I have to tell you, you gals and guys have been so incrediable! I feel like you are the only people who understand what my life feels like sometimes!

So I gotta ask, how do you handle when you are just so busy, and you body is telling you ENOUGH, get some rest! Last week I did 6 cakes, including a wedding cake, with all of them very time consuming designs. Every night I was up till 3 am, then got up at 6 am to go to my day job, would come home at 5 pm and start all over again. My last cake of the week just went out the door and now I have to head for the kitchen and bake two wedding cakes and a stacked present cake for the coming up week. Its going to be another week of staying up to 3 am decorating (the stacked cake is due thursday, the two wedding cakes are on Saturday) And I have 200 cupcakes to do too (about 50 of them are baked) I love doing this, when I am doing it, the creative side of me keeps me going and I enjoy it. But when I stop and sit down, the exhaustion hits me. One day last week, I was working away on a cake and realized I never had dinner, and I had to just eat a hot dog real quick. Yeck. My DH has been wonderful, he will make me stop and put my feet up for a while (One night I was on my feet for 8 hours standing there working on cakes..I have ordered anti fatique pad to stand on to help my poor legs)

Anyway, after next week, I only have two cakes due. (so far) I am thinking of just not taking any orders for a few weeks to rest. (I tried raising my prices and people still wanted them! I had several 100 dollar cakes this week!) Then I think to myself, can I not handle this?

So how do you guys deal with the physical time it takes to do our tasks? Or can we do them faster as time goes on? (I WIsh I just had a simple cake to do..everyone wants these sculpted, wild cakes!!)

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee!!

I know how you feel.I was on vacation from my regular day job this week except I had NO time at all to do anything or barely play with my kids and I felt so bad/guilty.I had a stacked luau cake to do,and a weeding cake (stacked presents) and got an unexpected order for a retirement party for 90 people only three days notice,so stupid me says SURE and then that totally messed up my baking/decorating scheduale for the other cakes !and at one point I was crying and thinking 'why the heck do I do this anyway!'needless to say I had to have my come help me make 9 batches of frosting and three fillings while I decorated (cause in the midst of that I had to bring my son to the doctor and babysit!),so she left at midnight and I was up a few nights this week till past 3am once till 4am and then gotta finish the little things in the morning and have no time to get my kids lunch,so my comes to take them to mcdonalds!!!!!!!so today we are going to the ocean and I have to go shopping for a wedding cake due on friday and a birthday teapot for the weekend!and housework...you can forget that I have not figured out how to handle the exhuastion yet as well,but I feel for you since you you seem busier than I !!!! thank goodness for good husbands huh,mines alwys telling me when to sit or eat and need to break,he's a good help

Sounds like you need to make a choice. Either quit your day job and just do cakes (I'd only do this is you were "legal") or know your limits and learn to say "No" when you've got all the business you know you can handle. Neither you nor your family deserves what you've been putting yourself through.

I'm right in there with all of you....well close...yet not close....I work a third shift job at a commerical cookie factory....have no kids thankfully....I try to sleep during the day, but by the time fall asleep and then my husband gets home from his first shift job I feel like I didn't get any sleep at all. So I leisurely get up out of bed enough to get a shower, make dinner only to lay back down and try to get in a couple hours of rest before I start the process all over again. I hate looking at cookies, but wish I could make my own (which taste way better and after I watch what some people do..I don't want to eat theirs anyway) and I looooovvvveeee cake decorating and would like to start working from home making cakes and work my way up to a real full fledged business...but it seems as if I have NOOOO time. I forget important things and let the dishes pile up and the vaccum sit idle just so I can try to get some rest let alone try to bake a cake or start up a business. Everyone at work has tried some of my cakes and say that they taste ooohhh sooo good and want more...but my body just won't do it.....Can anybody give hints or suggestions as what to do??? Keep in mind that I usually work 6 days a week and will be starting to work 7 days a week in September for the Christmas cookie rush all the way up until December....AHHHH!!! I want to bake cakes and make a business...sniff sniff....

I'm a SAHM and I have to admit that right now there is nothing I would put before my kids. I love the cake decorating and all, but my kids have to come first. I have two nine year olds and a 6 year old and they can and do entertain themselves, but I have to be able to stop what I am doing and tend to their needs, so I can't do the cakes full time. Maybe whe4n they get a little older I can accept larger and more orders, but not right now.

One of these days I would like to quit my full time job, but I am not making enough on the business to quit. I am going to start just saying No, I guess...but I hate turning away business!! I don't want to get a rep that I am too busy to take orders and not being to go full time.

But I am glad to hear I am not alone! Luckilly, all my kids are grown and out of the house..I agree, kids come first! Guess that is why I never did this when my kids were younger!!

Off to bake even more cakes!!!

Cakes are my full time job now, along with nursing school, so I've had plenty of those long days and nights on my feet. There have been times when it's 2:00 in the morning, and I'm nowhere near done with cakes, and I just stand in the kitchen and feel so helpless/hopeless from exhaustion, and I feel like I will never get done. But, I always do, and things do get better. I think you do have to say no sometimes, though (ya right, easier said than done). I have just in the last year started declining orders every once in a while. You can only do so much, and you can only spread yourself so thin (no pun intended). It's awful saying no to someone who wants to order a cake, but I have gotten to the point where if someone calls me the night before they need a cake, and that person knows darn well that I am an in-home bakery and not a commercial bakery and that I don't have cakes just laying around waiting to be ordered, I don't feel as bad saying no. I think that it is a great idea for you to take a little time off for some R&R and no cake orders ... you deserve a break. Life will go on for those people who want cakes during your break, but have to get them somewhere else. They'll come back to you, because you know that no matter where they order that cake from, it will be nowhere near as good as yours. Hang in there. We all know what you're going through.

I know how you feel. Except I was having a hard time saying no to work. I was working 80-90+ hrs a week and trying to spend time with my BF and my family (thankfully No kids here either) I was trying to do it all and my body was telling me no, but I wasn't listening.

Well It took me falling asleep at the wheel of my car (going about 70 MPH on a highway ) and rolling 360 degrees in a ditch for me to get the wake up call.

It is hard, but I have to remember saying no is for me and I have to take care of myself before I can take care of others.

Admitting I don't have to do it all was hard, and still is.

I know it is hard, but just tell your customers that in order to allow time with your family, they need to request a cake from you as soon as they can so you can get it on your schedule and make it for them. I think anyone that you would want to do business with would understand.

Is there someone else you know that decorates that you would be able to refer them to if you are not able to fulfill their order? After taking classes there is someone I know in my area that I would feel comfortable sending orders to if I wasn't able to help them.

I know it isn't easy, but sometimes the things we have to do aren't easy.

I hope it gets better... and listen to your DH, he is looking out for you. Even if you just stop for 1/2 hr and eat dinner with him or watch a TV show or just talk, at least it is a little bit of a break.

after reading all of your comments,I feel like I need too clear something up.....my CAKES DO NOT come before MY CHILDREN and I want to make that clear.I have an 11yr old and a 7 yr old boy who can entertain themselves but do require an aweful lot of my attention...therefor my orders,aside from mixing batter(i can walk away from my kitchen aid),and the actuall baking,are done AFTER my boys are in bed for the night.I Do NOT decorate during the day when they need my attention.I said yes to ahuge retirement cake with 3 days notice,while also needing the wedding one for the day after,because i need the money.my husband works 2 full time jobs and I work a part time 5-10pm 5 nights a week plus teach cake decorating (WMI)@ michaels crafts one night a week and take cake orders and we are still in financial trouble, so therefor I feel like I have to say yes to all these orders for the money.I do think everyone is correct about saying no and limiting how many orders per week to handle comfortably is a wise idea and I will try do that because the exhaustion is to much.my 3 and 4am nights are because I don't want to put the boys last,they come first.my attention goes to my boys during the day and my cakes at night sorry I had to vent after all these comments