Our first official customer!

I guess like all other things, we all have to start somewhere. Thanks to Christina, we just got our first payment from our first customer since officially starting this partnership and looking down at those two 20 dollar bills, just aren't like regular bills.

It's a start.

It's an accomplishment!

Getting Ready for an Adventure

Ivone and I both believe in a higher power and we just cannot believe how He planned for everything to come together. I truly feel that every job we've had, every store and employee that we've managed, customer service training, my marketing training, Ivone's natural culinary talent, every creative bone in our body, has all built us both up to make this project a success. It's a dream come true for me, personally, to own a business. I am so excited about Sugar Penguin Cakery. It's been a blast working with Ivone so far. They say you should choose your business partners wisely but this one was a no-brainer.

There is a lot of hard work ahead of us. When my husband and I have our first child, my husband already offered to put the kid in the backseat and drive around making deliveries if it ever comes down to that! *LOL* Our motto: ADAPT AND CONQUER.

I'm excited to see what our hard work can achieve and this will be quite the adventure.

Is it scary? YES!

Will it be worth it? No one knows.

Should we go for it? Absolutely.

Happy Birthday, Little One (Pocoyo cake)

I was reminded once again of how time flies. My baby, who's not so little anymore, just turned two last week. I had "Teddy Bears picnic" in mind for his birthday cake, but after watching him enjoying Pocoyo on daily basis, I decided to make him a Pocoyo-themed cake. Pocoyo is a animated series about this young lad's life adventure with his buddies: Ely, the pink elephant; Pato, the duck; Loula, the dog; and sleepy bird.

It's the first time for me to make fondant/gumpaste figurines based on actual characters. It took me lots of try to get Pocoyo right, even then I am not 100% happy with how he's turned out, he's more like a lego character than Pocoyo. The second character was Ely, the elephant. She's not THAT hard to make, but she is larger than the rests, and of course, I have to pick an awkward pose for her.... yes, that's me, always up for a challenge. The gumpaste figurine was heavy on top, so I have to use a lot of supports (read: cocktail sticks and spaghetti sticks).
Though I wasn't completely happy with those two gumpaste figurines, my dearest son recognized the two characters in an instant, it gives you such a gratifying experience.

I hand cut the "trees" made of chocolate fondant, I pre-cut the tiny flowers (for the flower bushes--and boy aren't they so tiny!) and just place the rests of the guys on top of the cake. I also made small colorful balloons made of gumpaste.

Here's the scene that I have to make the adaptation from:

And here's the finished cake!

Happy Birthday, my dearest Son...

Sugar Penguin Cakery is born!

First, it was out of curiosity, then it turned into an obsession, and finally it settled into passion. That's how Sugar Penguin was born. I was very much obsessed with cake decorating and how those simple fondant can turn into something quite magical since last year. I was very much impressed by a talented friend from Chicago (owner of My Itty Bitty Cake)--until today-- with all of her creation without formal training. After endless researches over the net for countless of numbers of videos, tutorials, and ideas, I finally got the guts to buy my first fondant and transformed them into cute bears and bunnies. As then, the holiday season was approaching, I created the penguins out of gumpaste/fondant. The penguins, reindeer, and the Christmas bears were a massive success, that lead into an encouragement to expand it into a business from a dear friend of mine, Bonnae! What can be more brilliant than having your dear friend to be your partner in business?
I like the motivational quote that I found over the net a while back by Belva Davies
"Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so." So there... I am going to make my dream into a reality!