By james art LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Every day, Makaly Peña can be found in her home baking and decorating sweet treats for her business, Kaly’s Cakes and Sweets.
Years ago she worked at Amigos as a cake decorator and discovered she had a real talent.
“It’s a lot of work,” Peña said. “You know in the intro to Full House and then there are different characters? There’s TikTok where you meet the baker, the decorator, the owner, the manager, the cleaner. That’s all from me.
However, life took her elsewhere and she and her husband moved to Colorado.
Three years later, in 2020, the couple found out they were expecting their first child and decided to return to Lubbock to be closer to family and start their business again.
However, in January 2021, during a routine ultrasound, Peña learned she had miscarried at 14 weeks.
“The baby was almost gone, but my body wasn’t accepting it and it didn’t know,” she said. “It was a weird dissociating feeling because my body couldn’t deal with what was really happening or my mental state couldn’t catch up with what was really happening. She wasn’t there when I felt she was still there.
After a severe period of grief, she managed to get back on her feet.
A customer approached her about making a cake and it gave her a purpose to start again.
In July 2022, Peña found out she was pregnant with twins Florence and Farah. Florence was watched at first due to a problem with her cable, but one day it was discovered that Florence was still here, but Farrah was not.
In January 2023, Florence was born, but due to complications she spent the next two months in the hospital. Another obstacle to keeping business and family together.
“We said, ‘what can we do,’ and finally, after we prayed, our response just felt like there was no other answer but to keep working,” she said. “I felt like it was the right thing to do. We felt like, “why root everything out just for the ultimate goal of going back to it?”
She credits the community with helping her through these times. In June, she was told she had to leave home, forcing her to work 36 hours straight over Father’s Day weekend.
Orders came in and the Peña family was able to move into a better and more comfortable home.
As for her future goals, she says she doesn’t have any because she wants to live life in the moment.
“Basically, after losing my daughters,” she said, “when you feel like you can plan for something to be, it just has to be, you have to have it, and then you don’t. You learn to just live daily and appreciate the things you do daily. So I have no goals for the future and no expectations for the future. I just know that God blessed me with life today so I made a cake.
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