From candlemaking to interior design, this mom of three and creative guru, Meghan Palabrica, spreads her light by following a dream.
We continue our Moms We ♥️ Love series with Maplewood mom-of-three Meghan Palabrica. During the pandemic, Meghan found her passion, launching a candle-making business that leveraged her retail background and passion for creative endeavors. And that was just the beginning.
Meghan Palabrica and her family moved to Maplewood in 2019, just before Covid shut the world down. Utilizing her downtime, she taught herself the art of making candles and started JB Home Company. That was when neighborhood friends began dropping off bottles for Meghan to cut into candle vessels.
Simultaneously, she and her husband were also renovating the Maplewood house they had moved into one year prior. This prompted Meghan to reach out to a friend she had made in town, hoping to utilize her highly regarded design-build company, Studio Envie. But what started as help with interior design ended with a serious question from her friend once their projects were complete:
“You like this! Would you like to work as a part-time project manager for my firm?”
And a project manager was born–with a twist. In this role, Meghan combined her newfound love of interior design/construction/renovations with her past career in retail at Ralph Lauren. They recently launched an ecommerce website focusing on furniture, design, and decorating for people’s homes in the community. Their end goal is to be a one-stop-shop whether you want to decorate a room, start a new build, need a major kitchen renovation, or simply need a one-of-a-kind handmade candle. None of this would’ve been possible had she never moved to Maplewood.
When did you decide to move to Maplewood?
“I was pregnant with my second child and knew it was time to leave Brooklyn Heights when three bedrooms really didn’t exist in our price range. In retrospect we felt fortunate that we timed it to move right before Covid. We were settled when a lot of people were looking to get out. The timing was right.”
Why did you decide to call Maplewood “home?”
“We fell in love with Maplewood and liked how close it was to the city for my husband, from a commuting perspective. And we visited the town on a weekend where they had this awesome annual music festival. Plus, Maplewood is like a cool historic-ish community that is super diverse with homes that are all different from each other. I loved how we could walk to our downtown, which I wanted moving from Brooklyn. It kind of checked all the boxes.”
How does living in Maplewood inspire you and your work?
“Well, we’re a group of four moms from the community and we just try to balance it. We find that a lot of people are in similar positions to us where we don’t have family support that is super close by. So the families and friends that we’ve become close with have kind of become those substitute families for us here. We get together with them all the time. Our kids are growing up together and that’s just really special. And my business is geared towards helping all the great people in the community that I love.”
What’s one piece of advice would you give to other moms?
“Snuggle! I saw something the other day that was just like, “slow down”. So if you have a kid who just comes up and gives you a hug, let them hug you for as long as they want to because they need that physical contact. So yeah. Snuggle and don’t let go.”
Want to find a place you ♥️? Get in touch to schedule your Suburbs Strategy session.
