The Third ... a young age I was ... “the creative one” and have spent the greater share of my adult life proving that to be true. My passion for ... special ... and finding the
The Third Child
From a young age I was nicknamed “the creative one” and have spent the greater share of my adult life proving that to be true. My passion for holidays, special occasions and finding the “perfect” gift was always a great hobby, creative outlet, and stress releaser until I decided to turn it into a full time business. I don’t go anywhere these days without my notepad to jot down ideas, impressions, and observations that I make in everyday life that help me to continually think “outside of the mundane.”
As the mother of two terrific kids (one boy and one girl), my children will vouch that they always had the most spectacular themed birthday parties - the neighborhood kids couldn't wait to attend each year to see what type of extravaganza we had "cooked up." Whether it was the year that we did "You are a Star" for my daughter's 10th birthday - complete with: tickets for admission and play money in the invitation, walk of fame, ticket booth, photo shoot, stocked candy display, and living room transformed into realistic movie theatre. - or my son's 8th birthday party which began with audio taped invitations that had "This birthday mission, should you choose to accept" that were delivered late at night and followed through with "dangerous" missions that involved finding the birthday cake before it self-destructed - well,
you get the idea.
Everyone told me I had that "special knack" to turn any occasion into something really special, and so CookiePots was born. It was named after our first and number one seller the Cookie Pot Bouquet that we produce for all occasions. When people first learn what I do, and ask “Just what is a CookiePot?” I simply say. “Imagine getting a wonderful delivery of flowers in adorable flower pots personalized with your name. Inside the pot may be candy, coffee, lemonade or cocoa and then, upon closer inspection you realize that the flowers on the end of the stems aren’t flowers at all – they are delightful decorated cookies!” We have cupcake and party hat cookies for birthdays, baby bottle and rocking horse cookies for babies, and cookie designs for every special occasion that you can think of.
After about 9 months of hard work, and the power of the Internet, orders began coming in from all over the country and my original one or two trips a week to Office Depot to ship my packages via UPS became two pickups daily by Federal Express and UPS! My neighbors began to shake their heads when they had to wait for the delivery trucks to clear so they could back out of their driveways. My two children, quite nonplussed about the amount of time it took to grow a business like CookiePots, not so affectionately named it “Third Child.” It became painfully obvious that I needed help and CookiePots needed its own home. In May of 2002 we officially opened "CookiePots" in Mayberry Square in Sylvania, Ohio and hired three employees.
Mayberry Square is a quaint "old fashioned" planned community with business
owners and home owners sharing the community. Along with CookiePots is
Floyds, an old fashioned Barber Shop, the Mayberry Diner, the Dessert Depot
and a quaint coffee shop called Nautica.
The cookie designs are unique to CookiePots. I use every event, every opportunity in life to inspire me towards future designs. When a tentative idea becomes a full fledged CookiePot design, the image is done first in pen and ink and supplied to two contract bakeries who manage to produce these into fabulous edible cookies! In addition to the "stock" designs that we offer for occasions such as: new babies, birthdays, thank you - we offer unique items each holiday to compliment the season. And so that people could look to CookiePots for a constantly changing line of ideas, we gradually added non food items to our offering. Now, a customer can not only welcome a new baby with a baby themed CookiePot, but can also include a keepsake handprint kit, a daddy's tool belt and a wonderful plush animal that plays a soothing melody.
This fall, we have designs that showcase children dressed up in Halloween Costumes, complete with cookies decorated like Trick or Treat Bags and the perennial favorite (or perhaps just mine – a piece of Candy Corn). For Thanksgiving (CookiePots are a favorite centerpiece with my customers) we will feature bouquets of pumpkins, stalks of Indian corn and adorable scarecrows complete with gourmet chocolate pops of turkeys and pilgrims.
The only drawback to the business is that I can hardly enjoy a holiday at the appropriate time of year. In July I am planning Christmas designs and in October I am thinking about Valentine’s Day. I suppose many people in retail sales share the same “hardship”, but to me, it’s not a high price to pay for doing something that I really love.
