Self employment and cake

Lets deal with the cake first shall we? My twitter friends will know that I was making cakes last weekend for my brother's birthday party. Yes he was 32 and he wanted a proper birthday party buffet like you have when your a child! I have to say it was always my favourite food. Birthdays were great with cocktail sausages, sausage roles quiche etc. My Granny also used to make us a fantastic buffet lunch when ever we went to visit with pork pies, scotch eggs, quiche, the best salad loads of fresh water cress, big ripe tomatoes and always loads of cakes of course. I remember one year for my brother's birthday my Mum made a dinosaur cake resplendent with green butter icing.

So for my brother's birthday I made fudge muffins decorated in pink icing and smarties pictured below. The gorgeous cheese cake above was made by the English Cheesecake Co who I can heartily recommend! The biscuit base was just perfect! My brother's had little Crunchy style chocolate and honeycomb pieces in it and on top of it. Personally I like the look of the blackberry cheesecake the English Cheese Cake Co do!

I also thought it was about time I blogged about being self employed. It's 3 month today since I left my permanent job at the NMC. Its funny the 3 months have flown by but it also seems like a life time ago that I was having my leaving drinks in Regents Street.

I certainly didn't make things easy for myself moving house 2 days later and then going through the 6 weeks of navigation through the selling a flat process.

Work wise I have been lucky. I only ever intended to work part time and baring that in mind I have been very fortunate with the contracts i have won. I have only so far applied for one thing that I didn't get and that was a public appointment rather than a contract as such.

I've carried out two training sessions which both went well, did some policy and consultation work for my old employer and as you know, from me plugging it on my blog, I'm organising and co presenting a seminar on disability and the equality act in September. There are a couple of other things in the pipe line too.

So my work so far has been varied and really interesting. I still have moments of panic when I think I should apply for a "proper job" so I have more security. I still haven't got used to the erratic nature of being paid as a freelancer. Because I didn't plan to do this as such I didn't have a nice cushion of savings or anything like that to see me through the barren periods. My long suffering boyfriend Jason has been wonderful in helping me. I have had to make changes though. Gone for now are my arbitrary beauty treatments. I'm doing them myself now at home. (apart from pedicures which due to my lack of eyesight I really cant manage so I still get my pedicure as a little slice of luxury!)

The thing that I am finding most difficult is the lack of routine. There is no way that I want to go back to commuting every day! Those of you who do that hard slog on public transport or in your cars will not have a jot of sympathy for me lounging about in my pjs at 11AM. But seriously I know that our bodies like routines even if my mind rebells against it I do need a routine and I haven't as yet found one.

I'm sleeping late, eating late and generally not keeping to any kind of routine. Some times I work in the morning's. sometimes afternoons and sometimes all day or not at all, if I don't need to. I guess I should really stop worrying about it as long as I'm getting the work done and I'm happy. I just wondered how others who work from home or are self employed deal with it? I'd love to know.

So on the whole I think doing freelance work is great! I'd also like to say thank you to everyone who has been so supportive with my decision and with my work :-)