I’ve been known to use the expression "a bon bon in the oven". In fact, in our May newsletter, I wrote: "Don’t forget to check our calendar to see where I’ll be next… on the radio and live-and-in-person for another Bon Bon Tasting next week. You’ll also learn where we’re going on vacation and who has a little bon bon in the oven!" The Father’s Day entry on that month’s calendar announced that my baby brother, Chad and my sister-in-law, Cara were expecting. I never imagined that a sizeable percentage of our clients would interpret that sentence to mean that I was pregnant! In recent months, I’ve had a lot of explaining to do; sadly, the only baby I’ve been carrying around is a food baby!  

It has been a joy to watch Cara, whom we affectionately refer to as "the ultimate baby-maker", throughout her pregnancy. She was a glowing mother-to-be who made the entire nine months of her pregnancy look effortless.! By the end of her term, she had the cutest (and biggest!) baby belly ever. She went into a very long labor on Wednesday morning, December 3rd and delivered our new nephew, Baby Carter, on December 4th at 6:28 pm.

When we first started our company and enlisted the entire family to help with our launch, we had to re-direct Chad from bon bon rolling to other tasks. Chad is a big guy, and his hands were so large he could only roll super-sized bon bons. True to form, Chad and Cara’s "little bon bon in the oven" was a big one. Carter weighed 9 pounds 10 ounces and measured 22 inches at birth! He was so big that the nurses had to immediately graduate him from newborn diapers to the 3-month size. In the photos, taken the day he came home from the hospital, Carter is wearing the baby sweater his Dad wore thirty years ago.

We are all in love with this cute little guy. In fact, he’s already proving to be a (happy) distraction during our busy holiday season.  Instead of solely packing and shipping our little bon bons as per normal seasonal operations, we find ourselves plotting ways to get over to this big bon bon so we can hold him, watch him, cuddle him, and marvel in his perfection. Congratulations Chad and Cara, and thanks for bringing another future bon bon roller into the family! If he follows in his Dad’s footsteps, his hands should be the perfect size by the time he reaches the age of eight!

Our place is a very popular spot for baby showers, and the day after Thanksgiving we held our biggest baby shower ever! Our normal capacity for our Bon Bon and Champagne Parties and Grapes and Crepes Parties is 10-16 guests (and we’re able to accommodate up to 20 people for custom events). But one local family needed us to stretch the rules as they honored the "queen" in their family, Keenan. You see, Keenan’s aunt (who coordinated the party) has 17 brothers and sisters! With mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins and close friends, it was impossible to pare the guest list down to less than 24 women. "Can you handle us?", Aunt Annie asked.  "If you’re willing to have a standing room only bon bon-making lesson, the more the merrier", I replied. And so it was that we undertook our first (and super-fun!) standing-room only bon bon demo.  

Keenan, the guest of honor, (the family calls her "Queen-an") is a true Southern belle. She is beautiful and talented with a razor-sharp wit. (That’s her ‘cartoon’ image so you’ll be able to identify her in the photos below). Aunt Annie directed me to her website and blog, where I have literally spent hours laughing at her hilarious accounts of her former life in pageant world (a rite of passage for almost all Southern girls) and her current life in New York City. If you like Sweet Potato Queen Jill Conner Browne, you’ll love Queenan! Incidentally, she calls her husband, her "Sweet Potato". Queenan sells funny T-shirts with sayings like "I May Not Be Much, But I’m All I Think About" and "I May Have to Stab Her in the Eye"; she shares delicious recipes (focusing on two of the best food groups, cocktails and carbohydrates); and she offers an ingenious service called "Mail Polish", where she will "coat your correspondence with just the right color".

Naturally, everyone was eager to treat Keenan like the Queen that she is, so they brought the "funnest", frilliest, most fabulous baby gifts I have ever seen. (Of course, Keenan is having a girl; doesn’t every Queen need a little princess?) While wearing a tiara, she un-wrapped hot pink tutus, pink embroidered fur-lined snow boots, sassy baby hats, and outfits that screamed "Ooh la la!"  I wished they made everything in big girl sizes; I wanted one of everything!

When the loot had all been opened, we moved on to the main attraction. Every generation of the family got in on the bon bon-making act and in no time these sweet Southern belles had transformed the shower into a raunchy, rowdy, rollickin’ good time.  Pascal, of course, was in heaven! We both fell in love with every one of the beautiful women in this big, happy family (the dav before they had celebrated one of their most intimate Thanksgivings ever with just 38 people at the table!). They certainly proved the cliché, "the more, the merrier", and they also proved our theory that families are lot like bon bons: lots of little sweeties with a few nuts thrown in!

Listing reasons why we love our customers is a regular feature on our blog. Y’all have been so good to us lately that we just had to share another:

#235: You Bring Us (and Sing Us) Cool Stuff!
At our last Dinner and a Movie Series (here’s info on our next one), we were joined by a customer with a severe onion allergy. This proved to be a big challenge since it seems that there is onion in almost every French savory dish (the only things on that menu without some form of onion integrated into the recipe were the cheese platter and the dessert!) Because she gave us lots of advance notice, we were able to accommodate her special need (Pascal even made her an individual portion of potatoes gratinées sans onion). Our client was so grateful for this consideration that she brought us a fun stash of Halloween-themed cocktail napkins as a ‘thank you’. They were the perfect festive touch for our Halloween Chocolate and Pumpkin Crepes Party at the Wilmington Wine Shoppe.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, when our holiday catalog was hitting mailboxes across the country, the phone rang. It was one of our beloved customers and her charming little girl, Catherine Grace. They had read our holiday bon bon story together and called to sing us their rendition of "Leon the Bon Bon", our parody of the Frosty the Snowman. It was an incredible performance that’s had us smiling for weeks.  

Recently, a former caterer booked a Bon Bon and Champage Party at our place for a baby shower. She and her family have a great sense of humor; and they’re also very generous. As we passed hors d’oeuvres at the beginning of the party, our ex-catering customer offered to bring us some silver trays and platters she no longer uses. True to her word, she arrived about a week later with a lovely assortment of silver she had collected at estate sales and garage sales over the years. Our favorite is a gorgeous engraved tray that says: "Booty and Mozelle, 25th Anniversary, August 20, 1973". It’s got the perfect personality for our eclectic sensibilities – wiith names like Booty and Mozelle, you just know that couple knew how to party. We’re happy they’ll be joining our celebrations from now on.

So thanks, dear customers, for making so many of our days feel like Christmas; we love the cool stuff you bring us!

I love to read, I love to write, and I love to talk. In short, I love words so I always enjoy learning about the official Word of the Year.  Each year, the New Oxford American Dictionary announces The Word of the Year and the Finalists. This year’s word is: hypermiling. Have you heard of it? "Hypermiling" (or to "hypermile") is to attempt to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and one’s driving techniques. If you keep the tires on your car properly inflated or have removed a roof rack to maximize gas mileage, then you are hypermiling.

I didn’t know the word before learning it was the 2008 winner, but I was familiar with a few of the finalists like hockey mom, tweet (see the tweets on my blog) and frugalista (a frugal fashionista). Since I’m no longer a member of the traditional corporate world, I didn’t know "moofers" (mobile out of office workers) or "topless meetings" (much more G-rated than it sounds – a meeting with no laptops present). But, the new word that fascinated me most was Carrotmob. Carrotmobbing is a mob gathering in which people, invited via the Net, support and reward a local, small, ethical business such as a shop or a café by all patronizing at the same time. It is a way for a group of consumers to "give these businesses a "carrot" for working toward "green" improvements. For a great explanation of how it works, check out this blog post on wired.com.

Learning about carrot mobbing comes at a time when Pascal and I are implementing ways to make South ‘n France Bon Bons more green. We’ve already reduced packaging waste by investing in custom-sized boxes for our shipments. We use re-usable gel paks, coolers and tins. We make our products by hand, using man power instead of a lot of machine power. And we’re putting together a rewards program that will be introduced in 2009 for customers who bring empty bon bon tins for refills. Stay tuned for more "green" ideas from South ‘n France in the New Year. Meanwhile, please Carrotmob us! We’d be honored.

If you haven’t already received one, our holiday catalog should be delivered to your front door this week. Each year, our catalog serves double duty as marketing for our product line, but also as our annual holiday greeting to you. We create a story, a poem or a song that we hope will make you smile and convey our best wishes for a joy-filled holiday and a happy new year. This year, with the help of talented graphic designer, Brent Holloman,we came up with the idea of a snowman made out of bon bons. We were also inspired by the classic song and cartoon, Frosty the Snowman, the movie, Elf , and the Office Max "Elf Yourself" Campaign.

The photo shoot for the creation of our snowman was a lot of fun. I came prepared with bon bons of all shapes and sizes, an assortment of miniature winter weather accessories from Barbie’s closet, and a miniature carrot that I extracted from a basket of assorted vegetables I found in the doll house department of our local craft store. First we created the three-bon-bon snowman using toothpicks to anchor the "right" bon bons into place. Next we tried styling the snowman with accessories. The scale of the scarves and hats was wrong (Barbie is much taller than a bon bon snowman), but the vintage earmuffs purchased on Ebay did the trick. The carrot looked great, but there was still something missing. "Twigs", I said. "He needs twig arms." So, we headed outside to sweep the ground for good-looking twigs. Satisfied with our twig hunt, we returned to the studio to get some shots of our snowman. 

I love hanging out with other creative people because magical ideas always bubble to the surface. Somehow, as we worked with the snowman and talked about how we had to work fast (he was bound to melt soon under those hot lights), we came up with the idea of making a ‘melted’ – or even better – an ‘eaten’ version of our snowman. Brent removed the twigs, the carrot, and the earmuffs and sprinkled just the right amount of crumbled chocolate around to achieve the effect. We loved it! We named our snowman "Leon" in homage to Elf. His cute little eyes and smile are the handiwork of Brent and his incredible PhotoShop skills. 

Et voila! A bon bon snowman was born, and the concept for the cover of our 2008 Holiday Catalog was conceived. We hope you enjoy reading this year’s story and seeing the other surprises inside…