“Fairhope Pretties started a year ago when I was a bored housewife and didn’t have anything to do. I was an international flight attendant and retired. We moved to Orange Beach first then moved to Fairhope. I started making these for myself in September of last year and gave a few to friends, then people started asking me to make them. They won the best new product of 2020 in the horticulture industry. Better Homes and Gardens contacted us about doing a story, but then the Coronavirus hit. At the Junior League Christmas show, we sold 600 in two days. We are now in 40 or 50 stores in states across the country.

Four years ago, I saw girls who put bouncy balls on bamboo skewers and sold them to raise money to go to camp. I thought I could gaudied it up. They are decorations for plants made from old door knobs from the U.K. and India. I don’t know what I am going to get in each order. I clean them and seal them and put the stones on the top. Then I clean them and seal them. The beads are Murano Italian glass, Swarovski crystals, and Tibetan silver. I buy tens of thousands and import them from around the world. There are no two alike. I have always done things like this. I owned two boutiques in Georgia. We made our own soaps and bath bombs and had a store for that. My husband told me we aren’t opening another store for Fairhope Pretties. They are sold around here at Southern Veranda and Street’s.

In 2011, my little sister passed away from diabetes. She was 49 and my only sibling. It was horrible. We lived in Atlanta and she lived in Arkansas. She had to move back home with my parents. My mother couldn’t handle her death and she shot and killed herself three years later. My dad died a year and a half later of a broken heart. I lost my family in seven years. We moved to Fairhope and I had time to start thinking about this. I never went to therapy and needed something to do to help me heal. There is not a day I don’t think about my family, but I have an amazing husband who supports me and a son. I have to go on.”