Here I am, stuffed to the gills on abfab food and B&B 101, thanks to Pam Rudolph of Carriage Lane B&B, Peterborough. Not the only things I'm trying to digest though, I've also got a head full of B&B data that I've got to chew through and absorb.
I've had 3 breakfasts today - at brekkie time, late lunch and late supper, because Pam has thoughtfully screwed up meal schedules for her and her inappropriately funny, adorable husband Ben, to give me exposure to her tried and true breakfast recipes for the time I'm spending here, learning at her table.
Pam runs an extremely professionally delivered B&B academy, giving newbies like me a solid footing, practical advice and proven direction, based on her more than a decade experience in bed and breakfasting. A career that, while maintaining a upper-tier B&B, has expanded beyond, as she put it, "bed & heads", to culinary classes, hosting events, concierging visiting educationals and other professionals and delivery courses in starting a bed and breakfast.
Friday, I left Wheatley and drove along Hwy 3, with a colourful honour guard of changing motorcycles - it was Friday 13th, the traditional excuse for bikers of all bikes and backgrounds to gather at Port Dover - from hogs to scooters... although even if I was an 89 year old female virgin nun, I would not show gripping a scooter at Port Dover..... the laughing would be unbearable even if I still did have my hearing.
I stopped at Courtland, visited Saffire Blue, a small family business, a warehouse for toiletries - shampoos, conditioners, essential oils, etc. I bought these three things, plus shower gel, facial cream and cleanser, and 8 oz plastic bottles and pump caps. I'll be making my house blend of bath products, with a blend of lavender, clary sage and rosemary essential oils. I've bought clear labels and will label the bottles accordingly and fill and refill them for guest use. The skin care products, I've bought for myself.
Next, a north turn onto Hwy 59, where I stopped at a nameless town because I saw the magic words - "Liquidation". Grabs my brakes everytime! I ended up buying a new mini garden hoe, a small I'm-on-my-knees rake and a bottom-loading black and stainless steel water cooler.... and a skirt. Unbelievably, in this hole-in-the-wall liquidation warehouse, was a teeny boutique of lovely cotton skirts, shirts and tees. How serendipitious, eh?
Driving then up to merge with the rightfully detested Hwy 401, it took me three lifetimes of bad karma to get through Toronto... what a bumper-to-bumper hellhole that stretch is! After spasming through that 1.5 hour stretch, Peterborough wasn't far, and Ms GPS had me at Carriage Lane B&B nicely.
Starting last night, after an aromatic Indonesian rice and beef supper, we outlined the course goals, my starting point, the level of preparedness I'm currently at and then viewed pictures of our home, the rooms and the property.
Early this morning we began, as they say, in earnest. Pam is just a resource to be reckoned with. I fired off questions and concerns and she's got all the answers. Leading me back to her well-prepared curriculum when I veered us off track, I was in the enviable position of being her only client this weekend, her only focus. We broke for a late lunch, worked again until 6 and then reconvened for a delicious breakfast/supper.
Pam and Ben are a wonderful couple, their professional lives multiple and varied, what with the bed and breakfast, her culinary career, his outside work (now retired) and their caring, selfless interest in fostering troubled children, setting aside the B&B at intervals when they see a child they can help.
We've done the majority of the curriculum by now and tomorrow will wind up the course with a few extra items and review. Pam supplies a certificate, hard copy assist materials, a tax receipt and a lifeline for assistance. With completion also comes a free year registration with BBCanada, the premier marketing/booking machine for Canadian bed and breakfasts. That's worth $100, taking the course price down to $350. Money well spent, I think. I have more confidence in my strengths and knowledge after this time with Pam.
Maybe a bit of return trip shopping........ home again, home again, jiggity-jig......
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Long time, no post...
.... because life is so freakin' busy! . I feel guilty about not posting all of April. I'll get a ton of text down, then add pictures in later. A few days before posting after a long drought (avoidance), the inner nag starts tapping my inner shoulder, then prodding my inner chest, then I get down to it.
But a few recent points of interest:
This has been the wettest spring/what spring?/cold, damp, miserable.... seems like the past few years we're a three season climate zone - prolonged, pissy winter/hot, all-too-short summer/really nice autumn. The lake has been wild for weeks on end, with rain nonstop. We've had another tree down, on the roadside lawn, just missing the house. The driveway - if there was an intergalactic market for mud, we could supply the multiverse - is a gloopy catch 22 - if we had a driveway, we wouldn't have any mud/we can't get a driveway until the mud is gone.
The zoning amendment went through! Huzzah! and Hooray! and thanks to the zoning gods. I went to the Council meeting on April 10th with the fabulous GGs for support (and 2 pitchers of sangria for extra fortification). We were next to last on the bill and were passed immediately. Now we can get our business licence - which I think I'll do tomorrow. This was our biggest - not obstacle - but biggest piss-off, I guess, in the B&B journey. Having B&B homes near us that didn't have to pay off the local government with an expensive zoning amendment was - expensively irrating. But - it's done.
.... assembled our first tax return data that included B&B financials. We've kept the majority of receipts, invoices, etc., especially the big tickets - boiler, insulation, zoning applications, and such. What we've spent on this thing is eye-wideningly, head-shakingly there in black & white. As there was no actual B&Bing going on in 2010, this is ground work for next year, our accountant Al tells us. This summer we'll be officially open in a limited capacity, so next year's tax return will hopefully be a bigger, better bang for those bucks.
.... this weekend, travelling to Peterborough to study B&B academy - at Carriage Lane B&B. The curriculum includes professional hosting, culinary, housekeeping, promoting, finances... the compleat angle. I'm going solo, Kee's working and actually, doesn't think a high percentage of the schedule relates to what he'll be doing - there's no tiling, wiring, plumbing or cement work on the timetable. I'm really looking forward to this - having successful experts show me how they perfected a wheel I just can barely recognize as wheel-shaped.
This has, as I've said, been a completely crap spring. But now the lake is actually turning blue - instead of muddy grey-brown. The sun is out a bit more - I hung laundry on the line on Sunday. It reminds me what we fell in love with and why we bought this place - in the first place.
All those hundreds of bulbs I planted in the fall - I'm getting results: hyacinth (hyacinthi?) of all colours and sizes, blue bells, white phlox and tulips in cream, burgundy and blues and lots of white, sky and dark blue muscari. What I thought - and looked in the pictures - were white paperwhites and something else - are actually yellow. I don't like any yellow flowers. Ninety-five percent of the stuff I planted was white or blue, with purples making up the remainder. Lots more are upcoming. I'll have to check my maps to see what was planted where... finding out what it is I'm looking at or what isn't where it should be coming up at.
D gave me a five foot tulip tree for Mother's Day, it's absolutely beautiful and very, very sturdy. He planted it in the roadside yard and it looks great. On Sunday I enlarged the roadside corner garden, planting two white lilacs, four rhododendrons, and some other white and purple flowers. I added some hollyhock and morning glory seeds up close to the fences. That garden will be all white and purple.
I'm going to kill a rabbit. A mangy grey rabbit has been eating my flower shoots - the crocus have been comletely nibbled to a half inch of the ground. This thing is so stunned I got within two feet of it. I've tried human hair, cat litter and mothballs. I think next I'll try a bb gun... or someone with a rabbit-killing firearm of some sort. I've never killed, even hurt an animal, but this is beyond personal - it's financial.
Went to another auction with my sister on Saturday. Bought a useless fan [crap], a four piece setting of handpainted dishes [pale green with white dot flowers - dinner and salad plates, fruit and soup bowls and a platter], three really nice fadey, white framed watercolours of birds and two really lovely, deep-hued watercolours of water birds, an art deco wooden magazine rack and a trim little art deco table, both of which I'll clean up, restain and use in the blue bedroom. I'm getting very picky and less frenetic with my bid card.... things are getting filled up.
Bought a fan for the sunroom - bit of an e-purchase drama there.... I searched through the net, found this lovely wall mount "Old Havana" fan: heavy black ornate base with a black and bronzish fan unit. Very period, very 30s looking. One site had it priced several hundred cheaper than others.... and after checking very carefully, I bought that one. And by very carefully, I mean - as much as I compared that one site against the more expensive sites, I could find no difference in the fan, while at the same time being extremely not-careful at all. What was delivered, what I bought - was the base - only the base. The fan unit holder. Not the fan. No fan.
Me and Mr Liu had an extremely close e-relationship for the next few days, ending with me spending three hundred plus more to acquire the remainder of the picture of the lovely Old Havana fan that I thought I had already bought. Whatthe? Well, it's up, it's gorgeous and I'm learning to move on from these type of things..... as these type of things do pop up.
I am a mad breadmaker right now. I recently bought a bread magazine and one of the recipes was the dutch oven no-knead method. So far I've made about 10 loaves - it's amazing! The bread looks like every beautiful artisanal loaf you ever did see. Tonight, before I did the final 1 hour proof, I smeared four cloves of roasted garlic over the top, some Mediterranean herbs and some pepper, then folded the top and bottom, left and right sides over. Let it rise for another hour, then baked. It tastes fantastic.
This dutch oven method broke big about five/six years ago and has fan sites galore. All you need is flour, salt, yeast, warm water, a heavy cast iron dutch and time. The results are beautiful, professional-looking and delicious.
But a few recent points of interest:
This has been the wettest spring/what spring?/cold, damp, miserable.... seems like the past few years we're a three season climate zone - prolonged, pissy winter/hot, all-too-short summer/really nice autumn. The lake has been wild for weeks on end, with rain nonstop. We've had another tree down, on the roadside lawn, just missing the house. The driveway - if there was an intergalactic market for mud, we could supply the multiverse - is a gloopy catch 22 - if we had a driveway, we wouldn't have any mud/we can't get a driveway until the mud is gone.
The zoning amendment went through! Huzzah! and Hooray! and thanks to the zoning gods. I went to the Council meeting on April 10th with the fabulous GGs for support (and 2 pitchers of sangria for extra fortification). We were next to last on the bill and were passed immediately. Now we can get our business licence - which I think I'll do tomorrow. This was our biggest - not obstacle - but biggest piss-off, I guess, in the B&B journey. Having B&B homes near us that didn't have to pay off the local government with an expensive zoning amendment was - expensively irrating. But - it's done.
.... assembled our first tax return data that included B&B financials. We've kept the majority of receipts, invoices, etc., especially the big tickets - boiler, insulation, zoning applications, and such. What we've spent on this thing is eye-wideningly, head-shakingly there in black & white. As there was no actual B&Bing going on in 2010, this is ground work for next year, our accountant Al tells us. This summer we'll be officially open in a limited capacity, so next year's tax return will hopefully be a bigger, better bang for those bucks.
.... this weekend, travelling to Peterborough to study B&B academy - at Carriage Lane B&B. The curriculum includes professional hosting, culinary, housekeeping, promoting, finances... the compleat angle. I'm going solo, Kee's working and actually, doesn't think a high percentage of the schedule relates to what he'll be doing - there's no tiling, wiring, plumbing or cement work on the timetable. I'm really looking forward to this - having successful experts show me how they perfected a wheel I just can barely recognize as wheel-shaped.
This has, as I've said, been a completely crap spring. But now the lake is actually turning blue - instead of muddy grey-brown. The sun is out a bit more - I hung laundry on the line on Sunday. It reminds me what we fell in love with and why we bought this place - in the first place.
All those hundreds of bulbs I planted in the fall - I'm getting results: hyacinth (hyacinthi?) of all colours and sizes, blue bells, white phlox and tulips in cream, burgundy and blues and lots of white, sky and dark blue muscari. What I thought - and looked in the pictures - were white paperwhites and something else - are actually yellow. I don't like any yellow flowers. Ninety-five percent of the stuff I planted was white or blue, with purples making up the remainder. Lots more are upcoming. I'll have to check my maps to see what was planted where... finding out what it is I'm looking at or what isn't where it should be coming up at.
D gave me a five foot tulip tree for Mother's Day, it's absolutely beautiful and very, very sturdy. He planted it in the roadside yard and it looks great. On Sunday I enlarged the roadside corner garden, planting two white lilacs, four rhododendrons, and some other white and purple flowers. I added some hollyhock and morning glory seeds up close to the fences. That garden will be all white and purple.
I'm going to kill a rabbit. A mangy grey rabbit has been eating my flower shoots - the crocus have been comletely nibbled to a half inch of the ground. This thing is so stunned I got within two feet of it. I've tried human hair, cat litter and mothballs. I think next I'll try a bb gun... or someone with a rabbit-killing firearm of some sort. I've never killed, even hurt an animal, but this is beyond personal - it's financial.
Went to another auction with my sister on Saturday. Bought a useless fan [crap], a four piece setting of handpainted dishes [pale green with white dot flowers - dinner and salad plates, fruit and soup bowls and a platter], three really nice fadey, white framed watercolours of birds and two really lovely, deep-hued watercolours of water birds, an art deco wooden magazine rack and a trim little art deco table, both of which I'll clean up, restain and use in the blue bedroom. I'm getting very picky and less frenetic with my bid card.... things are getting filled up.
Bought a fan for the sunroom - bit of an e-purchase drama there.... I searched through the net, found this lovely wall mount "Old Havana" fan: heavy black ornate base with a black and bronzish fan unit. Very period, very 30s looking. One site had it priced several hundred cheaper than others.... and after checking very carefully, I bought that one. And by very carefully, I mean - as much as I compared that one site against the more expensive sites, I could find no difference in the fan, while at the same time being extremely not-careful at all. What was delivered, what I bought - was the base - only the base. The fan unit holder. Not the fan. No fan.Me and Mr Liu had an extremely close e-relationship for the next few days, ending with me spending three hundred plus more to acquire the remainder of the picture of the lovely Old Havana fan that I thought I had already bought. Whatthe? Well, it's up, it's gorgeous and I'm learning to move on from these type of things..... as these type of things do pop up.
I am a mad breadmaker right now. I recently bought a bread magazine and one of the recipes was the dutch oven no-knead method. So far I've made about 10 loaves - it's amazing! The bread looks like every beautiful artisanal loaf you ever did see. Tonight, before I did the final 1 hour proof, I smeared four cloves of roasted garlic over the top, some Mediterranean herbs and some pepper, then folded the top and bottom, left and right sides over. Let it rise for another hour, then baked. It tastes fantastic.
This dutch oven method broke big about five/six years ago and has fan sites galore. All you need is flour, salt, yeast, warm water, a heavy cast iron dutch and time. The results are beautiful, professional-looking and delicious.
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