Planting my garden

After the lonnnng weekend and busy monday I finally had an afternoon off to prepare my garden bed. I'm using the compost that the nursery suggested and a soil amendment. My bed needs about 12 cubic feet of soil. I use 6 of compost and 6 of the rich soil.

Full of new soil

If you want your plants to grow in perfect rows I suggest making a grid and planting within a 1x1 foot area.

I just used some nails and string

It also helps if you plan out where everything should go before planting as well. You don't want your tall plants to cover the small plants. Or block the sun. Also some of the plants will spread over a larger space so it might be a good idea to leave a blank space in between certain types of vegetables. 

Planted :)

Also started some seedlings for mid summer planting. It's so fascinating watching things grow. It's been about 3 days since I planted some seeds and theyre already sprouting! I bought a seed starter kit at my local hardware store. Only 7 bucks!

Starting my garden

My family just opened up a restaurant in January and i've been slaving away since the day we opened. Working on the central coast is a big change from working in LA. I grew up in templeton but it's been about 4 years since i've lived here. I have a cute cottage on the west side in Paso Robles right downtown. Things have started to ease up at the restaurant and i've had a little extra time to start working on the yard. (I JUST finished unpacking all of my boxes inside....3 months later)
Whoever lived here before me didn't really take of anything outside so i'm slightly starting from scratch.
I'm pretty sure there used to be a lawn but it was completely dead and overgrown with weeds and decaying leaves from the pepper tree.
That tree! The leaves are pretty annoying, they get everywhere. I feel like I sweep outside for 15 minutes and the next day they're all back. I finally got some big shears and cut all the branches that were hanging over the yard. Looks a lot better and there's a lot more sunshine now.

After many debates on which type of planter box I should build I finally decided on redwood fence planks. They were only 4.99 each and they cut them for me at the lumber yard. And with some basic L brackets and a drill, I put together my own planter box. If I can do it, you can do it.

I haven't planted anything yet, but i'm getting the soil ready this weekend and will hopefully have sometime to start planting on monday.

This is basically before I touched anything, so many weeds!

This was a few days after I weeded everything (by hand) and let the ground dry out a little bit.

My finished raised planter box. 

4 Redwood Cedar planks

2 - 4ft

2 - 5 1/2 ft

2 packages of basic L brackets

1 electric drill

Sneak Peak of Judy Reyes' Baby Shower

I made the cupcakes for 'Scrubs' star Judy Reyes a few weeks ago for her Baby Shower in Santa Monica.
The story will come out in February in Pregnancy magazine so look out for it!



http://celebrity-babies.com/2009/11/10/judy-reyes-celebrates-her-baby-shower/

My first REAL post!

I've spent ALL morning on photoshop trying to make my blog look somewhat professional! I think that i've given up all hope in trying to make myself a website and decided that a blog would suffice. I'm constantly on here anyway, I might as well share my thoughts with others!

I should probably get all of this networking stuff out of the way first....
For all of you that have facebook, twitter, flickr....I would love to be friends!

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

FLICKR

So, A little background as well....
I'm currently working at Tres L.A. as the Pastry Chef.
It's a "high end" catering company out of Hollywood.
I'm their first ever pastry chef. Before I was hired they bought all of their pastries and desserts from bakeries all over Los Angeles. Mostly from Susina and Vanilla Bake Shop.
Because i'm the only chef currently working in the pastry department its A LOT of work. I make the menus, find/write all the recipes, order, bake and produce EVERYTHING.
At the end of the day....complete exhaustion. But I love it.

I hope to use this blog to share my experiences from work and my beloved side project WHITNIE BURKE CUPCAKES. Which is really my entire inspiration of my blog.
I was lucky enough to do my intership at Cupcakes & Co. which gave me the knowledge about the cupcake industry. It's a lot more intricate and intense than you would think!
Whitnie Burke Cupcakes started out as a "faux" side project that I created for a friends Champagne and Cupcake party. It was being covered by E! news so I was forced to make up a company name. Boom. Whitnie Burke Cupcakes, real unique...I know.
After that I did a few more events and then before I knew it.....it had become a business.