We started our first business 22 years ago in a small West Texas town with a popcorn shop called "Pop-O-Lot" named for me by my 7 year old daughter. Every time we popped that corn we thought we were in heaven. We never got tired of smelling that warm buttery smell as we heard the popping sound. We made butter, cheese and caramel corn with lots of other flavors to choose from. Soon we added ice cream and hand-made waffle cones to our little store and people loved to come in for these fun treats. We moved our shop to a town 12 miles away with a few more people and added sandwiches to the menu. Soon we found ourselves having to get a bigger place and the popcorn/ice cream fell by the wayside. Our sandwich menu grew into our first cafe called "Salad Soups & Such". Our food was all home-made by my mother, a great cook! We created a delicious fruit salad that we put in a hand-made waffle cone shaped like a bowl and dressed it with home-made poppy seed dressing. After awhile we had the opportunity to lease an in-store bakery and since I always wanted a bakery, we decided to move our cafe to the store/bakery. We baked pies cakes, cookies, donuts and lots of fresh home-made bread sold "HOT" from the ovens each day. We worked from 6:30am to 9:00pm my mother, myself, and my daughter. I was a cake decorator so I decorated cakes for every occasion. This was a great time to perfect our skills but the hours were hard on us all. We eventually moved our cafe from the bakery to a nice little place on the town square and gave up the bakery. A few years past and we decided to move back to Dallas Texas. Living in a larger city made it harder to open a shop like we had so I decided to go to work for someone other than myself. This was a first for me and so I got a job at Cookie Bouquet and was hired as a cookie decorator. My cake decorating skills come in handy and I worked my way up to head decorator and then to manager. The business was sold after a couple of years so I moved to another cookie shop called Cookies In Bloom in Dallas and worked there for a few years until 1997 when I decided I had, had enough working for other people. I was raised by my mother to be self-employed and come up with my own business which I did all of my life. I started messing around attaching candy to wire and making arrangements. I spent lots of time perfecting the way they were made with new ways of using tissue and cellophane together. I started making new designs and came up with a candy bouquet made with colorful tissue overlaid with cellophane. We arranged them in a gift box and added a matching 9 inch balloon. We wanted to fill them full with lots of candy in fun and full size packages, boxes and bars of candy, so we did, and made our first line of Candy Bouquets! Creative Candy Grammes was born and we found a new wonderful tool called the Internet to get our products to people all over the USA not just a small town. We opened our first on-line store in 1997 and have worked very hard to bring fun gifts to give for every occasion. After the Candy Bouquet we designed the Cookie Bouquet with 1 dozen delicious chocolate chip and double chocolate chip cookies, each wrapped in festive cellophane and arranged in a clay pot accented with candy flowers, a 9 inch balloon and a bow. Then we added cute ceramic Cookie Jars and Cookie Gift Boxes filled with 18 fresh baked chocolate chip and double chocolate chip cookies. Later on the Candy Bar Cake was designed and it has become one of our best sellers. We are always looking for Unique Containers to arrange candy & cookies in. Preview our Holiday candy arrangements. We opened our 2nd on-line store 3 years ago called "Creative Candy Gifts!" |
movie, cookie box, candy bar cake, gifts,