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It just makes scents Reunited couple finds happiness in home-based business and each other. STORY: ROXANNE BROWN
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≈ PHOTOS: ANTHONY RAO
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iving frugally, clean, and happy are the main goals for Ken and Alex O’Bright of Fruitland Park. They found that out serendipitously. In fact, it is how most things in their lives seem to happen, including how their company Belladonna Apothecary came to be, how they ended up back together after being married to each other and then going their own separate ways for 15 years, and how they found their perfect home. “All these things just brought us to this point. It’s like the universe was grooming us and that’s ok, because we are always creating something in some aspect of our lives. Every day is something new,” Alex says. Before founding their ETSY-based shop, Alex traveled the country for 18 years for TJX Corporation, launching Home Goods, Marshall’s, and TJ Maxx store openings. One day, while on a trip with her boss, she unexpectedly called it quits. “I was on the road 48 weeks a year. Finally, about three years ago, I was kind of burnt out from traveling. I was never home, and I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore,’ so I told my boss, “I’m done,” Alex says. “It was never a planned thing that I was gonna quit and I was scared to death going from a reliable income every single week to being without that safety net and realizing it’s all on us.” Ken, who has worked at Disney for 13 years, says, “It came as quite a shock.” Soon after Alex’s resignation, the two were out shopping when she came out of a popular beauty store with what Ken considered over-priced soaps. It got him thinking, and the universe must have liked his idea, because later, after frying bacon at home, he experienced an undeniable “ah-ha” moment. “As a guy, I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I cannot see spending $80 on six bars of soap,’ and that’s what led me to think of reusing and recycling the waste bacon grease I saw sitting there, rendering it down to a cake of lard and researching YouTube on how to make a bar of soap,” says Ken, laughing about how the first bar of soap he ever made was from bacon grease. Today, the soaps they sell at Belladonna – some Vegan and none bacon – are made from all-natural ingredients, including French lavender, pine tar, patchouli, rose petals, pumpkin, apples, honey, oatmeal, goat’s milk, bayberry, sage, sandalwood, and many more.
