For those of you who don’t know — and by that I mean all of you except for my first two followers (thanks KM and AC!) — I am in the Culinary Arts Entrepreneurship program at my school of choice here in Maryland. This mean that half of my classes are in cooking and baking, and half of my classes are business classes geared towards those of an entrepreneurial ilk. I’m also taking Italian language classes, but that is neither here nor there. These entrepreneurial classes are designed to help prepare people who want to start businesses, i.e. entrepreneurs, focus on their ideas and prepare their business plans. This semester I am in the Sales and Marketing portion of the program. We have been working on developing our marketing plans (target market, demographics, value proposition, etc.) and tomorrow we have our fake Trade Show where some faculty, some members of the local business community, and some unfortunate students who need to earn some Extra Credit points will come and check us out. I have been, as I am wont to do, taking this very seriously and have been pulling rabbits out of my hat for the last few weeks trying to pull together as if the business that has been in my head for the past ten years was actually getting ready to launch. So I needed a logo, a tagline, and marketing materials, pronto. Of these skills I have none.

Fortunately, what I do have is a friend,  who also happens to be a cracker jack graphic designer, the illustrious Ms. C.N., within driving distance of me. So, for the price of the Harbor Tunnel toll and some brownies that were basically just chocolate bits held together by butter, this Jane of All Trades cranked out, in short order, a tri-fold color brochure-cum-mailer-cum-menu, a killer postcard, and about 300 photographs of me in my chef’s coat to get that one, useable image. Oh, and she threw in a business card image, too. Done, done, and done.

The trade show is tomorrow, bean pie and olive oil brownies for sampling are baking, and business cards are ready to be picked up on the way to the show. Happy Owl Baking is born.