Believe it or not in July of this year it will be the 10th anniversary of my first cake sale! I had only made about 8 decorated cakes before that one. The last one being for my sister-in-law's baby shower. A couple of weeks later one of her friends who was at the shower called and wanted to buy a cake. I told her I didn’t sell cakes but she insisted. (I am glad!) The cake was a three tier cake that she had seen on a magazine. Not too shabby for a first order right? Somehow I managed to pull it off and from that point on I was hooked! I made a few more cakes that year (2006) for family and friends and in 2007 I decided to market the business.
At first I just pinned a flyer at our pediatrician’s office, you know the cheesy kind that you can rip a tab off. At that time I had a 2 and a 1-year old and I felt like I was in there all the time for vaccines and checkups so it seemed like a good place to start. And it worked! People started to order and my brother offered to make me a website with the few pictures that I had. That year I sold 50 cakes while being a stay at home mom with two small children.
This was the banner for my first website. I came up with the logo myself. The cake illustrations were inspired off an illustration on a birthday card.
Around that time I was contacted from the local newspaper. It was my first exposure in the media, an important milestone!
And between all of the baking, I managed to have my third child. But that didn't stop me. I still managed to make about 40 cakes in 2008. In the following years business kept growing and my cake decorating skills improved.
In 2010 the website and logo got their first facelift.
But 2011 was really the turning point of it all. That year one of my cakes was picked by BRIDES Magazine as one of America’s most beautiful cakes and I had cakes featured in multiple magazines. That was also the year that I participated in my first styled photo shoot and started to connect more with other event professionals. Even though I was selling cakes before, 2011 was the year that Lovely Cakes became a true company!
2015 brings another milestone to this journey. For starters the site and the logo got their second facelift to represent the stage our company is now. The old logo was very fun and cute; the new one is more sophisticated but still whimsical. Another big step I am taking this year started to take place in January of 2014, when I made an offer to buy a property where I could build my own kitchen and showroom. It took 8 months to get to the closing date, we hit a bump every single step of the way, but now we are at the final stages of construction and should be at the new location by this summer! This picture was right after the closing in front of our new building.
I have enjoyed this journey immensely and I am thankful for all the events and special moments that I was somehow a part of with my cakes. Cheers! Here is to 10 more years making awesome cakes!