some of you may already know, but i am making a huge life change this year. i am opening my own BAKERY! it will be located in idyllic downtown windsor, connecticut and will go by the name ‘get baked’! i have been pretty swamped in cleaning / painting / paperwork / other randomness to get this ball fully rolling, and i thought i would share a few of the prep photos with you. when everything is all finished i’ll post some full before / after photos as well. so excuse the mess in all these pics, we are a work in progress!

i am very blessed with a supportive family and group of friends who have been helping in every waking moment it seems. whether it is at the bakery or at home, or keeping me (semi) sane through this whole process. thank you one and all for your major contributions to ‘get baked’ and to ‘team emily’.

the bakery is set inside of a historic building that once housed such things as: a gold medal flour packing plant, a burlesque house, and even a car dealership. it’s new life right now is an antique auction house that has auctions once every three weeks (there’s SO much cool stuff being auctioned, if you’re around come on down for the auction on 24 january).

of course this does NOT mean i’m going to stop taking photos, or blogging, or knitting…it just means that i’ll be doing more baking and now you can come taste all the things i’m posting about all the time – yay!!!

words can’t say enough how lucky i am to have such a supportive group of folks in my life. thank you, thank you, thank you all!

katrina came in from ohio for a few weeks to help out!

painting the half wall

the reading nook, before

window cut through to the kitchen

service area with the wall patching by kevin

kevin painting the reading nook

kat hard at work on the half wall

starting on the service area

done with the dining area!

loving the exposed brick!

painting help from a pro

careful attention to detail....that is what i require.

kat takes a break to knit while paint dries

brightening up the cabinet doors

and the kitchen door

dad dresses up the window

woohoo!

looking to the kitchen

ahhh fancy cabinets

a few weeks ago i was lucky enough to wander through bushnell park in hartford and take some photos of sweet jasiah and her fantastic mother, jasmin. jasiah has an imagination that rivals walt disney, and the entire time we were in the park she was giving me a tour and telling me all the things that she and her family built. it was amazingly awesome, and she is so much fun to be around!

as hard as it was, i narrowed down the insane amount of photos that i took to just my top picks for the day. I have to say, this was the hardest part of the entire shoot!

sweet baby nolan was born in early october, on my boyfriend’s birthday so that’s a good sign! i was lucky to be able to take some photos of him when he was just over 2 weeks old. his father is my brother’s friend from childhood and his mother is one of the craftiest people i know. check out the awesome headboard and ‘nolan sign’ she made and we featured in some of the photos! nolan is a very lucky guy to have such awesome parents, and i had a blast taking photos of him.

as many of you may have heard, we just got walloped in new england by a nor’easter. in october. it even had an official winter storm name, alfred. according to the cl&p website 100% of windsor is still out of power and we should expect to be out of power for up to 2 weeks. yikes. we have a generator going for now, but we’re really only running the fridge and a few lights. i’m running the laptop off my battery for now. it seriously looks like a war zone, or as if a tornado went through. there are downed wires everywhere and branches leaning on power lines. we drove through one intersection today that had not even a shred of there being a stoplight there – it was over off the side of the road in the trees. not even the wires holding it up originally could be seen anywhere. we went looking for gas this afternoon for the generator and after waiting in line twice to get up and find out the station had run out, we finally found a place. i was able to have a very kind gentleman fill my gas can for me on his credit card and i paid him cash so we didn’t have to wait in line. i also have to give a huge shout out to the new york times delivery guy who actually showed up with our paper today. we really appreciated having something new to read! anywho, no more chatter, i’ll just start showing you the devastation that is surrounding us.

looking down from the 2nd floor

looking down from the 2nd floor

the tree limbs fell mostly all around the cars

poor mulberry tree

i did say almost, right? dale's jeep got dinged.

tree limbs in the side yard, missed the sunroom thankfully

aw snap

mulberry tree

back yard

back fence

this one may not make it

side yard

fall or winter?

this branch is right on the power line to our house

dale's poor jeep

neighbor's house

neighbor's house

neighbor's house

neighbor's house

neighbor's house

on 27 august i departed antarctica. i was lucky that my flight wasn’t delayed. the flight from 23rd was delayed until the 27th and then we all left together on the same flight. there was speculation all day that if we didn’t get out on our planned day that we wouldn’t get out for another few days (this would turn out to be true as there were more delays heading south after our flight) but there were 200 or so people blocked up in christchurch and they were trying to move them down to the ice so that they weren’t in chirstchurch any longer than they absolutely had to be.

as always, it is bittersweet leaving. though this time i was more excited than ever to go. i miss being there at winfly, i love that time of year for the new energy that the new folks bring in, it is fun meeting some new people and seeing old friends, and the weather is gorgeous (i love the nacreous clouds). however i’m excited to go home and have some shred of summer weather left, maybe get some kayaking and camping in. also i was wicked excited to go to san francisco for a few days and thaw out (photos from that are coming soon!).

this is the genius fire chief stuck because he tried to drive on an ungroomed road.

saying goodbyes

keri was just going north for a little dental work, lucky!

kelli was helping out the fire crew

jonathan drove a shuttle out

sun!!!

brett on the plane

sunset from the plane

sunset from the plane