How To Make Martha Stewart Jealous...

So last night, 46 of our finest friends joined us at the Inside Columbia Culinary Adventure Center for a night of baking fun and it was AWESOME!  Seriously...we bounce a lot of ideas and crazy thoughts off each other, but in our wildest dreams, we didn't plan that 46 pie fans would come out on a Wednesday evening during the first game for the Cardinals in the World Series to hang with us.  That is love, and don't think for a hot second that we don't appreciate every single second. This blog was created for the whole point of keeping this process real and keeping it transparent to those interested in our journey.  We vowed to each other that I would share the good and the bad and the crazy and the unexpected with you at whatever cost.  And so it is confessional time:  TEACHING A BAKING CLASS IS HARD WORK.

We spent the last two days prepping in all ways...baking pies, buying and pre-measuring ingredients, rolling dough, cleaning out every Hyvee in town of their small baking disposable baking tins, figuring out what to wear, making 46 individual cups of pre-measured shortening, and peeling a bushel of apples.  Literally.  And it brought us to this:

When I tell you that the baking facilities at the Culinary Adventure Center are slung-up fabulous, I am totally not joking.  And when I tell you that putting together a seamless presentation that involves cups of flour and trying to read each other's mind is really hard, I am totally not joking.  But I can tell you in all confidence that we had fun with each other even when we messed up and we had fun with our attendees, who listened intently to everything we said and asked a ton of great questions.  Seriously, our crowd made us better.  So while Martha Stewart can probably say she wasn't jealous of our performance, she would be jealous of our crowd.

We offered our participants a chance to learn about three pies - cherry, chocolate bourbon pecan, and apple.  Jeanne taught a quick lesson in dough making and dough rolling to get us going.

We had a few people who promised us that if this pie-baking thing doesn't work out, we could take a comedy show on the road.  Here, Jeanne is discussing lattice top crust and the Culinary Adventure Center Executive Chef, Dennis Clay, is prepping our cherries.

After completing all three pies, we turned our participants loose to make and roll dough and then complete one baby pie.

Soon it was time to load the pies into the oven.

And get down to the real business...sampling the seven different pies we brought to share with our 46 newest besties.

We loved this part of the class...we got to mingle and talk pie until everyone was ready to take their baby pie home.  We got so many great thoughts for the shop and received the sentiment loud and clear that dropping gooseberry pie from the menu might lead to some sort of revolutionary overthrow.

Just when you think this story can't get any better, remember that $25 from each ticket sold to the event went to our Kickstarter campaign.  For those of you about to reach for your iPhone calculator, that is a total of $1,150 to our goal of $10,000!  Holy smokes...that is game changing for our campaign.  As of the time of writing this post, the proceeds of the event will give us a total of $7,810.  That means we need another $2,190 in the next 10 days.  Please take a look at our Kickstarter campaign at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1576929042/bring-back-peggy-jeans?ref=live and share it with every person you know!

I couldn't sleep tonight without properly thanking a ton of people for making last night possible...

1) Our families, because totally tearing apart your kitchen and baking pies until late in the night while having panic about not having enough measuring spoons is an experience all the peeps shared in.

2) Fred and Melody Parry, obviously.  Their idea, their building, their resources, their belief in us.

3) My friend and creative genius, Sherry Kudrna.  She worked her fingers to the bone to make the cutest recipe card favors for our guests that you have ever seen. They were beautiful and she had to wait for the UPS man to deliver tiny rolling pin ornaments at 5:15 pm when the event started at 6:30 pm.  Hello, last minute panic.

4) Shawna Houser at Bella Salon.  What a girl can do when she has good hair and killer eyelashes is unbelievable.

5) The Inside Columbia staff that assisted us and made us feel like creating a big mess was totally normal.

So tomorrow we are back to business as normal.  We had to write the architect another fat check this afternoon.  This should mean there is movement in some sort of direction, right?  Plans should be in the contractor's hands tomorrow.  Until then, I'm concentrating 98% of my mental power on sending ESP messages of "why yes, we can have your space done by November 20th AND it is going to be amazingly cost-effective!".