Girl on Top, Jacky Doyle, chose to raise her $5 000 for our charity this year by baking her famous cookies – it was a path less travelled, and a longer journey than she expected.
Final statistics for the Girls on Top cookie quest:
Funds raised $5 000
Cookies Baked: approx 16000
Km driven: 7129
Eggs used: 400
Flour: 120kg
Butter: 80kg
Chocolate Chips: 20kg
Nuts: 20kg
Phew!! What was I thinking!!!!! I certainly didn’t fully realise what would be involved when I took my family at their word and decided to sell my beautiful hand made chocolate chip cookies to raise my $5000 donation for this year’s expedition.
Not until I did my budget and worked out just how many cookies I needed to bake did I fully appreciate the work that would be involved. Something like 20,000 cookies needed to come out of my little oven.
Finally all the planning was done, registrations and approvals complete, markets booked and cookies baked and I set off for my first market, the Capital region Farmers Market in Canberra. This would be the first weekend of many, making a 7 day a week workload for the last 3 months. Little did I know this when I first had this idea.
The first market went OK, I sold around 50 packets of cookies, not bad for a fist day, but well short of the 150 per week I needed. Thankfully, Michael the nut guy (everyone at the markets is know by their products, there’s the nut man, the mushroom guy, the cheese man and of course I was the cookie girl) suggested I try the Old Bus Depot Markets in Kingston.
So into the routine I got; drive the Canberra Friday night straight from work (thanks Sharon and Lisette for the Canberra home), markets Saturday and Sunday, drive back to Wagga Sunday night, work on Monday, bake cookies in the evenings, go to the gym, sleep and repeat. Most weekends were much the same and the below zero mornings were a bit trying, I’m so glad I had my down jacket, and somehow it was even colder in the Old Bus Depot. However, the warm welcome from the other stallholders helped.
Many weeks I would have one of the kids I had taught at work come up and say hello and their parents would usually by some cookies, or someone who had been to or knew some who had been to Ladakh would come up and say hello, stop for a chat and but some cookies. Though you have to wonder about the ones who talk to you for ten minutes, then say, “hope your sales go well” and walk away without buying anything.
Slowly over the weeks the profits started to build and by the last weekend I had reach my target.
Special thanks must go to:
My Mum, for manning the stall when work meant I couldn’t go, and baking many batches of cookies.
My Nan for all the cookies she baked for me.
Sharon and Lisette for the home away from home.
Annemarie, Ann, Pam and Di for all the support and sales.
Rob Durie and the Rotary club of Hall and Ray and the Management of The Old Bus Depot Markets for running great markets and getting behind my efforts and our cause.
And my fellow stall holders for being welcome and supportive and giving lots of great advice.