Plans for the future..

I haven't had the chance or the funds to do quite so much baking as I'd like recently. However, I had been looking into means to further improve my skills and produce better designs. Looking in the local area I couldn't find a course that suited my needs, I wanted a course that wasn't about baking but gave me specifics in decorating the cake. I also needed a course that would be at a suitable time for babysitting. So I my mum looked in the local area. We found a course in Lewisham college, however, by the time we'd decided to go ahead the course was booked so I'd missed my chance. So I set about researching some more and came up with 2 options. 

1) A sugarcraft course in Greenwich college, this is a beginners course lasting 20 weeks, 2 hours a week, which covers the basics of different materials. It uses sugarpaste, marzipan and other bits to create flowers, models and to decorate cakes. 

2) PME professional diploma courses, I discovered this courses when I was searching around. They are courses that are for people looking to start up a home business and cover the basics of running a business as well as going into details on the various elements. There are 3 modules that together make up what they call a masters. The modules are Sugarcraft, Royal icing and piping and Flowers. Each module is a minimum of 25 hours long and typically they cost around £200. Many places run these as either an intensive 4 day course or over several weeks, 5 hours a week for 5 weeks. I was really interested in this idea as each module looks really detailed and the description sounds like what I want. However, the courses all started in September so I would be missing a week with our holiday, this would mean that I wouldn't pass. I was also worried because some of the descriptions stated this wasn't for beginners, whilst I've done some practice with the materials I haven't had any training and was worried I'd fall behind and therefore not pass. 

So in the end we came up with a plan. I'm doing the Greenwich beginners course starting at the end of September. Im still going to miss a week but it'll be just 2 hours and I'll make it up with practice. The course lasts until 27th March so throughout this time I'll be practice practice practice. Once I've completed this course I'll start looking into the diploma courses more seriously. We would need to save up lots of money but if I can get my business running then this will be worth doing. I'll aim to start the diplomas in September 2014, either as an intensive course or a weekly course. Lots of places in London carry out the course so I'll investigate what is the best option for us. It is possible to do a really intensive course which covers all 3 modules and therefore gives you the masters, but of course the cost of this is more. 

I'm looking forward to my course starting and I hope to learn many new things and hints and tips. I know I have a long way to go but I can only get better.