I’m Heather, and I’m so glad you’re here! As the writer, recipe developer, baker, photographer and social media manager of this blog since 2011, you’ll usually find me in the kitchen, covered in flour and wrangling two little boys who want to help, or at my laptop editing photos and writing up recipes.
To me, the kitchen is the heart and soul of a home. It’s where I feel inspired to create beauty through food. It’s the place where everyone gathers, where my boys help me bake, where people feel warm and comfortable and full, where the lovely aromas of apple crumbles, freshly baked breads and layer cakes, flaky pie crusts, warm pots of soup, cinnamon and sugar and steaming coffee permeate the rest of the house, drawing everyone back to the kitchen.
Living in Colorado at an altitude of 5,280 feet, I’ve spent years testing and re-testing my recipes to perfect them for other high altitude bakers who struggle with baking in the mountains. I hope you find my recipes to be a valuable resource to help you with your own high altitude bakes!
Want to know more?
- I graduated college with a degree in Creative Writing and English Literature. When I was 22, I took a job in Dalian, China, where I lived for three years from 2001-2004, teaching English as a second language at a computer college. I was able to travel all over China, Hong Kong and Tibet, and had so many incredible experiences. In Tibet, I became extremely ill with high altitude pulmonary edema, and would have died if my friends hadn’t taken me to a hospital to get oxygen. Those years abroad were some of the most memorable and amazing times I’ve ever had.
- My husband and I met on eHarmony (he lived in Denver and I lived in Longmont at the time). We were married 5 years later, and now we have two wonderful little boys together. They are my world. My husband is a really good cook, too, and during our early years (before kids), we spent a lot of time cooking fancy meals together for date nights.
- I hate sports, reality tv and competition shows. I miss the old cooking shows. My all time favorite shows are Outlander, The Walking Dead (first 5 seasons), Game of Thrones, Gilmore Girls, Downton Abbey, and Breaking Bad. Favorite movies are Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Jane Austen type period movies, and apocalyptic genres where the world is ending. Definitely a mix of romantic classics, fantasy and sci-fi!
- I’m a total introvert. I’d so much rather watch a movie at home than go to a party or somewhere loud and crowded.
- I love photography so much, and really, really hate the social media trend towards video.
- Although I’m a creative person, most of my previous work experience is in customer service, a career that made me pretty unhappy. When my first son was born, I quit my corporate job to be home with him. During that first year of being a new mother, I tried various things to supplement our income whenever he was napping, such as decorating and selling custom cakes, cupcakes and baked goods. I even had an Etsy shop for a while, where I sold handmade aprons that I sewed from vintage fabrics. At one point, I was determined to write a cookbook, but I had no idea what I was doing, and realized it wasn’t the right time for that project. Then our second son was born 18 months after our first, and it became even more challenging to find time for myself.
- Eventually, I decided to focus on updating my website so I could monetize it and turn it into my career. I took Foodtography School to improve my photography, and then I put every second of my spare time into retesting, rewriting and rephotographing almost every single recipe on my website, working late into the night every day for a year until my page views started to climb.
- Baking and photography is my passion, my heart and my soul, and every day I’m so grateful that this is what I get to do for a living now. I’m forever thankful for my husband, my biggest supporter of everything I strive for. And I’m grateful to all of you who visit my site, try my recipes and leave reviews and star ratings! This is one of the best things you can do to support your favorite food bloggers, so that we can continue to create new content for you.
What are my days like?
- My days are pretty packed, and working for yourself requires a lot of discipline to just get to work every day. I honestly don’t give myself too many days off, although I really should do that more often. I put a lot of pressure on myself to get too much done every day.
- Currently, my boys are in Kindergarten (full day) and preschool (half day). So I get up at 6:45, get them dressed and fed, make their snacks/lunches, and then we walk to school most days, when the weather is nice.
- When I get home, I make myself coffee and breakfast.
- Then I post on Instagram and Facebook, and try to spend 15-20 minutes on there, responding to comments and commenting on accounts that I follow. I check my Planoly account, and plan what I’m going to share on social media for the rest of the week.
- And then I start baking. I have a content calendar that I make for myself, and usually I have planned out the next 3-4 months of content at a time, with anywhere from 4-6 new recipes a week that I want to test, photograph and publish on my site. This is a big goal, and it’s a lot of work to create this much new content all the time. So it works best for me to bake in the morning and take my process photos. Then, of course, there’s the kitchen cleanup and the never ending washing of dishes.
- Mid morning, I go pick up my younger son from preschool. This creates a challenge in my baking schedule, since I can’t have something ready to come out of the oven while I’m gone, so I have to time things just right.
- Once we’re back home, I get back to work on that day’s recipe, and plan how I’m going to photograph the final photos.
- At noon, I’ll take a break and my youngest son and I have lunch together. Then he’ll play or watch me while I finish up my photo shoots, if I didn’t get everything done in the morning. This will completely depend on the complexity of the recipe, how long something takes to cool/chill/set, etc, what the light/weather is like that day (since I currently only shoot in natural light). Some recipes will even carry over to the next day if there’s a long chill time or dough that needs to rise, and that sort of thing, and others I can get finished all in the same day.
- In the afternoon, I’ll sit down at my computer and work on any number of things. Responding to comments on my site, responding to emails, culling and editing photos, researching and writing recipes, outlining recipe posts, watching photography tutorials, shopping for groceries/props/backdrops, working on backend technical website stuff, etc. I may get a lot done if my son is happy playing with something on his own, or I may get very little done if he needs me to be with him.
- Then it’s time to pick up my oldest son from kindergarten, and we all spend some time together, sharing an after school snack, talking about their days, and playing for a while.
- From then until dinner, hopefully my boys can keep each other entertained while I get more work done at my computer.
- And then it’s time to make dinner, and when my husband gets home from work, we all eat together as a family. After dinner, we have some family time until the boys go to bed.
- Once they’re in bed, my husband and I will watch a little tv, while – you guessed it – I sit with my laptop and continue to work until 10 or 11pm, and then I go to bed.
- And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I have to stay on top of cleaning the house, picking up the endless piles of toys and clutter, doing laundry, vacuuming crumbs and sugar and flour, cleaning bathrooms, organizing and cleaning up my office/studio. My husband is great about helping with house cleaning on the weekends, though.
- Then the next day, I repeat it all again!
