And More Progress.....

I'm a little late in posting these.  I went back in Monday and put in another nine hour day of painting.  It's far from done, but at least there is color on the walls!  (I know...it looks a little like mint chocolate chip ice cream at the moment, but I do have a plan!)

The floors seem to be giving us more trouble than anything.  We found cement underneath the carpet, which is actually great, but the carpet was glued to the cement, so we need to remove all the adhesive.  That job definitely falls into Arnie's department, as it involves nasty chemicals and I tend to be a clumsy gal!  :)

I thought it might be nice if I actually posted a cake picture or two as well.  Just in case you thought I forgot how to do that!  :)  Cake and cookies for one of my best customers, Beth....

And last but certainly not least, my customer Amy sent me this photo.  I did cupcakes for her a couple of weeks ago, and she always comes up with the greatest ways to display them.  She made this adorable cake stand to put them on.  Isn't it great?!

Okay, well, for me its back to work.  I have paperwork to file and walls to paint.  :) 

A Good Days Work!

So, I haven't posted any pictures of the inside of the building yet, and that's definitely for a reason!  This is what we started with at 8 o'clock this morning:

Obviously, one of the first things we wanted to get rid of was the paint!  So, after 9 hours and LOTS of primer (we can now strongly recommend Valspar brand from Lowes!), we have primer on everything and no more carpet.  Now the fun will begin tomorrow, when I can start painting our final colors!

I have a feeling we're in for some loooong days of labor!  But I'm so excited to get going!  It's hard to believe that we only signed the lease two days ago!!!!

Bakery Tour - Chattanooga Cupcakes - my 2nd favorite!

This was my 2nd favorite cupcake place we visited in Chattanooga.  It's almost unheard of, but we actually went back for more cupcakes from this place.  The location helps....it's a quick walk from our boat, across the pedestrian bridge and into downtown.  If I haven't mentioned the pedestrian bridge yet, it's one of my very favorite features of Chattanooga.  I've always loved bridges anyways, but this is the longest pedestrian bridge in the country.  Here's a shot of it from the downtown side of the river.  You can see the Delta Queen docked underneath it, which is where we like to stay. 

Another shot of what the bridge looks like.  I took this picture for my mom, who actually introduced me to Chattanooga.  The crowd of people coming towards us is headed to the park to set up to watch the fireworks (which we got to watch from the deck of the boat, lucky us!).

Okay, one more for Mom.  This shot was taken on the pedestrian bridge, looking down into Coolidge Park, where everyone set up to watch the fireworks.  And you can see my boat, the Delta Queen, off to the left.  People started setting up tents and roping of their sections at like 10am. 

On to Chattanooga Cupcakes.  So we left our boat, walked across the pedestrian bridge and into downtown.  This is the side of the building, and I got so excited when I saw their adorable logo, that I never took a pic of the front.  Go figure.

And here's a close up of that adorable logo.  I just love how the cupcakes replace the two o's.  So cute!

And when we walked in, I was in heaven.  Honestly, it was a little bright for my tastes, but this was one happy, friendly cupcake place! 

The seating area was really cute as well.  Everywhere you looked there were cupcakes...pictures, knick knacks on the ledges....everywhere!

The quality of their cupcakes blew me away.  And get this...the strawberry cupcake actually had strawberries in it!!!  The peach cobbler cupcake (Arnie's favorite)...it had peaches in it!  I know that should be normal, but its quite often not the case in alot of places we've visited.  My only complaint would be that there is ALOT of icing on those cupcakes, but I had no problem scooping off a bit from the top and enjoying the rest.

A must-do stop if you happen to be in Chattanooga....

All Aboard!

Just in case you were wondering if we did anything other than visit bakeries on our vacation, here's the proof that yes, we did.  On Saturday, we took the Tennessee Railroad from Chattanooga to Chickamauga, GA.  It was about a 2-1/2 hour train ride each way, with an hour and a half layover to check out the small town of Chickamauga. 

We had really high hopes for the train ride.  It sounded like soooo much fun.  Unfortunately, it didn't go quite as well as we expected.  First, we stopped for an hour for them to fix one of the women's bathrooms.  It seemed a bit unnecessary, as there were other restrooms available and they could've worked on it while we were stopped in GA.  Add to that too many unhappy children and unpleasant scenery, and it just wasn't what we had anticipated.  However, when we're on vacation, we try to keep a good attitude, so we definitely didn't let it ruin our day.

Once we stopped in Chickamauga, we decided to find some lunch.  We ate at a barbecue place (my hubby LOVES barbecue..we ate alot of it on vacation, which is a fair trade off for all the bakery stops!).  The food was really fantastic.  I loved my smoked chicken, and we also had fried green tomatoes that were the best I've ever had.  And it was a really cute place too.

And then, on to the bakeries!  :)  The first place I was really excited about...it was called Cakes & Coffee.  I only took one picture of the cute outside, as when we walked in, we realized it was more of a gift shop than anything else.  They did have one full cake, a few cupcakes, and a pot of homemade coffee, but that was it.  Not much of a cake shop.

Luckily, across the street was a place called the Chocolate Cafe.  How could anybody resist going in there?  Somehow, I didn't get a picture of the outside, but the inside was exactly what I have always pictured my own shop would look like.  It had beautiful brick walls and hardwood floors.  In the backroom, there was a large fireplace and an outdoor patio. 

Cute, right?  Almost exactly what I would look for in a shop.  While I really like the "cute" cupcake shops, I'm always drawn to the more natural elements, like brick and wood. 

From here, we made the two hour train ride back to Chattanooga, giving a huge sigh of relief as we exited the train!  :)

Bakery Tour - The Bread Basket

On our first full day in Chattanooga, we headed up the mountain to Signal Mountain.  My friend Sandie owns a cookie shop, so we stopped in there to say hello, then headed to The Bread Basket.  What a cool place!  The outside is incredibly beautiful.  (LOL..there's my hubby again, being dragged to another bakery!)

On our way down, we stopped at a cheese farm, did the tour, and bought some cheese varieties, so we definitely needed some bread to go with it.  The interior of the shop was just as beautiful as the outside.  The staff was friendly, and the bread was delicious!

I love the wicker rack they have with the different mini breads.  I would love to find something like that for the farmers market, so let me know if you happen to come across one!

'Til tomorrow....

Bakery Tour - Whipped Cupcakes

This is an adorable little bakery.  And the best part is, it's located right by the Delta Queen, which is the steamboat we like to stay on when we're in Chattanooga, so its within walking distance.   Well, most things are within walking distance for us when we're on vacation...that seems to be about all we do! 

They have a very cute seating area with this huge foam core cupcake on the wall.  And I love the hanging tissue paper balls.

My poor husband...he is SUCH a patient man.  When I got home and uploaded pictures, I realized that he's in a bunch of them, always ordering for me, so that I can look around.  I'm lucky he's such an amazing travel companion!  :)

The bakery case is pretty cute too.  They have plastic trays that have the perfect size circle cut into them so that the cupcakes stay nice and don't fall over.

Stop in tomorrow for another tour.  I think I have like five more to post.  I haven't been on a scale, but I'm assuming I need to start dieting off the cupcakes!!!  :)

Back from Vacation!

I surely wish I could say I was happy to be home, but that would be a total deception.  :)  I love vacation with my hubby.  If you have followed my blog for any amount of time at all, you know that I'm slightly obsessed with visiting bakeries and cupcake shops while we're gone.  I prefer to think of it more as research than obsession, as it sounds more sane.  :)

I can't possibly post all of my pictures in one post, so I'll post a bakery a day.  Our first bakery stop was The Cup in Knoxville, Tennessee.  We came across it by accident...just saw a small billboard at an exit we were getting off at anyways.  The shop is totally adorable.  They have another location in Knoxville as well.

I have to admit too, that I've taken most of my pictures with my camera phone, so they may not all be fantastic, but hey, you'll get the idea.

The inside was really cool as well.  I really like a minimalist approach to decor, and they pulled that concept off perfectly!

I would love to say the cupcakes were amazing, but the best I can give them is pretty good.  They were definitely fresh and not piled with a ton of icing.  They were simply a very good cupcake.

'Til tomorrow.....

Bakery Visit

I met my friend Dawn when we both went to Cookie Camp last year.  (Many of you will know her as Kneadacookie on Flickr!)  She came down to pick me up in Ohio and we continued on to Tennessee.  Mind you, we had never met before.  Can you imagine how uncomfortable that would've been if we hadn't totally hit it off?!  But we did.  In fact, we're so much alike, it can be a little frightening!  :) 

Dawn lives in Michigan, which is where we are originally from.  Since we went up to my nephew's wedding last weekend, we decided to take an extra day to stop and see Dawn on our way home.  She opened a bakery, called the Butterfly Bake Shoppe, in the Detroit area.  I'd never been to that side of the state before, so it was fun for us to take a new way home. 

And Dawn's bakery....gorgeous!!!  Exactly what I hope to open someday.  Here's the two of us...it took alot of begging to get Dawn to take a picture with me, but I finally broke her down!

Well, I guess I should've started with the outside, so that's where we'll go next.  The area is absolutely adorable.  There's quite a few little bakeries in the area.  We spent a little time just wandering around.

On to the interior.  I love the colors she choose to paint the inside.  It's really bright and cheerful.  And the bakery cases are beautiful!

Dawn handpainted the "Coffee Bar" on the wall, which I LOVE! 

And she has this HUGE kitchen that I would almost kill for.  I did say almost, right?  :)  And the picture only shows half of it!  Oh the mess I could make in there!!!!

So if you're ever in the Detroit area, make sure you stop by!  Her lemon bars are FANTASTIC!  And I must not be the only one that thinks so...we were there for around 2 hours and 3 customers stopped in looking for them! 

And thank you, Dawn, for putting up with us, answering our millions of questions, and letting us interrupt your day.  It was soooo nice to see you!!!!!