Client References

Growing up at Wrightsville Beach, NC, Heide and friends remember eating hergreat grandmother's buttermints most every holiday season. This ritual became the basis of an idea Heide and her late father, Dr. Joe Hooper, had for Heide when she was ready to take the risk of dropping out of the corporate world to make buttermints full time. Her first account, Robert's Grocery, a local grocery for residents and a "must-see" for any visitors, is still located on Lumina Drive and has the buttermints at the counter, just as Heide still goes by the store weekly to make sure they have adequate inventory. It is one account she will always enjoy servicing herself. However, life has changed since the days of working 14 hours in her own kitchen with the help of her mother and friends on occasion. Heide's first year or so in business began to create a challenge to simply keep up with the demand for her buttermints in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach.

She started getting calls from all over the world as residents would send and take their homemade buttermints to friends around the globe. Within another year, she had added secret ingredients to the recipe after years of making them herself to create the buttermints she now has on the market. She added various flavors and contracted with a local artist, Deborah Cavenaugh, to create the first appearance of a tin package to market her candy on a national level.

The work now is to always keep the buttermints flavor by using climate control and many other secrets that help the buttermints keep their flavor

regardless of the distance they travel as well as to create more of an experience than a purchase when buying and eating these highly addictive

candies. She has had glorious reviews handling weddings, Heart Ball Fund Dinners, Family Events, Parties, and so many more, not to mention the local

surfer she knows, not by name, but by his ongoing comments about the buttermints he buys so often.

The secret has been to gradually develop new ideas for the packaging as many new tins will hit the market in the coming months and to make sure she

continues to keep her organization together thru communication in each aspect of her business. The "just in time" inventory allows her buttermints

to ALWAYS remain fresh when they are purchased by the end consumer. Heide's long hours and perseverance have definitely been and will remain strong, noticed by everyone in the community as they talk to her daily about her buttermints and company. "It's exciting to watch the growth after so many years of struggling, but the friends I have met along the way always keep up my spirits. In fact, I now have many friends in states all over the country who notice our buttermints, hardly a day drifting by without a comment or testimonial being emailed or faxed. Years later, and I still think of the

time my daddy sat down with me to listen to my idea with a smile, acknowledging his support in his own way; my work will always remain a

tribute to him. I love you daddy."

Artwork for sale at: www.deborahcavenaugh.com

Deborah Cavenaugh is a self-taught artist. She began painting on Mother's Day in 1992 after her
children presented her with a box of watercolors they bought in a toy store.

In late 1993, Cavenaugh took a couple of the paintings she had made (mostly to make her children
happy) out from under the bed where she kept them stored. Her bold idea was to frame a few
pieces for her own bedroom. A local frame shop happened to send Cavenaugh a coupon. The
frame shop happened to be owned by a gallery.

The gallery owner happened to be in the frame shop that day, saw Cavenaugh's work, and put her under contract right then. The next week, three paintings sold.

Cavenaugh still didn't take it seriously, however. It wasn't until about six months later when she was offered a show at a popular local-art's restaurant, that Cavenaugh decided to paint as hard as she could for one year and see what would happen. That was in March of 1994.

Today, Cavenaugh has had over 50 shows. Galleries have represented her from Maine to Florida. Her work hangs in private collections across the country and in at least 11 foreign countries. Cavenaugh is a respected commission painter, loved for her portraits of families and the blessings she writes onto their paintings. She has a popular website with a store that offers about 200 different prints as well as an extensive card line. Her work has been featured in movies, magazines, large-scale festivals, and 23 images have been published by Gibson Cards in the Artist's Corner. She has been featured in newspapers, magazines, NPR, and on television.

Deborah Cavenaugh paints comfortable scenes and familiar images from life as we know it. She invites the viewer into her world - a world that they already recognize from their own. Cavenaugh's watercolors are colorful and complicated. She is known for the sayings she writes on each and every piece - sayings, Cavenaugh says, are "all about making life a little easier, a little more joyful, and helping us all to recognize that on any day, while the list of all that is going wrong could be written down, the list of all that is going right could never be finished.