Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Goats

Sometimes you have to not post about cupcakes, you know... :-)

Goats.  Who remembers the last time you looked at one and thought, "What a cute and cuddly creature!"  They're like reject sheep, honestly...sheep are cuter, and fluffy, and sell good mattresses.  Goats...eat stuff.  Are associated with tin cans.  Smell unfavorable.  Yet here in 2013, it's all we seem to be able to talk about. Goats.


If you haven't seen this YouTube video yet, goats are taking over the internet.

I'm not sure why this is as funny as it is, but I can't stop watching.  It's like a car crash.  You want to look away, and click on something else, but you can't!

Now people are remixing songs to include these goats.




Why can't we look away?  Why can't we stop watching?  What is YouTube doing to us?!?!

If you don't hear from us in a few days, check in, make sure we haven't sold the place and opened a goat farm.  Goodness, that would be madness!!

Monday, February 25, 2013

Ron Swanson

Sometimes, when I need a break from baking, I watch Parks and Recreation over and over again.

Ron Swanson is my hero.

Frankie Says Relax!!

Do you ever have those months where you look back and say, "Where did this month go?!?!" That was our February.  How is March 1 this Friday???  As you know, this isn't our favorite month, so we're not super sad to see it go, but our life seems to be on fast forward right now!!

We have a break from our full time job at Initech today, and decided to get caught up on some bakery odds and ends while we have the chance.  It's been a crazy few weeks at work, and baking has taken a back seat to sleeping, showering, and occasionally eating. :-)  Luckily we're approaching wedding season, though, which means we'll be baking out the wazoo over the coming weeks.  Themed wedding cakes are our favorites, and we should have some pretty fun ones coming up this spring/summer season.



In the mean time, we've been baking up some fun treats for some birthday celebrations.  Our favorite of the month?  This stunning almond raspberry cake we made for a good friend.  Simple, elegant, and absolutely delicious.  Sometimes celebrating birthdays isn't about the icing and the sprinkles, but the smile one gets when biting into a perfectly delicious bite of cake.  Mmmmmmmm. :-)

We also had fun baking some cupcakes for a bridal shower last week.  It was a last minute request with one very simply instructions: no chocolate.  WHAAAAA...??!?!?!  No chocolate???  How could anyone want to throw a party without chocolate cupcakes??  The shock was quite unbelievable, but after we regained our breath from the initial bad news, we did manage to find some good flavors to celebrate the upcoming nuptials  strawberry champagne, vanilla bean, and lemon raspberry.  Even without a bit of chocolate in the batch, they still turned out surprisingly well.

For now, we're going to go reorganize our pantry (always an awful task), watch some Downton Abbey, and relax on this day off from Initech.  It's 43 and sunny today, a perfect sign that spring is just around the corner!!



Enjoy the sunshine, and watch out...some Psych themed cupcakes will be popping up in our bakery this week to celebrate the return of the wonderful tv show!  We can't figure this recipe out!!

Lis

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Febru--ewwwwy

We're going to start off this post with a bit of honesty: we hate the month of February.  It is so cold, and so glum, and so confusing with the "Is it Leap Year, Isn't It??" drama, and seems like that last final hurdle between winter and spring.  How this month is only (usually) 28 days is beyond us, because it always seems like the longest month of the year.

The only good things about February:
     1. It's our half birthday on February 19th (and we have always been firm believers that you celebrate your half birthday!)
     2. It's Groundhog's Day, meaning the wonderful Bill Murray movie will be on TV again.

Otherwise, this month can pass as quickly as possible.

It's been another busy week for us here at PSR, although that is slowly becoming the norm.  We made our first tiered wedding cake, baked some delicious cupcakes, and managed to design a new logo.  Some wonderful pictures for you to drool over coming right up!


(the top photo is our raspberry lemon and the bottom is our breakfast cupcake, complete with freshly cooked bacon on top!)

So as we slowly build into a business, things have started to fall in place.  We came up with a name, thanks to a lengthy Facebook post.  We passed out PA SafeServ test.  We've bought new supplies and tools, and boxes, redesigned business cards, launched websites, wined and dined potential clients.  It's a very small snowball still, but at least it's rolling.

One thing that was bothering us was the lack of a logo on any of our products.  We're of the firm belief that branding, advertising, and logos help people to recognize your product (on a large scale: the golden arches of McDonalds.  On a smaller scale, we all know the commercials and advertising campaigns for Edgar Snyder and Associates). We feel we advertise fairly well, given our income, but we were still on the hunt for a good logo.  Online designs, while well priced at times, were a big game of "what ifs".  You paid for one design, and if you didn't like it, oh well.  We figured we'd rather pay a little more and make sure we had some say in the design.

A friend of the bakery is a graphic design student, and he does all that awesome stuff on computers we can only dream of.  Our computers are used for email, facebooking, and catching up on tv shows via Hulu.  We gave him a vague idea of what we were looking for: Color, definitely.  But elegance.  Also fun, we're a fun bakery.  The classic black and white theme works wonders too, though.  Feminine, but not too feminine that men run away screaming.  Honestly, that's almost word for word what we typed him.  He somehow made sense of all of that, and began working.  

8 revisions later (take that etsy and your "no-revision" policy!) we finally had a logo that I loved, he was proud of, and I could pay him for.

Ladies and gentlemen, our new logo:


Thoughts?  We personally LOVE it.  He somehow managed to incorporate everything we asked for in our email.  Fun, elegant, colorful, feminine (but not TOO feminine), and expressive of who we are.  You might see this popping up a little more often, as we slowly use logo placement to help you keep track of our business!

So on to today, and our busy weekend.  Business checks to cash, a sale to organize (read that and prepare yourself.  We're having a flash sale soon, on Facebook.  Amazing deals, extremely limited supply.  Keep watch, because it won't come around again anytime soon!!) and a pineapple birthday cake to make.  Any Psych lovers out there?  This cake is going to be for you!!

Have a wonderful weekend, try to stay warm.  March better come quickly, so we can get into the wedding swing of things!!  Cannot wait!!

Lis