A Working Lady

We had a few boxes of things across the street at a friend's little workroom, which I went to pick up this evening. While I was picking up more boxes to carry across the street my friend (male) said "it's nice to see a woman working"....! :D

I just got home from the cafe. I got to sleep in today and only had to start work at 10am - yet I've still managed to put in a 14hour day of work. Generally I spend all my time and days at the café with only a few exceptions.

Tomorrow I'll be there from 8am until about 4pm, because I'll leave early to go to a birthday party in Turku :P Yet I will also be taking a night bus back so that I can help out on Sunday when we have a Christening at the cafe. Cutesies!

Tomorrow, or technically today (Saturday), we'll be serving breakfast from 11am until 7pm, come enjoy! :)

A Happy Monkey

I've been busy, but I've been loving it. Katja just told me, if I'm tired I can go home and rest but why go home when I can sit down and update our blog in our lovely cafe? My home is, unfortunately, just not decorated as cozily as my "offce": there's not candle light, no jazz, no murmur of people chatting.

I'm happy to say, for the first time in my life, that I'd rather be at work than go home!

And this gives Katja the perfect opportunity to hop off to the paint store to pick up some gray paint, there's a spot below our antique cash register, which is still paintless! ;)

Now, chocolate news! Our chocolatier restocked our chocolate shelf with raspberry, nut, mint and white chocolate with passion fruit filling..! And we're having a chocolate tasting here on the 13th of February which will include dinner, coffee or tea and of course a wonderful range of chocolates that you will get to sample, so send me a message if you're interested to hear more.

Right now one of our regulars is showing us aprons she's sewn, and they're gorgeous and we hope to have them here for sale when Spring enters our café and little leaves appear on the branches of our ceiling!

Uuh, writing here is challenging because I keep getting caught up in conversations, this is why this post is a bit all over the place, hope you're keeping up! But if you're not, then no worries, I have to stop writing to go feed myself before I go play with my friends from Jolly Dragon. Thank you for reading! I'm a happy monkey! ^_^

A quick update..

Did I promise to update the blog? Oops. The last two weeks have been busy.

The first week was busy but nothing spectacular happened. The second week we re-opened and I spent most of my time there. Morning till night. I have completely fallen behind all of my blog reading and writing.

But I do feel like I'm in the right place. I really enjoying being a cafe entrepreneur! All the hours and all the work really don't bother me because it's our own business, our own thing.

Despite spending all of my time working, it doesn't even feel like I've fallen out of touch with my friends either. That's the wonderful thing about working at a public place, friends (and even your mother's cousins!) can drop by and say hello to you during your work day. I'm sure I'd feel a bit different if I'd been spending all my time these few weeks setting up and working at say.. an accountants office? Or a dark room? ;) And of course I'm meeting new people all the time as well. We've had some friendly customers this past week!

I would like to encourage all of my friends to stop by and visit me!

Tomorrow will be a busy day, will meet Katja at 8am to prepare for the week to come. Just FYI, our opening hours will be 11-19, Tuesday to Saturday! And already next week we will have re-enforcements: Essi will be helping out. yay!

More to come!

Hasn't quite sunk in yet...

So last Friday was my last day of work at the office. This morning when I walked passed my usual bus stop it felt like I was skipping work. Yup, I felt like a rebel! If this was a movie I would have walked down the street while tearing off my business suit, taken a hammer sledge hammer and smashed our little office coffee machine into tiny twisted plastic bits.. Next I would have fixed my hair, straightened out my apron and walked up to our beautiful espresso machine and switched it on.

Ah the movies!

In real life however, something inside your café partner says "today is the first day of work with your co-worker - now it's OK to get sick!" So half of my day today was spent by poor Katja's bedside going over papers and making plans for the week to come. The other half I was clearing the backroom of the café in preparation for a few more finishing touches (=more. yes more renovation work). Get well soon Katja! I mean it :D

Renovation of course means that we have unfortunately had to postpone the re-opening until next week. Sorry about that! But it's better that we take care of all the things we have to take care of properly and then come back when we can really focus on running a café 100% and not have to think about all the other nonsense ;)

A bit about my last day of work at the office...

By 14:00 I could hardly sit still. It was the same feeling I get before travelling somewhere, anxious and constantly asking myself if I had forgotten to do something. But then 16:30 comes so quickly you hardly notice it and before you know it your last day of work is over and you're being handed a bottle of champagne while your co-workers say mushy stuff that makes you blush ;)

I was indeed given an incredible send-off which included the above mentioned champagne, dinner, a gift certificate for a 1 hour massage (!!!), a gorgeous Kalevala necklace and so many kind words. Thank you all again for the send-off and for all that went into the past year!
Thank you! And do come visit me at the café :)

We'll be back next week on Tuesday the 20th from noon until 19:00! But I'll probably write an entry or two before then, so see you soon!

So new.. !

Eek! Two days left at my office job, then my career as a café worker will (hopefully) take off! All the paper work has naturally been left until the very last minute, but I am starting to get ideas regarding what to wear ;)

I've crossed over the last countdown week on my post-it note and have begun to clear my desk.

I was just chatting with a friend of mine and said that this whole transition simply feels crazy, to which she replied "yeah.. but it's real". Can't escape that! And I don't want to. I'm looking forward to this but naturally it feels crazy because I'm not sure what it is I'm facing. My daily routines will change completely starting next Monday. What a great way to start the new year... it's exciting... and crazy!

Have yourselves a good 2009!