Category Archives: CLT Eats

I loved #TypeAcon even if I’m not a “blogger”. Or Type A.

courtesy of Southern Spark

I’m a storyteller, NOT a writer. I come on my little “blog” to post occasional kid funnies and quirks, then forget about it for months at a time. Of course when you’re actually with me, I never shut up. From now on I’m going to refer to this as my FLOG. As in: Fake blog. (I know so many perverts, seriously.)

I’ve never gone to one of these conferences, but I will tell you this-I never want to NOT go to one again. These chicks can party. AND they’re smart. Also, informative. But partying is #1, don’t be fooled.

First and foremost I have to do thank yous. Thank you to the amazing, sweet and wonderful Lisa Frame, my “Daily Pinch,” for hooking me up with Kelby Carr.  These two fabulously, generous women got me two major gigs at this conference. One with Carbonite  who put one of our cupcakes in 520 swagbags….and also with Ubisoft - the group responsible for making million of gamers and techies happy (that’s known as wii games in my house) for the release of their Just Dance 4 “The 80s” party.

I went to this conference with some of my biz-zy hobags, as we are all trying to find our niche being relevant, and partying as we do so. Tricia our southern, travelin’, food bloggin’ spark writer, the Emmy award winning (no joke) turned massage therapist Susan, and Super bombshell ponysheller Allison.

We were SO behaved that Friday morning, attending those awesome sessions, taking notes, live tweeting….and then there was the highlight of the afternoon. Everyone has that favorite moment, and this was mine.

Friday at 8am Tricia (TPO) is going on and on about the bloggers she can’t wait to see and meet and chat and …blah blah blah. Susan and I? Deer in headlights. Out of NOWHERE, we see a speeding wheelchair careening towards us, and I recognize the driver but am unable to place her. Tricia leaped behind a wall, grabs us, and gasps: “Do y’all knoooooooooooow Who That Is?!?!” This is followed by gasps, oooohs, aaaaaahs…..

It’s Anissa Mayhew. Now in all honesty, I’ve been around a few comedians, or people who WANT to be comedians. It’s scary, like Russian Roulette for the ego. So we ALL hid.

She went whizzing past and I swear to God, TPO did not shut up about her all morning. Or at lunch. Because immediately after lunch, she would be leading the session on humor. I can be super long winded about shit, so YOU can go learn about Anissa with all of the links I just linky loo’d through this paragraph. Or google her. But the bottom line was this, I’m about to meet TPO’s “NEO a la Matrix.” I see Anissa is sitting alone in the room preparing (or screwing around on twitter) and plopped my ass next to her. Hand to God she says, “it’s about time someone fucking showed up, I thought I’d be stuck in here talking to myself!”

I now love this woman. The session was amazing, I learned a lot. As a matter of a fact, she learned from me as well- she now knows that Food Network paid for my boob job. (as does everyone else at Type A, but whatever). I also had the pleasure of meeting Tracy whom should have her own humor session next year, too. The session was like being at home for me (if home was in an asylum).

Actually, our hotel room was asylum-like with 80s themed snacks, booze, music blasting, hair crimpers and Susan giving massages on the bed. No, I’m serious.

this is how we do it.

We get a text from Ms. Lisa “Pinch” Frame informing us we are to use kid gloves caring for her “Precious”….her precious being Kadi Prescott ~Social Media Mom extraordinaire. She’s was also on SuperNanny. It’s kind of fun bonding with someone else about reality tv who gets it (and can find humor in it). But honestly, it was much more fun doing tequila shots and annoying the shit out of our server. (we left a good tip, I promise!)

sangria, tequila, mojitos oh my @ Malabar

we were also joined by two totally adorable ladies, birthday girl Fawn and new-ish mom Jessie -I hope we were not horrendously offensive ALL of the time, because those are the nice girls we don’t like to ruin.

Blah blah blah- headed back to the conference is when I saw him, my Cupcake Wars nemesis.

Leave it to Charlotte to have a parent writing conference and comic book conference at the same time for all of us who will never grow up.

Sweatin’ to The Stache-Tastic Oldies.

Pictures say it better than my crappy writing so here:

Kadi&I. Screw Magnum.

Bernie, the weekend “before”

The kick ass photo booth:

 

an 80s prom queen named Cheryl and of course- the cupcakes! Thank you for this Ubisoft gig, Lisa Frame! I LOVE this picture Leticia took (and I thank you too! xo)

and with that, Day 1 was complete. I have lots and lots of pictures I could post of Tricia sleeping with her armpit wrapped around my head, and Susan clutching her iphone for dear life while she slept, but I will refrain for now. The day 2 sessions were great even with a hangover, and yes I phoned it in a bit (thank god for Twitter) so I could stuff my face at Mert’s (twice!) . Of course, a day of learning must be rewarded with a night filled with eating and drinking, and this was going to be my first visit to Harvest Moon Grille. I’ve done a few events where we were both present, but this time I was a guest (use that term loosely)!

Helloooooooo, deliciousness. But a party isn’t a party until you make the restaurant staff act as weird as you. Wax lips in my purse= theme of our evening. Because, why not.

sober, anyone?

Not for long….

this wax is organic and locally made, right?

back at the hotel, we bumped into Anissa…..

smooches!

https://twitter.com/AnissaMayhew/status/216726549142044672/photo/1

heehee this one in the link is better ;)

And then came Sunday. I have no idea at this point. Sessions, goodbyes, MAC lips stick and Black Finn.

 

(poor Lisa!) who captured my near arrest by a rent-a-cop….

and a glass rainstorm.

http://www.wcnc.com/news/neighborhood-news/Police-Drunk-man-behind-uptown-fallen-glass-incident-160285355.html

Click the link and there’s the coverup New story…..I mini-interviewed for because, hello, I had just gotten out of my fountain bath and was still hiding from said rent-a-cop who was more upset with me in the fountain than the broken window shower.

So with that, we had a pretty swell time. Better than swell because guess what? I made enough dough (pun intended) to afford the next big thing in NYC—-

Next up is BLOGHER.

With MARTHA.

THE MARTHA.

I need to go hide now.

 

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We got Sprinkled at Cupcrazed

Larry Sprinkle-d!

Our @wcnc morning weatherman does a hilarious morning segment called “Larry’s Look” and he came to sprinkle up cupcakes! I had lost my voice completely, so I had Deb do the work.

http://www.wcnc.com/on-tv/Larrys-Look—142305835.html

 

(I think Deb has a crush…she couldn’t keep her hands off him!)

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Cupcakes, Cupcrazed, Charlotte, & Creative Loafing


The link:

http://clclt.com/charlotte/meet-the-winner-of-food-networks-cupcake-wars-cupcrazeds-heather-mcdonnell/Content?oid=2580612

I was blown away to see a feature with my mug on it in my favorite local magazine, Creative Loafing.

She did an awesome write up (thank you, Trisha Childress!!!) on all of the local Charlotte cupcake shops. Sometimes I feel lucky to get included, since my zip code is Fort Mill, South Carolina 5 miles away from the big city. But Charlotte has been our home for 11 years so I’m grateful to be included with the other great businesses, and we have some crazy customers who drive over the border for cake, even. ;)

Here is the official article on all OF THE CHARLOTTE SHOPS.

And let it be known I have nothing but admiration and respect for all of the “competition”. I know how much work (and stress) goes in to this job, SERIOUSLY. There are enough customers for everyone to be successful. Who the hell doesn’t like cake?

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A moment of me, and Yelpo de Mayo. Ole’

I love yelp. Yelp is this great site/app that helps you find things in your town or when you’re traveling. I started using it a while ago, but once I opened my business I started to sweat over it. Let’s be honest, customer feedback use to be a box and an anonymous note about your biz, pre-technology “good old days.” Now we deal with daily pros and cons– not just from professional food writers, but from people who pretend to be writers but might just be chronic whiners, and then there’s the problem with fake accounts by clowns who just want to publicly attack you.

Jealousy is not awesome. But one thing I know as a yelp fan–those reviews are not even acknowledged by real users. I appreciate constructive criticism. You think our cupcakes are great, wonderful, the best, amazing, earth shattering….awesome! If you get one that is small, dry, tasteless, or ugly well guess what? Getting online and giving me constructive criticism isn’t going to kill me or hurt my feelings. A great thing about yelp is that I can apologize when I’ve done someone wrong, I can offer a refund, and I can be appreciative that a customer gave me their business in the first place. I like to fix REAL problems and make things better.

What I can’t deal with would be the mean, nasty people out there that want to be hurtful. I haven’t done a damn thing to anyone, so when word on the street is that there are locals shit talking me, well I can’t help but wonder WHY. Why do you want to play that game?This is my business, this is my life. The store is something I work at, heart and soul. I love what I do. I leave my home and my kids and I gamble on an idea EVERYDAY. Why would someone think it’s okay to stalk me around the Internet slandering me whenever they can? Get a life, find something to do with your time that is unrelated to hating on me, because you don’t even know me. I don’t have enough time to respond to stupidity, because when I’m not at work I am with my family. So grow up. I don’t have time to deal with garbage. I would never, ever spend one moment publicly attacking a competitor. You know why? Because it’s CAKE. It’s not the amazing race, it’s CAKE. Everyone eats CAKE. I’m not threatened by someone else’s CAKE. I eat cake, love cake, and don’t have time for petty shit and most of all wouldn’t want to hurt someone else’s business when I know what it takes to jump off a bridge into a sea called business ownership. It’s HARD. Everyday is hard, life is too short so quit being negative.

That said. Back to what’s important, and that was YELP.

Yelp is totally awesome, and I was pumped when I was asked to be a vendor at the 1st Yelpo De Mayo in Uptown Charlotte. I met incredibly awesome people (real foodies, not bs’ers!) and ate and drank a boatload of awesome (and free!) treats. It was a blast. I want to share the pictures, because they’re fab.

Also, thanks to everyone at the shop that busted their ass that weekend (Deb, Margaret, Amy, Tara, Taylor, Shayla, Ali, Hailee, and my madre) between Yelp (yay success) and the Strawberry Festival (not so much) we were bat shit crazy in that kitchen for days. Okay, shutting up.

setting up, me and some hot chicks-


   

  

600 minis and 300 cookies- GONE in under 3 hrs. My favorite part- we heard a lot of this.

“I’m not really a sweets eater, but I’ll try it….”

10 minutes later. “maybe I’ll try another flavor”

5 minutes later, “well now I need to try the last one.”

Uh huh.

Thanks for having us, Yelp!

For locals, Yelp is on FB

http://www.facebook.com/#!/yelpcharlotte

pro pics

http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.201132976591006.42651.148715675166070

and of course, Yelp! http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelpo-de-mayo-open-party-charlotte

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