Christine Marie: The Ginger Bread Story

How I Did It

Making Sweet Dreams Come True

by Christine Marie

The Gingerbread Story

Mrs. Gingerbread was baking cookies one night. When she smiled and waved at the moon. The moon shot magic into her hands. And her bowl and her apron and spoon. The magic went into all that she touched. She couldn’t believe her own eyes. The cookies she baked—they started to talk!
A magical gingerbread surprise.

And so it happened, once upon a time, that a former kindergarten teacher with a dream gave birth to a sweet new line of children’s characters called “The Gingerbread Kookies.”

There’s Goober, Gumdrop, Cupcake, Lollipop, Cornbread and more – all soft puppets which are brought to life through the magic of ventriloquism. Mrs. Gingerbread’s first DVD, called Alphabet Fun and Games is the first in a series of new interactive videos.

Actually the idea to start an educational company named Gingerbread came to me a few years ago. I was a single mom and one of my children had ADHD, so I studied research to figure out how to best help him.

The result was a degree in psychology, a job as a kindergarten teacher and then a career teaching workshops to parents on how to teach their children to read and other things.

This soon turned into my own business that I ran from a Victorian farmhouse in Michigan while I home-schooled my children. During this time, I was able to develop products and create a catalog that was decorated with the theme of gingerbread and apples.

At one point I had 800 sales reps and I did the training, marketing, product development, everything and I was overwhelmed.

The response to my project was fantastic, moms loved the gingerbread-themed materials, and I sold out of my parenting tapes. However, I didn’t know how to raise money and I didn’t have a savings, so when I went through some business difficulties, I ultimately went out of business, went bankrupt, lost my beautiful farm and a lifetime of dreams with it. Or so I thought.

My children and I sold everything at an auction, and took what we had left with us on a train and moved to California to start over. After a rollercoaster of drama, tragedy and poverty…I got the courage to ask a TV station owner if I could host a little show on his channel. He said yes, but he couldn’t pay me. I created the show myself, and remembering the sweet response to the gingerbread theme from my past business, I called the show The Gingerbread House.

The show was co-hosted by my Gingerbread Kookie puppets and we also had guests on the show. I couldn’t afford to pay guests to come in so we even grabbed people walking by the station – “Hey! You want to be on TV right now?” I’d have totally unprepared strangers helped me to silly kid projects and sometimes it turned out hilarious.

However, I was so penniless at that time that I didn’t even own a pair of earrings. Before my show, I would use Elmer’s Glue to glue heart-shaped buttons to my earlobes. I had no introductory graphics, no music, no set – they just turned the camera on live and I started sharing cute ideas for moms, grandmas and kids.

Even dads watched the show which surprised me. Well, thanks to the station owner named Ray Horn, I was “discovered” in my ragged circumstances hosting my humble show at this tiny but lovely TV station by a Hollywood producer named Tolga Katas. Tolga was charmed by the content and agreed to take my little show concept and turn it into a gorgeous production and line of DVD’s for moms and kids to watch together.

Best of all, he didn’t even charge me a penny up front. And to make it all the more storybook-amazing, in the process, Tolga swept me off my feet with his kindness, brilliance, creativity, and funny personality, and we are now more than business partners, we are a couple! Someone said to me, “If your life story was Pretty Woman, you would be Julia Roberts and Tolga’s like your Richard Gere.”

So that’s how it all started. I now have a national distribution deal for my educational videos, called Gingerbread, which were shot and edited right from my home! On the DVD’s, I am the host, Mrs. Gingerbread, and also Ms. Ginger B. Read - get it?