Welcome to My Life as a Baker

Personally, I feel as if not many people know what goes on behind the scenes to be able to get the final product.

I think most people think we mix a few ingredients, add details, and everything is done. Sometimes I do wish it was that easy but only because I also work a full time job other than baking.

Before we get into all the good stuff though, let me tell you a little bit about me and my life.

My name is Selena (hint to why my business is called Sel's Sweets) and I am 25 years old. I was born and raised in Gulfport, MS by my amazing parents who are from Mexico. My first language was Spanish, and that is the language I speak to my parents in since their English isn't very good. I also live with my amazing boyfriend Justice and our two fur babies. We have Sunny who is an orange cat and loves the sun ( hint the name) and Bruno who is a Border Collie and an Aussie mix but loves to hug and kiss everyone. During the week, I work at my 9-5 job at a car dealership in D'Iberville, which sometimes makes it hard to manage my time when I have orders, but I usually do what I can.

Sometimes I do think it would be easier to bake full-time, but unfortunately, it does not pay the bills (yet). It definitely would relieve some stress, though, working on it full-time and making sure I meet all the deadlines without stressing so much about time.  I spend some nights up until 3 a.m. or not going to sleep at all. That is basically the reality of being a one woman show, lots of late nights and no time to go out. For some people, that sounds like a terrible thing, but honestly we don't always have much to do on the weekends anyways so it's not so bad. When we do have things planned, I would have already met everyone to pick up their orders early Saturday morning..

It often feels like I work all week and get only two days off, but it's mostly because no one talks about prep work and inventory. On Sundays, I look at my schedule for the following weekend to make sure I have or need to order any thing for the cakes and cookies coming up. Luckily, I have Amazon Prime, so everything gets here on time before I need it. I also order any ingredients for pickup if I need it, I try to keep everything in stock except for fruits or anything that doesn't get ordered as often.

I feel like I would be lying if I said that being a small business owner was easy because it definitely has its challenges. Being ONE person who is in charge of EVERYTHING, feels stressful. Probably one of the reasons why I started getting gray hairs. I am in charge of posting on social media, answering messages, ordering ingredients, baking all the cakes, washing dishes, organizing everything and I feel like the list goes on. The good thing about it is that I like doing most of it. It keeps me busy and I get to be creative with it.

Overall, many customers or clients don't give their home bakers much credit. I am mostly just saying that because I am one, but I think I felt like that before I became one. If you think about it, everywhere you go eat food, watch a movie, or buy something from, they are there to provide for themselves or their families. They spent their time away from home to be able to be there to serve YOU. So it is always nice to be kind to the people who provide you with something.

I feel like we got a little bit off topic but all in all, life of a baker is not always easy. I hope this gave you some insight into my life and that you learned just a little bit more about what it could also be like for other people.. I hope to continue to do these blogs and I go more in depth of not being a perfect person.

Hope we can talk again soon ;)

XoXo Selena