One thing I love about my husband is that he’s always full of surprises.  He loves to garden.  So while I have authority over our interior spaces, the exterior is all his.  In years past, he has jealously guarded each and every bloom in his garden, insisting that they remain outdoors as a part of his magnificent creation. 

But this year, much to my surprise (and ongoing delight!), he has taken to bringing his blooms inside.

One morning, I arrived at my desk to discover a tiny bud vase of wildflowers and miniature roses, complete with rosemary and mint as green filler.  And, over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying beautiful bouquets of hydrangeas from plants at the far end of the garden (an area where I seldom venture). 

Since mon jardinier (so much more romantic than the English equivalent of ‘gardener’) has taken to this new habit of making my day with fresh floral bouquets, I thought you might like to share in my delight.  I hope you enjoy this photo (a virtual bouquet) that currently graces our entry way. 

Long after the flowers are gone, it will remind me to relish life’s little surprises.

In the past, we’ve shared several reasons why we love our customers: you send us great mail; you take “tres bon bon” photos; you place creative orders; and you bring us cool stuff!   Well, here’s another reason we haven’t mentioned yet:

#174: You Make Us Giggle (and Gurgle)! 

We are blessed to have a customer who has one of the sunniest dispositions we’ve ever encountered.  Her bright and cherry attitude is matched by a melodious speaking voice and a completely infectious giggle.  Every time she comes to South ‘n France, she elevates our mood!

We were completely thrilled when Jane came to our Easter Open House.  She was our Easter Bunny this year, surprising us with a most unique gift–a GurglePot!  It’s a water pitcher shaped like a fish that gurgles after you pour water, wine, or the beverage of your choice. 

Of course, there is a fabulous French connection.  The creator of the GurglePot, Matt Ellison, tells the story like this:

We tried the pot right away, and the gurgle (listen here) definitely made us giggle!  Later that week, we entertained guests and served iced water to them in the GurglePot.  True to its promise, it was the hit of the evening and a hot topic of conversation.  Everyone enjoyed pouring their own glass of water and then listening for the gurgle.

What we love most about the GurglePot is that the gurgle makes of think of Jane and her fabulous giggle.   Perhaps we should try to invent a GigglePot…..

Locally, look for the GurglePot at Bella Anne in Hampstead, (Phone:  910-270-6371) or A Proper Garden on Anne St. near Elijah’s in downtown Wilmington (Phone 910-763-7177).   At this writing, A Proper Garden has black, chocolate brown, oatmeal, merlot, and mustard colored GurglePots in stock.  And the storekeeper said she’s getting a big shipment of all 16 colors on or before Friday 4/23.

I’m all about practicing the Law of Attraction. One technique attraction gurus suggest is “acting as if…”.  For example, because I want a super-cool Bon Bon Salon retail space, I have to act as if I already have it.  This means scouting out locations and doing some mental decorating until my Bon Bon Salon actually materializes.

A good student of all things New Age, I decided to start “decorating” our future Bon Bon Salon with a little internet-based window shopping.  Before long, I stumbled upon this utterly fabulous chandelier by Jellio.

Jellio is a fabulous design group that incorporates childhood memorabilia into incredible interior design pieces.  Think Rubik’s Cube tables, cap gun mirrors, and of course, Gummy Bear chandeliers, lamps, and bookends.  I’m craving cupcake stools and an ice cream sandwich bench so badly, I can taste them.

As for the Gummi Bear chandelier, I’m not sure that my powers of attraction are advanced enough to add this item to my shopping list just yet.  You see, Jellio intends to make only 10 of these stunning custom chandeliers.  Each one is made of approximately 5,000 hand-strung acrylic gummi bears and  takes about two months to complete.  There is no price listed.  And you know the old adage:  “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”  At least not yet….

Got any ideas for the future Bon Bon Salon?  Any tips on how I can advance my powers of attraction?  I’m listening!

My grandmother, whom we called Nanny, was a strong, independent, and very conservative woman (except when it came to buying jewelry).   Born on February 23, 1924, she was a farmer’s daughter–one of eight children–who grew up during the Great Depression.  A polio survivor, she battled this crippling disease while expecting her 2nd child and caring for her eldest son, a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler, at the time.  My grandfather had to add casters to my uncle’s baby highchair so she could push it around the kitchen.

Although most married women of her era remained housewives, she worked as a “nanny”, babysitting other families’ children while raising her own.  Later,  when my grandfather underwent open heart surgery and had to take early retirement, she took a full-time job as an LPN in a nursing home.

Whenever I went to visit Nanny, I slept downstairs in the finished basement.  The basement consisted of a great room, an adjoining laundry room, a half-bath and a cold cellar.  The great room contained a hodge podge of old furniture (a sofa, chairs, a table, a bed, and even a rocking horse) that had been replaced by upgraded models upstairs.  These castaways, however, were still serviceable and would never be thrown out.  In fact, not much was thrown out in her depression-era household.  Nanny saved the twist ties from bread, used old juice cans for composting, and made tea towels from flour sacks.

Downstairs, next to the guest bed, there was a 1950’s era refrigerator (that still worked and was used for extra food storage).  Next to the fridge there was a large  freezer where my grandparent’s kept surplus summer vegetables and beef from my uncle’s farm. 

Although she loved us, Nanny was far too practical and puritanical for  a lot of demonstrative affection.  As I grew older and started pursuing the many opportunities for young women of my generation (traveling abroad, entertaining on cruise ships, cocktail waitressing in a 4-star hotel), Nanny had difficulty relating to me.  She was concerned that I was living a “fast” life andshe couldn’t understand why I wasn’t following her dream for me, which was to “marry a red-headed minister, sing in the choir, and have red-headed babies”.  I kid you not.  My French Pascal was certainly a far cry from a red-headed minister!

Around this same time, my fascination with all things vintage was born.  This was another thing that Nanny just didn’t get.  At a time when I had just started a collection of vintage brooches and jewelry, I was heartbroken to learn that Nanny had unwittingly sold all of her old costume jewelry in a yard sale at just 25 cents per piece!  Someone got very lucky, scoring all “that old junk”, as Nanny called it, for a pittance.

When Nanny died, I (like each of the granddaughters) inherited one of her rings.  Nanny had a weakness for jewelry and amassed quite the collection of rings, earrings and necklaces that were the “real McCoy”. I didn’t really care about the ring.  The things I cherish the most are two old chairs from the basement that were almost sent to the Goodwill; the rusty vintage tin that sat on her kitchen windowsill collecting all of those twist ties; and a small collection of her floursack-tea towels that we use daily in our own kitchen.  I also inherited that vintage refrigerator that used to hum next to me whenever I slept in Nanny’s cool basement.

For a while now, Pascal and I have been talking about rebranding our business and updating our bon bon packaging, but we couldn’t seem to settle on an idea that felt just right.  But inspiration comes from unlikely sources.

 As a devotee of interior decorating, I loved those early episodes of Trading Spaces when interior designer Genevieve Gorder would design a room around an eggplant or a bowl of miso soup.  I also smile knowingly at that Kohler commercial when the couple visits the architect to present a designer sink faucet explaining:  “We want you to design a house around this.”

Our own home decor has been inspired by a motley collection of flea market finds and trash-day treasures.  But it wasn’t until recently that  I remembered Nanny’s fridge, which has been sitting patiently in storage at my parents’ house waiting for me to decide its next life.  A bolt of creative inspiration surged through me, when I suddenly realized that Nanny’s vintage fridge would be the perfect launching point for our bon bon business makeover. 

Nanny wouldn’t understand.  “Why on earth would you want to do anything with that old thing?”, she’d probably ask increduously.  But, I still think she’d be secretly proud that we find value in her old castaways, especially since they’re still perfectly serviceable. 

Thomas Edison said: “Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.”  Now that we’ve found the inspiration, it’s time for the perspiration.  There’s no better example than my hardworking Nanny to remind us that hard work does indeed eventually pay off.  After a lifetime of daily work and sacrifice, she was able to enjoy life’s luxuries in her later years:  new clothes, fancy jewelry, and fur coats.  

We love the idea of an old-fashioned, hardworking fridge that will hold an abundance of life’s little luxuries, South ‘n France Bon Bons.  We’ll be sharing our path from inspiration to makeover completion in the weeks to come, and we hope you’ll join us for the journey.  For a sneak preview of our plans for Nanny’s old fridge, visit Big Chill (photo credit), an appliance company that shares our appreciation for vintage values.

We have a really great kitchen. I love our Jenn-Air gas stove/convection oven, our industrial baker’s rack, our huge work table, our deep industrial double sink, our cement floors, and our European dishwasher. I’m not surprised when guests at our gourmet parties envy our kitchen, wishing they had one just like it. Envy comes from the French word "envie", which means "to desire". Years ago, I learned that envy and jealousy are wonderful, positive emotions because they allow you to identify the things you want.

Lately, I’ve been assembling a new "vision board", a collage of images that comprise my current visual wish list. Much to my surprise, I seem to be dreaming about kitchens. When I saw these two photos, I had powerful kitchen envy/envie. The huge oven and the center island in the first photo, the traditional French table in the second photo, and the wood-burning ovens in both, appeal to me. They’d be perfect in that French farmhouse we plan to own one day. 

Our current dining room table is almost 10 feet long; we can fit twelve people at the table. I love that table, but I dream of an even bigger one similar to the communal tables you find at Le Pain Quotidien. My dream table would also come with drawers like the one in this photo. Why do French tables have those little drawers? They are used to store napkins and napkin rings. When it comes to dining habits, the French have been ‘green’ for a long time, using cloth napkins instead of paper ones. So that the napkins can be re-used throughout the week, each member of the family has their own unique napkin ring (rond de serviette), often engraved with their first name. I count the two traditional wooden napkin rings Pascal bought for us at Mont Saint Michel among my greatest treasures. On one side, they have a very touristy painting of the island; on the other our names are hand-written in black paint. For me, they are a symbol of our union as a couple. We had those napkin rings long before we had wedding rings, and each night when he pulls them out for dinner (his boasts a blue cloth gingham napkin; mine is a coordinating red gingham), it reminds me that we are a family.  I look forward to the day when that little drawer in my dream table is filled with napkin rings, each engraved with name that represents a friend or relative who always has a place at our big communal table. Who wouldn’t envy a kitchen like that?