Just in case you’ve been living under a rock or missed it, I’ve spent the last 8 or so weeks recovering from a broken wrist – The day after Hurricane Irma, I was helping with clean-up and fell off a ladder, breaking both bones in my right wrist, straining my left wrist, bruising my ribs, acquiring a lovely case of road rash on my legs, and losing the nail from my big toe.  Yay, right?  Aside from lots of whining and feeling completely useless, those weeks gave me a lot of time to reflect and to make some business decisions for both Bake with Rho and Rhonda Bakes.

Pink peony bud

First, let me say that I am not closing down Bake with Rho – I have a ton of fun with it, and I plan to continue hosting LIVE sessions on Facebook and sharing recipes.  I’ve found that after I got over my initial hysteria, I enjoy hosting the LIVE sessions, so I will continue to do them as long as folks continue to watch them.

One thing I’ve done in the last weeks, and even more so in the last 7 days, is take a long, hard, look at where I want to be in my cake career and what I need to do to get there.  In case you haven’t noticed, I can have a hard time focusing – I like every single shiny new thing, and while that makes for a lot of fun for me, it’s expensive and it’s not advancing my dream of an eventual retail space.  So I’m working with a group of like-minded folks to work on serious goal management in 2018 and I’m making some decisions about “how” to integrate the two entities so that they compliment each other.

Pink peony – 5 petals

Bake with Rho will become the “behind the scenes” look at Rhonda Bakes.  I’ll post videos and images of projects that I’m working on, such as the Peony that you’re seeing interspersed throughout this post.  I’ll still be doing LIVE sessions with great recipes and techniques that I know you’ll love, but I’ll also be making sugar flowers, creating cakes for portfolio shots, and looking for new recipes and techniques to try.

I’ll also be publishing a schedule that will get sent out to subscribers letting you know what’s coming up so that you can join us for the recipes that interest you most.

I’ll be asking for your ideas and I want to know what you want to see!  You know how much I love experimenting with the new stuff, and I’m always on the lookout for inspiration – Give me some!

I’m not the best blogger on earth – I typically just type in my own “voice”, and while I want the content to interest you, I also now that I have a ton of friends out there who are so very good at this, it amazes me and intimidates me all at the same time!  I’ll be sharing some of their stuff here, because if I’ve managed to entertain you at all, they’re going to blow your socks off, I promise!

“But what about Ana?!”  Friends, Ana is always here, she’s always involved, she’s my sanity checker and my voice of reason.  I’m going to convince her to participate in a LIVE or two – I need to get some “guest stars”!  Actually, there are some amazing Greek recipes that she has that we could try if I can talk her into it – Not necessarily all sweet, some are savory and as someone who’s had Yia Yia Julia’s lemon chicken soup, I can tell you they’re fantastic!

Pink peony – 10 petals

So the peony you’ve seen throughout the post is my own brand of physical therapy – My only worry when I broke the wrist and was trying to decide on surgery was if I would still be able to “cake” – Working on sugar flowers takes a log of wrist and hand movement and while my hand is absolutely killing me today, I was able to do everything I needed to keep on creating – I can’t tell you what a relief and how grateful I am that I can still do what I love.  I just need to do it smarter.