Holly Bantique: Founder of Calique Paperie & Design and Little Lemon Cookies
Female Founder Features: Chapter 1
The smell of sweet, buttery goodness fills the kitchen. Holly takes a deep breath. Heavenly. She watches as the KitchenAid whips the ingredients into a smooth, creamy mixture, just the beginning of her signature lemon cookies.
How lovely would it be to bottle the scent up into a candle to enjoy whenever I want? A butter and sugar dream.
Baking is wonderfully meditative. You follow the recipe exactly as outlined, each measurement precise. There’s something comforting about knowing exactly what comes next. You measure. Mix. Wait. And slowly, a handful of ingredients that aren't much on their own become something entirely new.
Like magic.
For a little while at least, the kitchen is completely hers.
Holly Bantique is a mom, wife, and the founder of two very different businesses: Calique Paperie & Design, a custom stationery and event design company, and Little Lemon Cookies, the baking business responsible for the lemon cookies currently cooling in her kitchen.
If those two businesses seem worlds apart, Holly sees a common thread. She describes herself as a “builder at heart.”
She loves the beginning of an idea, when something exists only in her head, and she gets to figure out what it could become.
It Started With Rose Gold and Navy: The Origins of Calique Paperie & Design
The idea for Calique Paperie & Design came while Holly was planning her gender reveal. She wasn’t going for anything extravagant, but she wanted the details to feel cohesive and intentional. And she knew exactly what she wanted: rose gold and navy.
Who knew that would be so hard to find?!
Most stores carried the traditional pink and blue, and custom stationery was primarily geared toward weddings, which, of course, came with a wedding-sized price tag. So Holly found herself piecemealing everything together from different stores and making what she couldn’t find herself.
The same frustration followed her through her baby shower, her son’s birthday parties, and other celebrations. Eventually, she had a thought: I can’t be the only one.
She saw a gap between generic party supplies and expensive custom stationery. And that gap became Calique Paperie & Design.
Today, Calique specializes in custom stationery and curated celebration details designed to bring intention and magic to every event.
Serving Up Comfort and Joy: When a Christmas Tradition Turned Into a Business
Little Lemon Cookies started a little differently. Every year, Holly, her mom, and her sister get together to bake Christmas cookies. Her mom makes the traditional family recipes, her sister makes sugar cookies, and Holly is the one who likes to switch things up.
One year, her husband requested something lemon-flavored. So Holly made a lemon cookie, and a few made their way to her husband’s coworkers at the hospital.
They wanted more.
They even offered to pay her. And this went on for years.
By Christmas 2025, the requests were getting relentless. But this time, Holly had already built Calique. She’d started a company from the ground up once. She knew she could do it again. Little Lemon Cookies was born with customers already waiting.
Today, Little Lemon Cookies is a cottage bakery based in Riverview, Florida, serving up small-batch cookies made with simple ingredients.
Drowning in the Background
There’s a lot you don’t see when you’re looking at someone’s business from the outside. And that’s certainly true for Holly.
She runs two businesses on her own while constantly switching between mom, work, business, and family mode. Somewhere in there, she has to remember to eat lunch.
She built both companies from scratch, figuring out what she didn’t know, learning new skills, making mistakes, and then figuring out how to fix them. There’s always something else she could be doing. Sometimes her husband has to remind her that she said she’d stop working at 6 p.m.
And she’s building all of this during a major transition for her family. Her husband is in school to become a physician assistant and won’t be able to work during the program. Holly is incredibly excited for him, but with her businesses still young, she knew she’d need to bring in a more predictable income.
At first, she thought that meant going back to full-time work. She spent hours applying and networking, but nothing felt like the right fit. She’d left full-time employment to spend more time with her son and didn’t want to give that up.
Eventually, she connected with someone through LinkedIn and landed a flexible, part-time role that requires roughly 10 hours a week. She genuinely enjoys the work and, perhaps even more importantly, feels like she belongs there. The steady paycheck gives her family some financial predictability while she gives her businesses time to grow.
Building in Breathing Room
With everything on her plate, Holly realized the way she was running her businesses wasn’t sustainable.
She was used to saying “yes” to every opportunity. Need a rush stationery order for a wedding? Done. Same-day cookie order? No problem. Even if it meant staying up until midnight to bake.
Eventually, she started asking herself, What happens if I’m sick? What if I go on vacation or simply need a day off?
So she began building more breathing room into both businesses.
She extended Calique’s timelines to give herself more flexibility when fulfilling orders. At Little Lemon Cookies, custom orders now require advance notice, and smaller orders are only available through Friday Batch Bakes.
Holly also had to change the way she responded when she hit her own limits.
She used to respond to stress by pushing through it. Even when she hit a wall, she’d immediately switch tasks or move from one business to the other instead of actually giving herself a break.
But pushing through only made things worse. She’s learned to recognize the signs that she’s crossed the line from everyday overwhelm into I need to stop. She starts to feel like she’s drowning. Panic and anxiety creep in. Her work gets sloppy, and she gets frustrated more easily.
Now, she steps away.
She might go outside, move her body, or do something she enjoys that has absolutely nothing to do with either business. Most mornings, Holly makes time for yoga, Pilates, or a mix of both, which helps her feel more centered as she moves into the rest of her day.
Stepping Out of a Box She Didn’t Know She Was In
For a long time, Holly thought she knew exactly what her life would look like. She’d stay at the same company until retirement and do fun things, like travel, on the side. It didn’t feel like settling. She was happy with that life for a while. Her career had even become part of her identity.
Then she became a mom.
After dealing with postpartum and severe burnout, Holly stepped away from full-time work. That decision eventually led her to start Calique, but it also forced her to confront parts of herself she hadn’t realized were there.
“I am learning to accept and love myself,” Holly shared with me. “And I never thought that was an issue until I had to go through all of those other things to get me here.”
Holly hadn’t realized how much she’d bought into a traditional idea of what her life was supposed to look like. Dreaming bigger, or simply dreaming differently, didn’t even feel like an option. She’d shut down those sparks of ideas before she had the chance to entertain them.
People who love her have jokingly called her weird or pointed out that she thinks differently and enjoys things other people find boring. Now, Holly sees those differences as her superpowers. She’s learning to fully embrace them and shares that journey on Instagram, where she “journals out loud” about her experiences.
The more Holly started to understand herself, the more she realized she didn’t fit into that traditional box.
She’s also giving herself permission to define success differently.
We’ve all been exposed to business owners online who talk about scaling, scaling, and, oh, did we mention scaling?
But Holly doesn’t need either business to become a multimillion-dollar company to feel successful. She wants room for her businesses and the rest of her life. And right now, she’s perfectly happy being a solopreneur.
For Holly, success doesn’t have to mean constantly getting bigger. It can mean building businesses that support the life she wants to live.
Holly’s Next Chapter
Right now, Holly and her family are in a transitional season. She’ll continue building Little Lemon Cookies and Calique Paperie & Design while working part-time and supporting her husband through school.
Her husband is expected to graduate in 2028, and Holly is already curious about what life might look like then. What could she do with more time and capacity to give her businesses?
For now, she’s excited to find out where all of this takes her.
If you want to connect with Holly or check out her businesses, you can find her here:
Email: hollybantique@gmail.com
