So I suppose I should share how I ended up here…with a blog…again (I guess that’s part of the story, huh?). Our oldest, Elyse, is now 8 and a half at the time I’m writing this. This means, it’s been 8 and a half years since I left corporate America and my job in digital advertising. A decision that didn’t come lightly to either my husband OR I. We had registered with a daycare, I already had a semi-work-from-home job that I was succeeding in. We had just bought a beautiful home. But during maternity leave, I started to feel it – the anxiousness of leaving her, the knowing of what my life was like having a mom at home full-time, the “how will we manage this?” when my husband’s job often took him overseas and away from the house while mine had me at evening dinners entertaining clients. I was in Account Management – almost impossible to consider a part-time option when digital advertising is a 24/7 always on business. So, we took the leap. And don’t get me wrong, I LOVED it. Loved having lazy days and managing my time around her schedule or how much sleep I’d managed the night before. Grocery shopping and running errands at leisure. Was it absolutely exhausting? Absolutely. Parenting balances the seesaw of exhausting and rewarding even today with a 6 and 8 year old and I suppose it always will.
But as many moms know…sometimes you just need something for YOU. For me, this time of life was the first time I had been without a creative outlet…and the first time I realized I quite frankly need it in order to feel complete. From the time I could speak, I was singing, at the age of two I was in dance, second grade brought piano, then the love of the theater at eleven. I was an acting major in college with a freak out last-minute switch to advertising nearing the end. Always something creative in my life…until now. So, I dabbled. In a lot of things. When she napped, I crafted, I made tablescapes, I baked. I blogged FunYumAndFrills, I made yarn signs (it’s a thing), I made meals for working families. But nothing lit the fire long enough to stick. And then a neighbor told me about the art of decorating cookies. I was intrigued…perhaps the next small flame that would be fun for a teacher gift before moving onto knitting perhaps? I watched some YouTube tutorials, picked her brain, and got to work. And I hated it. Swore off cookies. And in true me form, devoured hours worth of YouTube tutorials and Instagram highlights and was back at it two weeks later – but cookies would NOT beat me. It was still hard but better! That second round of cookies made it to Elyse’s preschool teachers and got me my first order at that very drop off. Within a month I opened a bank account and Missy P Sweets was born.
Thousands of cookies and hundreds of cakes later, here we are. Along the way, I learned so much about starting a cookie business. So many things that weren’t talked about, just weren’t out there for us. So I listened to my gut and started an Instagram series – launching myself into the community as an “educator.” Within a year, I was hooked up with Chelsea of @rollinginthedoughaz and we started The Cookie Chat. From there, I started finding places for myself in the industry where there were holes – “cookie graphics,” Patreon to educate and help others, Presale MasterClasses. And now, the blog. Not just focused on cookie content, but sharing everything I love. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past five years with this business…sharing makes me happy.