HOUSTON – It’s homecoming season here in the Houston area and by Texas tradition that means it is time to get those mums and garters together.
“If someone had asked me would I be doing this I would have told them no,” says Cindy Hooks as she stands among about three-dozen giant mums on display.
For the last 20 or so years, every fall Cindy’s house is taken over by mums, mums, and more mums.
“It snowballed so fast from doing just a handful to quite a few.”
“My daughter went through Katy High School and she had mums, then I had three sons following her and I made their mums for them and the following year several of their football friends asked me to make their mums… and then the following year I had Taylor [High School] football players show up at my door… I asked how on earth did they know that I made mums and they said that their girlfriends had friends at Katy [High School] and they wanted my mums.”
With that the business was born. Though the style, size and decorative items have changed over the years, the basic process of creating a mum has not.
“I sell a basic mum and then they build what they want on it… you pick out what size you want for the girl… one ribbon will have his name one will have her name on it and they’re supposed to select trinkets for both of them, it’s supposed to represent him and her.”
While the seasonal business has been a success Cindy admits she never had any kind of plan for it.
“What I didn’t expect is for it to last this long… it keeps growing and it’s fun!”
“I do Woodlands, Pearland this year, the Cy-Fair school district… I’ve shipped them to Dallas and College Station.”
“I have a sister that helps, a daughter that helps, two daughter-in-laws and a dear friend that’s helped me since the very beginning.”
All she has to do is simply keep up with the mum trends.
“Now it’s all silk with the students but also they’ve grown! This used to be considered a big mum and I had three sizes now I have eight sizes and I even did a Texas shaped mum this year… and then the garters have changed. They used to be small, a lot shorter and then the students started coming in saying ‘can you put a little bit bigger flower in that one’ and so it just has grown, grown, grown.”
Cindy’s mums cost between $50 and $250 based purely on how many trinkets and add-ons the student wants to include.