How The Tipsy Bee came to be...

     People often ask how I came up with the name 'The Tipsy Bee.'  They will comment that it is such a cute name or that they love the bee in the logo.  To me, The Tipsy Bee name perfectly epitomizes my business.  It is super cute, super laid back, and totally Southern.

     So how did the name come about?  Did someone help me come up with the name?  My mom and aunt and I took a day trip to the beach a few years ago.  We wanted to go to Morehead City and eat lunch and check out the shops.  I had been thinking about starting a little shop myself.  My goal was to have a shop that produced food products common around a Southern kitchen from scratch without preservatives.

     I knew that one of the most important parts of starting my business was coming up with a catchy name.  As we spent the day together, we talked about products that I would sell.  Jams and jellies are found in every Southern kitchen.  My aunt had discovered some really unusual recipes... bumbleberry jam and daiquiri jam.  When you get a group of women together, they tend to laugh and joke.  Talk of the bumbleberry jam led to a discussion of honey bees, a new interest of mine at that time. 
  
     My mom, a teetotaler, said that she could just see a honeybee flying over the daiquiri jam and becoming drunk since the daiquiri jam contains the tiniest bit of rum.  She said, "hey, why don't you call your business The Drunken Bee."  I said, "Mama, we live in the Bible Belt.  There is no way that I can call my business a name that has the word 'drunken' in it even if it is meant in a joking manner.  How about we call it 'The Tipsy Bee?'"  The name stuck and encompassed two of the biggest aspects of my business... honey and wine.

     Many people don't realize what my business is truly about.  We may put a slightly different twist on some traditional items, but everything that we sell represents the things that would be found around a traditional Southern home.  We sell cupcakes and cakes.  There is nothing more Southern than a cake made from scratch using eggs from our own chickens.  The honey that we sell is from our honey bees just as most Southerners back in the day kept their own honey bees.  And many Southern kitchens years ago made and kept a little homemade wine.  Jams and jellies are made from fresh, in-season fruits.

     And that my friends is how The Tipsy Bee came to be!  Best, Christian XOXO

Change

Good evening, everyone!  It seems that every time that I think that I am going to commit to blogging regularly, I fizzle out.  Life catches up with me, and before I know it, I haven't blogged in 3 months. 

Then I find myself in a reflective mood as I begin blogging again.  I am thinking about the things that were going on in my life 3 months ago and how much things have changed since then.  The key word here is CHANGE.  Change can be a wonderful thing.  For me though, while it is somewhat thrilling, it is a scary, terrifying experience in other ways. 

For whatever reason, I have just never handled change very well.  Even though it may be exciting, it seems to frighten me on some level and in a way that I can just never explain. 

So for instance, I am super excited about the changes happening at The Tipsy Bee.  I have made sacrifice upon sacrifice to make The Tipsy Bee work.  When Isay sacrifice, I mean both the time kind and the monetary kind.  I have turned down offers to do fun things and not spent money on things that I really wanted, even felt I needed, to help The Tipsy Bee make it as a business.

And now on the eve of planting my grapes and pouring concrete for my new building, I am filled with pride, excitement, but still some dread.  With every major transition of my life, I go through these exact emotions.  You can imagine how trying my childhood was for my parents...lol... yes I wanted to go to kindergarten, but then I was terrified of leaving preschool.  The story replayed itself with every transition... elementary school to middle school... high school to college.  And though I survived each transition and found that the new experiences that came with the transition were awesome, change is still that thing that thrills me and scares me all at once. 

And with that, I leave you to ponder how change makes you feel... and promise to be less reflective in my future blogging :-0)

xoxo The Tipsy Bee

The Sweet Surprises of My Week

So I am not a girl who likes outrageous surprises like surprise birthday parties.  I have been told that I am "too practical," therefore big surprises make me nervous.  However, I love sweet little surprises.  When someone sends me flowers or drops me a note in the mail, my day is made a thousand times better.

As you know from my recent blog post, I celebrated a birthday last week.  My shop is open on Saturdays, and I had bunches of cake orders.  Last Saturday was super busy.  One of my favorite customers came in to buy cupcakes and surprised me with a handmade card with a bee on it.  My heart completely melted.  I also received a birthday card from my great aunt who is in her 90s and a card from a friend who lives in another state.  The fact that these people took time to remember me on my special day meant so much.

My week continued on a happy note when my dad surprised me with caps and visors for The Tipsy Bee.  I recently had t-shirts made with The Tipsy Bee logo.  He thought that the head gear would be a nice addition to the t-shirts to advertise my business.  My dad was just looking for a way to help promote my business.

Sometimes it is not the big gestures in life but the small ones that mean the most... XOXO The Tipsy Bee