Antoinette Baking Co.
Once inside their doors you begin to feel the magic, but one look at the bakery case and you realize it isn’t just any magic--it’s a different kind, an adventurous kind. Five years ago in September, co-owners Molly Martin and Andrea Mohn opened Antoinette Baking Company after their home-business grew too large to manage and too life-changing to give up. They needed a shop. Their first location in Tulsa’s Brookside area was so successful it outgrew itself in just two short years. In need of a larger space, they found and began renovation of their current shop in the thriving downtown Brady Art District.
The New Tuscan Hill, Part 1: Time
So far, in my experience, waiting doesn’t exactly get easier. It becomes more fruitful, yes. But easier? No. We can so clearly see what we want that sometimes we think we can reach out and there it is--we have it. But this isn’t a story of hopes and dreams being dashed by “reality”; this is a story of hopes and dreams enduring time. A lot of people give up when there’s a promise followed by a long wait. Many people believe that the “wait” itself is a closed door, an answer of “try something else.” But we are not those people. And that is not this story.
The New Tuscan Hill, Part 3: Together
And it took me a long time--years--to let a very small group of people come around me and actually begin to pull me out of the metaphorical “home” I’d made to better myself in. The resounding concept was “you are done there.” But not just that, it was an exclamation…”look what you’ve become!” Their eyes stared at me in astonishment but I couldn’t accept it, I wouldn’t accept it, and I tried to crawl back in to “grow more.” But it turns out that you do, eventually, outgrow the cocoon. And once you’ve outgrown it, you must move on. You must BE the thing that you were cocooned to become.