Two weekends ago was my first official full market selling experience, which admittedly went pretty damn well, with Chantelle’s Cookies & Cakes experiencing a bumper day of sales at the Willowbridge Food Market.
Of course, two weekends ago also happened to be both my birthday weekend (I turned 32 on the Friday) and Mother’s Day (on the Sunday), but outside of visiting the (literally) newly opened Zest restaurant (The guys who took over our beloved Hagglund’s spot) for lunch on Sunday, both were pretty much left uncelebrated as Friday was dominated by preparations for the market, Saturday which was dominated by the market itself (my folks looked after Jessica while I manned the stall, first alongside Chantelle who by a twist of fate could join us in the morning, and then with Cheryl to close things off), and of course lastly, by the fact it was Chantelle’s scheduled work weekend.
Anyway, skip two weekends forward and after enjoying a well-deserved weekend off last weekend (which I spoke about here), this weekend was again dominated by the market, though this time around our time management during the week had been spot on for a change, meaning that we closed kitchen just after 22:00 on Friday night – instead of the usual well after midnight stint.
(Not that it helped much mind you – I completely overslept on Saturday morning, and in the end, just managed to make it through to Bellville and over to Willowbridge in time for setup!)
Because my folks weren’t available to assist with looking after Jessica this weekend, Chantelle arranged for Eba to come and look after her at our home, before taking over again during split, and then eventually ending up with little Jess at work, while I on the other hand spent the day on my feet, happily selling cupcakes, truffles and whatnot with Cheryl, on what turned out to be a not too bad a day of selling (with some decent weather thrown in for good measure), though unfortunately not quite at the sales level we experienced two weekends ago.
I can only surmise it was my distinct lake of beard this time around that hurt sales, though in all seriousness, I suspect that it was most likely The Good Food and Wine Show currently ongoing at the CTICC which was partly to blame for the slower than usual day!
Back home in Gordon’s Bay, having picked up Jessica from the guest house and then running the bed time routine, Saturday evening saw Chantelle and I get pretty caught up in SABC 3’s evening movie, the thoroughly engaging Ryan Reynolds drama, Chaos Theory, whilst Sunday was pretty much everything back to normal in terms of Chantelle working in the morning and evening, leaving us to take advantage of her split in the afternoon – by heading out for some shopping at Somerset Mall and the big Mambo’s Plastic Shop that recently opened up right next to it, followed by an incident packed light lunch at the new Tameret coffee house/restaurant, which saw us enjoy some quite tasty tramezzini sandwiches, while Jessica managed to cause the chair that she was sitting on to fall backwards, leading to a nasty fall, a very surprised Jessica, and of course, a bucket load of tears to follow suit!
Luckily for us though, no harm done, everything calmed down, meaning that by the end of this weekend past, I could confidently put my feet up, catch the compelling Richard Gere movie, Primal Fear to close off the evening (well technically, churning out this blog post was the last thing I tackled), and bask in a weekend well spent, resulting in batteries charged and therefore raring to go to meet the new week head on! :)
(Oh, forgot to mention that Saturday night saw me only go to bed at 01:00 the morning – Silly creative urge forced me to quickly knock this out before I retired for the night! Sigh, I’m pretty sure sleep would have been a better option…)