Lynchburg Living's Best of Lynchburg

So I was just over on Lynchburg Living's website voting for my favorite businesses in their annual "Best of Lynchburg" contest, when I noticed that some awesome person nominated "coffee cakes" for best desert. So it's spelled like the drink - I still think they meant us. People misspell it like that all of the time. I know you are all going there anyway to vote for your favorite amongst the many wonderful businesses we have in Lynchburg, so, while you're there, if you think we deserve it, we would appreciate your vote. THANKS!

Lynchburg Living Magazine's "Best of Lynchburg"

I just love, love, love weddings - but I can never be there so I just LOVE when someone sends me pictures of the happy couple enjoying their wedding (and their wedding cake)! Crystal George has posted Mike and Melissa's wedding pics from August 8th at the FABULOUS West Manor and I just had to share them with you. Thank you Crystal and of course CONGRATULATIONS MELISSA AND MIKE! Oh -Check out the cutie-pie kid eating cake! What a doll.

Crystal George Studios' Blog

I haven't been here in awhile. It's been a crazy busy summer - but fun. We've already started planning for another cruise in December so that light at the end of the tunnel is keeping me sane for now! :)

So...it's Friday. I have 4 wedding cakes to make so I'm out.

Oh the competition was fierce. There are so many awesome businesses in Lynchburg that it was crazy to think that little old me would win a small business of the year award. I was just thinking that since you can't get any smaller than our business that we might have a shot. We didn't win. It was a great honor to have been nominated and I'd like to thank my awesome bride Amy Hunt Lawson for the privilage!

More later. Running a little behind this week because of the holiday. I hope everyone had a safe and happy Memorial Day and remembered that the holiday is an occasion for us to remember all of those who have lost their lives in defense of this great country. I am thankful for their sacrifice every day, as well as our troups, veterans, firemen, police and first responders. God bless the USA!

Busy, busy, busy.

Oh to have more hours in the day! Been so busy making cakes and remodeling a real estate project and planting flowers and trying to squeeze in every other little thing that I want/need to do. It's challenging and fun. I'm having a blast. Hopefully the remodeling will be done in the next few weeks and I can focus on some things that have had to slide - like this blog.

Wedding season is kicking into high gear. I had 4 wedding cakes last weekend along with a couple of graduation and other cakes, 3 weddings this weekend and a birthday, grooms cake, bridal shower, and one or two others. I can normally do 3-4 wedding cakes per weekend unless they are very large. I'm so thankful for all of my customers and happy that so many people come back time and again to order my cakes.

Now for some really big news - I have been nominated for the Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce small business award to be announced on May 20th at a luncheon at the Hilton Garden Inn. There is a lot of great competition and I know I'm not likely to win (I'm the tiniest fish in a pretty big pond) it's still a fabulous thrill and honor to have been nominated. More coming soon on that - I'll let you know how I did. If you would like to go to the luncheon again it's May 20th from 11:30 - 1:30 at the Hilton Garden Inn on Wards Road. Admission is $20 for Chamber members and $30 for non-members. Reservations are required and should be made by May 15th - that's tomorrow - so call 434-845-5966 or email info@lynchburgchamber.org. Wish me luck! :)

Have a great day!

Natalie's bridal shower

Speaking of shopping themes... I did a cake last weekend for a bridal shower held at Boonsboro Country Club for Natalie. Today I got the sweetest email from her friend who planned the shower and happens to be a professional photographer. Her name is Patricia Hildebrand and she graciously allowed me to post some of her pictures. Here is one of them.



And....I'm blogging on Friday again....back to work! These wedding cakes won't make themselves. :)

One very popular theme for birthdays and bridal showers is shoes, accessories and shopping in general, so I thought I would post this picture of one of my recent cakes for just such a party.



Don't forget West Manor's open house this Sunday from 1:00 - 4:00. Enter to win $2000off of your wedding at west manor!

WOW! What a great day we had at the Lynchburg Bridal Expo on Sunday March 8th. It was a gorgeous day and there was a huge turnout for the show. I was happy to see a lot of brides there that I'm already working with on their wedding cake, and it was very nice to meet so many new ones. I'm sure everyone got a lot of ideas to help them with their wedding planning! It was so nice as always to spend some time with some of Lynchburg's great wedding vendors too!

The next event that we will be attending will be at West Manor's spring open house on March 29 (see previous post for information). Of course we are looking forward to that - we LOVE West Manor! Come out to see us - Free cake! :)

On April 18th we will be at the Montview Manor on the campus of Liberty University for Timeless Affairs event "Wedding Planning Made Simple". The hours for are from 9-4 with different vendors in the morning and afternoon hours (we will be there from 9am -noon). This event is by appointment only so please rsvp at www.timelessaffairs.com or call 434-509-2906.

I hope you all have been enjoying the beautiful days that we have been having. March is so unpredictable (10 inches of snow on Monday and 80 degrees on Saturday) so I guess there are still some cold days in store for us, but it sure is nice to see some signs of warmer days ahead.

West Manor's spring open house

I hope to see you there!

Be sure to check out the new "Hitched" issue of Lynchburg Living magazine -available in about a month. Of course there will be tons of valuable wedding planning information - plus an article featuring a cake by Coffey Cakes. We are very excited to be included in this fabulous publication and hope that you all will run out and get a copy!

We are also pleased to announce that we have been honored with the 2009 Brides Choice Award presented by Wedding Wire.




Thank you all for your support of our work!

plugging along

It's the middle of January and I might be getting a little caught up.....maybe. The actual weddings have slowed down a bit but - it's planning season! So we're staying very busy with birthday cakes and wedding cake meetings - we average about 7 meetings a week. I love meeting all the beautiful new brides and hearing all of their different ideas for their weddings. Such fun! I've already booked up for several dates during the summer but I still have lots of availability so give me a call so we can get together and talk about your wedding cake! :)

It's going to be a busy year.

Other than that - we have a few bridal shows coming up. We'll be at The Acedemy of Fine Arts on January 24th from 11-2:00 for Soiree's "Something Blue - a Bridal Affair". On February 7th we will be at the Inn at Trivium for the Central Virginia Bridal Guide's Bride of the Year Luncheon. You have to have pre-register for this show so call 434-237-9083 for information. On March 8th from 1-5:00 we will be at the Lynchburg Bridal Expo bridal show at Cattle Annie's. This is going to be a fabulous day so please be sure to come out for that. And on March 29th West Manor is having their spring open house - it's always a treat to spend the day with Sharon and the girls in the fabulous West Manor ballroom eating some of Chef Ken's awesome cooking! So there are lots of opportunities coming up to mingle with other brides, meet some of Lynchburg's awesome wedding vendors, get lots of ideas to help you in your wedding and eat some great food (and cake of course!).

See you there! :)

A little about our trip and then - Back to the grind

Wow - what a....month! Between preparing for our trip, taking the trip, Christmas and New years the month of December was pretty much a blur and flew by. I hate to see my life whizzing by me like that - I feel like I need to stop and smell a rose RIGHT NOW! But it was a wonderful month even if it does seem like a dream.

The trip was fabulous! There were gale force winds for most of our trip so the sailing was rough. I was VERY queezy the first night and was thinking that I might have made a mistake, but I was fine the next morning and didn't have any other sea-sickness through out our trip.

The instructors on board were awesome as expected. I had a class on painting with food colors with arthor Toba Garrett and two classes with Food Network Cake Challenge Judge and arthor Nicholas Lodge. I also sat in on some instructions from former ICES president Keith Ryder. I made some wonderful new cake friends including Diane Shavkin who I've looked up to for years.

Walking up and down that huge ship was a workout and even with a buffet for three meals a day and all of the snacks and room service that we could eat I only gained 1/2 a pound while we were gone! Cool! We visited Grand Turk which was a big mess from recent hurricanes - I mean it was a mess! Only the cruise center ( a bunch of stores in a group as you get off the boat) was intact and worth seeing and I wasn't there to shop. We did ride a jet ski in the ocean and do some quick snorkeling. Puerto Rico was nice - a lot of walking again and we got some great pictures of the old city and the forts. On St. Thomas we took a sky ride up to the highest point and got some great pictures, but other than shopping the attractions were fairly lame. On our last day we visited Half Moon Cay Bahamas and had the most fabulous day of all! We took a ride in a glass bottom boat and saw some nice reef formations and fish. We went PARASAILING! What a blast! I'm scared of heights and cried when I had to get up on some scaffolding to paint some high areas in my house, but I was not scared at all of parasailing. It was amazing! We got to swim in the beautiful blue waters that I thought I would never even see with my own eyes and really didn't believe the pictures that I'd seen - but it's really there! I do love the Bahamas! It was a wonderful, wonderful combination of work and pleasure and I hope we can work it out so we can go again next year.

Today Greg went back to work after having 21 days off so it's officially back to business as usual, and I've got some catching up to do.

I hope all of my friends had a wonderful and safe Christmas/New Years and I pray for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009 for you all!

Wendy