much as it is that they take so much more time. It isn't at all like the cake constructions they do on the TV shows, but they do require a bit of cutting and stacking together. Most of our business is still birthday cakes. We have done a few cakes for Christmas parties.
I don't have to work tomorrow. Yeah! I haven't been home all day in over a week. I have a ton of stuff I need to do tomorrow. Hope I can strike a few things off my list.
I should have had this photo for a recent Photo Quest, but I didn't take it until this morning. I like the contrast of light and dark. I'm sure the slow shutter speed accounted for the blurring, but I think it adds to the interest of the shot.
Another cold day today. I wore three shirts, but was cold all day today at work. Our counters are close to the front door, plus most of the store is kept cool enough that you can comfortably leave your coat on while you shop. I bought a sweater/jacket to wear while I work tomorrow. I don't like being cold. I don't mind for a few minutes, but not all day.
We were busy again today. There were three of us, but we still didn't finish all of the orders for tomorrow. Mostly birthday cakes. We have gotten a few holiday cake orders, or orders for birthday cakes with holiday decorations. We are selling a lot of cupcakes with holiday decorations. Last year, I made a lot of cupcakes with poinsettias on them, but this year I haven't had time to make any. Yesterday, we had an order for a cake with spring flowers. That was weird! I made daisies, daffodils, and tulips. It was very pretty, but it looked out of place. This year, we have a dark green icing that they call Winter Green. I used it and a dark red on a couple of cakes for the case this afternoon. I should have taken pictures. I was in a hurry to get things done so I could leave early. My original schedule was for 31 hours. It got bumped up to 40 hours, but they don't want you to ever work more than 40 hours a week. Didn't hurt my feelings to leave early!
I was sure it was Saturday night when I got home tonight. I have been confused all week. Glad I will get to sleep in again in the morning. I stayed up until 12:30 last night so I could finish reading my book. I was reading Echoes by Mauve Binchy. She is one of my favorite authors right now. I need to go back to Amazon and order another one. Maybe I'll wait until after Christmas. I need to get my cards in the mail, and presents wrapped, etc. Plus I'm way behind on my magazines. Not much point in getting them if I'm not going to read them.
Another moon shot from sometime, I'm not sure. Recently, to be sure. I remember it was cold. Perhaps it was Friday after I got home from work. I used to just collapse as soon as I got home, but I'm trying to make myself cook a wee bit so hubby will have something good the next day while I'm gone. On Friday night, it was just garlic toasts and pudding. I can't remember what I did Saturday night. Last night I just watched Sunday night football. It was a good game, even though I did pass out before it was over.
We were cleaning out the top part of the frig this morning. Found a pie crust that I had forgotten about, so I made a pumpkin pie. And turkey a la king. Yummy! I ate mine with brown rice. I've spent the entire afternoon on the computer, just trying to catch up.
I worked by myself on Sunday. Not much time to be creative. I wanted to get started on our Christmas cupcakes, but never got around to it. On Friday, we had decorated four racks of cakes for Saturday. That is a lot! We got most of Sunday's cakes done on Saturday, just a couple left for me to do on Sunday, but then several more came in late, so I was busy.
I need to finish putting our records on a spreadsheet and order some magazines for the grandkids for Christmas. I won't do much shopping this year. Doing Christmas activities and cooking and decorating help me get in the Christmas spirit, but there won't be much of that this year. Bummer! We did get a dusting of snow last night. It didn't last very long. It has been a grey, dreary day.
Here's a cake I decorated yesterday just to have something to go out in the case. I think it was gone by the time I got to work this morning. At least I didn't see it. We got some new tips with very small openings that make it easy to make the "strings", as we call them.
We had more orders to do today than we usually do on Monday. We had one order for 10:30 that I didn't find until 11:00, so I made it right away. Then when I came back from lunch I found out that I had made it the wrong size, so I had to start over!
I don't think anyone makes pies or rolls anymore. I can't believe all the pies and rolls that we have sold already.
Since I went in to work early this morning, I got home in time to cook dinner. I made potato soup, and while the potatoes were cooking, I made a pumpkin pie. Of course it is still cooling, but hubby will probably have a piece before he goes to bed tonight. If I don't have room to put pies and such in the frig, I just stick them out in the BBQ grill. That only works when the weather is cool, of course. Right now, it is perfect, in the 40s.
I was busy all day today, but don't remember a lot of it. I did get a call late this afternoon that was interesting. The customer called to order a cake with Tinkerbell for a guy. It was a joke of some sort. So this is what I came up with. Hope they like it!
Hubby is into the pie already! Think I may go have a piece, too, then watch a little football.
Here's the Pooh cake I made with the new kit that we got in yesterday. Isn't it cute? We didn't have too many orders to do today, so I did some extra cakes, but nothing that was too exciting. I did another big rainbow with swirl cake like the picture from the other day, and it was gone before I left tonight. I have to work again tomorrow. I think we should have plenty of time to play. I did make a sample of the new Little Mermaid cake, but I forgot to take a picture.
There are only four of us now doing the same job that it took 6 people to do last year. Are we all that much faster and better than we were a year ago, or are there a lot less people ordering cakes? I'm guessing that it is a little bit of both, but I'm not sure. We really can get by with out current staff, but one of the girls is going to leave us soon. We may try to get by with just three people. It won't be easy. The worst part is that it will be really hard to get any time off.
I got home by 7:00 tonight, so I thought I would be able to get some other stuff done. Wrong! I collapsed in front of the TV for an hour, then got up and piddled around, made myself a cup of tea, and checked my email. I need to pay the electric bill, then I'm off to bed. Toodles!
I worked today, so no time for pictures. I did make a unique cake this afternoon, but I had forgotten to take my camera with me today. I'll have to make another one tomorrow. We received three new kits in today for new Disney designs. I'll have to try them out to see if I like them or not. One of them is iCarly which we have gotten several requests for.
No real news on the medical front, but it looks like my hubby is leaning toward keeping the quality of life that he has now and taking a chance on living for at least a few more years. He read a lot of information today that our daughter had given him, and all of it regarding the operation was depressing.
Since I didn't take any photos today, I decided to go back to this time last year and see what I was doing. In addition to making pot holders and table runners, I was still outside taking pictures. This is an edited version of a spider's egg sack. Last year I took lots of pictures of spiders and praying mantis, but I hardly saw any of them this year.
It's in to work early again tomorrow morning, so I'd best get myself off to bed. 5:30 comes early for me. There should be three of us, but I think someone is going to have to help the donut people, so that will slow us down. We made most of the Friday cakes today, so we should be able to make a big dent in the Saturday orders tomorrow. I'll still try to get a couple of pictures. Toodles!
I took this shot of Lady on Saturday before I left for work. I had to take it through the glass in the back door to keep from waking her up. I was supposed to have Monday off, but they ask me to work anyway. It wasn't too bad. We got the orders done and several cakes for the cake case, too. I worked by myself today. I had a lot more orders than we usually do on Monday. Today I felt really good about every cake I decorated. I felt like I had done the best I could do. Everyone seemed really happy when they picked up their cake, so that was nice, too. I did make a couple of unique cakes that I took pictures of, but I will wait until tomorrow to post the pictures. I want to go watch Monday night football!
I took this shot of a milkweed leaf with a barbed wire fence a couple of weeks ago, but I don't think I posted it. I just uploaded it to iStock. I got three more acceptance notices today. Yeah!
I needed some good news. I had a good day a work today, until the last hour. All of my customer were really friendly, and liked their cakes, then I messed up and made a full size (huge) sheet cake and forgot to put the filling in BEFORE I iced it. It was already 15 minutes past time for me to leave when I realized what I had done. I probably would have stayed to fix it, but I was so tired, and we wanted to go to the wake for a friend of ours. I had worked an hour and a half extra last night, so it was 10:30 pm before I got home, then it was 2:30 am before I really got to sleep. Then the alarm went off at 5:30 'cause I had to be back at work by 7:00 am. Three hours of sleep is not enough! I know I start losing concentration fast when I'm tired. I need to ask them not to schedule me to close one night at 8:00 pm then open the next morning at 7:00 am. Unless they are willing to put up with my mistakes!
We are going to the funeral tomorrow, so that will take most of the day. It rained again today, so I don't have to worry about watering anything, but the weeds are terrible. They are going to take over if I don't get out there soon!
I looked for Maeve Binchy books on Bonanzle tonight, but didn't find any so I popped over to eBay and bid on a couple. In my latest cake decorating magazine, apple green and black was the hot color combo for the season. I did a couple to cakes with those colors, I have were striking, but this area is too conservative to really get into something like that. I would like to find some apple green and black fabric, though. Wouldn't that make a fantastic quilt?
Need to check my email, then get to bed. No rest for the wicked! I did remember to get a double mat and picture frame for my photo today. I'll post a picture tomorrow.
I have always loved fuchsia plants, but have never had one. This is the one my daughter brought me for Mother's Day. I LOVE it. It isn't easy to get a good picture of, however, as the flowers hang down from the plant. Don't worry. I'll keep trying.
She also brought these lovely orchid petunias,
and these impatiens. The flower is over the hill, but the leaves are pretty by themselves. I think I'm going to put the petunias in containers and hang the fuchsia on the porch. I brought it inside for tonight because we are under a tornado watch. I tucked the other plants up in the corner next to the house so they would be protected. I cut all the iris that were open and brought them in so they wouldn't get beat up. We had a little sprinkle this morning, and the wind is really picking up now.
I have been rather lazy today. I worked for 13 hours yesterday. We were really busy with high school graduation coming up just around the corner to add to the normal craziness. I had six full size cakes (about 3 feet by 4 feet) to decorate yesterday. It used to take me about an hour to do one, but I got a lot faster yesterday. Between 10 and 1 I did 5 full size sheet cakes and 1 half sheet cake that was both filled and decorated with flowers. That is a record for me. I was going along pretty good until about 5:00. By that time I had worked 7 straight hours without sitting down or taking a break of any kind. I was at the end of my rope, and the knot was coming loose! LOL I finally took a half hour break, ate a sandwich, and put in another two hours. Don't think I could have gone much longer. My nerves were pretty well shot. I am kind of proud that this old grey mare could go that long. That was a marathon, for sure! Wish I could have taken pictures of a couple of the cakes that were decorated with spring flowers. One in particular was quite stunning.
I've got bean soup in the pot for supper, but I need to go add a some onions and potatoes. Toodles!
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