Diary of a Cakemaker #29

It was a full-on week — we are really revving up for the festive season! Weddings are winding down and Christmas is ramping up! The Christmas shop is open for business, and at this time of year lots of companies place orders for work events or want tasty Christmas gifts for clients. It all starts to get a little hectic, but we love it! 

I spent a fun day at TAQA Group last week. They were holding an event for their employees, aimed at empowering them for life after TAQA wraps up oil exploration in the UK. The idea is to give their employees the opportunity to explore new careers, find a new passion and potentially retrain.

I have to say I was super-impressed with the whole initiative — they had training companies, Universities and representatives from different industries to open up possibilities for exciting careers outside of Oil and Gas.

We had been asked along to help people explore their more creative side, so we held a drop-in session for people to come and give cupcake decorating a whirl! We’ve never done a drop-in before, as opposed to an organised workshop, it was great fun! We had a steady stream of budding cakers, it was kind of like an open audition for The Great British Bake Off! 

I had to whizz back to the Cakery afterwards as we had lots of orders going out the next day — perhaps I should have taken back some of the more promising TAQA guys to help me out! 

We had a kids’ birthday party on Saturday, which are always a lot of fun! 15 kids, 90 cupcakes — a recipe for chaos and lots of laughs and, in fairness, some rather tasty looking treats at the end! 

After the class on Saturday, I went to a Worship Conference at The Music Hall organised by Glorious. The conference was nice … but … I got locked in a car park!!!  It was in the city centre, and I didn’t really want to pay for 7 hours of parking, so I cheekily parked in a church carpark. When I came out of the venue, I discovered my car was locked in It was funny, but safe to say lesson learned, and I won’t park there again!  Thankfully, after an hour of waiting, I got out! Hey! Don’t judge me, city center parking costs a fortune!!! 

I’m heading off to see my brother in warm climates (keep guessing where lol!) next week and I wanted to buy some Scottish souvenirs to take with me. There’s a lovely little shop in The Trinity Centre I popped into while I was out walking on Sunday, and bought a few bits — the shop was also rather handily placed so I could grab a cheeky cinnamon roll from Shots n roll on the way out! 

Ooh, and I haven’t given up my plan to be active every day — I’ve been for walks and played tennis 4 times this week (definitely back in the game – yay!) and been to the gym. I think I might be eating more too