5 Random Things I Did This Weekend

Woah, this was a crazy busy weekend for us.  Pretty close to about as jam-packed as I think we can make things fit.  Here’s the low-down (and this is skipping all sorts of stuff like a company that came and visited with a new watch, and much more slated for later this week).

1) The DCR Open House!

This weekend I held the ‘grand opening’ of the new DCR ‘space’.  I haven’t quite decided what I’ll call it yet.  It’s technically part of a new location for the Cupcake shop, but underground.  Right now, we just call it the ‘Studio’, since, the official name of The Girl’s section is “The Cake Studio by Bertie’s”.

You’ll remember back about a month ago I made the small announcement of a Paris party/gathering, and I believe over the course of the night we had about 20-25 different folks drop by, which is awesome!  Tons of friendly faces – a few I’ve met before, but many I hadn’t yet met.  Huge thanks to everyone for swinging by!

Most of the time folks gathered upstairs, where we had a bit of food and wine available.  When I went to pickup baguettes, the boulanger asked if I was operating a restaurant (there are far more baguettes, cheese and wine in the back out of view!).  Plus, as you can see below, the CupCakery supplied both a cake as well as cupcake mini’s.

And in the background there you see a petite Christmas tree, adorned with a variety of sports technology items.

I can’t take full credit for the idea.  A reader jokingly mentioned such a concept last week in a tweet, and I realized it was perfectly suited for the open house.  The Girl then went to work putting it all together, it looks great!

To top it off, Clever Training supplied a bunch of gifts as giveaways, including a few devices, t-shirts, and other items.

But wait…you wanted to see the DCR Cave that’s underground where all the real coolness is?  Well…for that, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s post.  But fear not, I’ve got tons of photos, a video walk through and the whole bit.  It’s gadget galore!  Just simply down these steps…

And, I’ll explain a bit more about the combined DCR/Bertie’s space, as well as show some of the construction that it took to get there from this past summer

2) Ran the Santa 10K Race!

Mixed in on our Sunday morning was the always awesome Santa 10K race.  Just us and a few thousand Santa’s.  But, you can read more about that in my full race report post.  In the meantime, here’s a teaser pic at this annual favorite of ours!

And if you want more Monday morning distractions, here’s the 2013 and 2012 race reports as well.

3) Ugly Sweater & Cookie Party

I suppose it’s probably worthwhile to turn back the clock a bit to Friday night, which is when we hosted our first event in the new space – for a bunch of our friends in Paris.  It started off with a cookie exchange of sorts with all the girls.

They had various Christmas movies up, like Home Alone, which was somewhat entertaining when passerbyers would stop to watch for a bit from outside the big windows.

Then a bit later the party moved venues a few blocks away to our living room for dinner, after all the guys had joined up.  The perfect Americana-Canadian Christmas party, albeit with pizza (but it was by our favorite pizza shop in the city, which we think is partially owned by an American), and boatloads of very American cookies.

4) Hosted another event at the Cake Studio

This weekend ended up being a bit of a test for the Cake Studio in terms of logistics.  While most sane people might plan a single test date, we went for the full on threesome.  Friday with the cookie party, Saturday with the DCR Open House, and then Sunday rounded things up with a pop-up show for a jewelry line.  There were of course cupcakes there from the CupCakery.

I don’t know a ton about the Stella & Dot line, but I hear it’s popular in the US, but they lack any stores in Europe.  So we at the Cake Studio were happy to host them for the afternoon so folks could come check it out.  Especially since there’s a lot of potential cross-over with expats and others interested in that line, with custom cakes and the like for parties.

Luckily, all three events went off without issue – so just really a few minor tweaks we’ll make to continue improving things (like more coat hanging space, didn’t think of that!).

5) Flew to South Africa

After rushing back to the Studio from the Santa run to ensure the jewelry event was getting set smoothly, it was straight away to the airport for me.  I’ve got a quick work trip down to Johannesburg for Monday, coming back Tuesday.  Then from there I’ll bounce through London for a few hours before zipping off to the US East Coast.

–

With that – thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!

FOUND THIS POST USEFUL? SUPPORT THE SITE!

Hopefully, you found this post useful. The website is really a labor of love, so please consider becoming a DC RAINMAKER Supporter. This gets you an ad-free experience, and access to our (mostly) bi-monthly behind-the-scenes video series of “Shed Talkin’”.

Support DCRainMaker - Shop on Amazon

Otherwise, perhaps consider using the below link if shopping on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. It could simply be buying toilet paper, or this pizza oven we use and love.