Hey Y’all!
Welcome to Southern Bella Home. I’m Sharon and I am so very glad that you are here. I want to warmly invite you into our sweet, c. 1900 southern farmhouse. My husband and I have been lovingly working on its restoration since we bought it in the summer of 2016, and we are just beginning to create our homestead. Please come and spend a little girl time with me as I encourage you to love home even more than you already do, and to make it the most warm and comfortable place for your loved ones to gather. I think you will really enjoy your visit and I hope that your visit to the farmhouse will be a fun little break in your day. With each blog post, I will offer you something encouraging and uplifting to read, something beautiful to look at and some wonderfully creative ideas to try for yourself, all while sharing my heart on the many facets of balancing the homestead, loving the family and making time for yourself. I also hope to encourage you to set aside time for growth in your spiritual walk.
I am sure that we will become fast friends and hopefully you can find common ground with at least some parts of my story. I am a stay at home mom who has four sons that I gave birth to and one “bonus” son that I came to love after marrying my sweet husband in 2013. Prior to that, sadly, I went through a divorce after twenty-eight years of marriage. But God is the God of second chances and I feel so very blessed to have married my wonderful husband, Todd!
Something very important that you should know about me: The most pivotal event in my life was the day the Lord took my 16 year old son to heaven with a lightning strike in 2008, while he was mountain biking in Colorado. He was spending the summer working at a Christian youth camp there. As you can imagine, that was the day my life changed forever. I recently heard a quote that fits here perfectly. “You never get through with grief, you just get through grief”. That is so true. It never goes away. The pain remains just below skin deep at all times. It just waits to be bumped or scuffed. But depending on the Lord for help and healing have made all the difference for me. He most definitely sustains me and has renewed my joy.
During my 50 something years, I have covered a quite a few bases in life. I have been a single, working mom, I ran a home business and have home-schooled my family full of boys for over 26 years. I have one son who is a college graduate. He is married to my beautiful “daughter in love”, and they have an absolutely adorable little girl (my first grandchild)! He is now a cotton and peanut farmer on a large scale farm in South Georgia. I have two sons in college and the one in high school. They are my heart and I consider myself one blessed momma!
Like everyone does at some point or another, I have had to deal a few very tough struggles in my life. That is just the stuff life is made of. It is the ground that God uses to teach us so many important lessons. Tough things like dealing with a close family member with serious mental illness and all of the anguish that comes along with that, and watching my aging father go through serial strokes, cancer and heart problems and then the sadness of saying goodbye to him in 2011 were two especially difficult times in my life. So, if you have had to deal with either of those issues, I can relate.
On a very happy note, I hail from an amazing, and wonderfully imperfect, southern family that loves and serves Jesus wholeheartedly. More than once, we have been asked if we “take in” honorary members to our family, because quite simply, our family is a little crazy, but oh-so awesome, and friends have told us that they want to be a part of “us”. We love each other dearly and have way too much fun together.
My heart is, and always has been, lovingly drawn toward hearth and home. I enjoy the role of wife, mother, and keeper of the home. As a matter of fact, my goal is to single-handedly attempt to bring honor back to the long forsaken, vintage term, “Home-Maker”. (What a wonderful thing to make, right?)
I truly believe that the job of “making a home” for our family is such an important and joyful responsibility. In my opinion, home is the place that makes us who we are. For several years, I had a sign that read, “Home is where your story begins”. I love that! And it is so true! Recently, I passed it along to someone who had a brand new home and I thought they would enjoy it like I did. I think that it is such an honor and perk that as mommas, we get to create the atmosphere that will make beautiful stories for our families. What an awesome thought, right?
A few things that I LOVE to do: feather my nest, cook delicious and healthy meals and treats for my family, grow gardens full of flowers and veggies and herbs, keep chickens, ducks, rabbits (and any other animals that I can talk my hubby into), do all sorts of DIY projects, decorate for holidays and family celebrations, create opportunities to make family memories, go thrift store treasure hunting, yard-sale pickin’, and antiquing wherever there are some to be found. I love Jesus and find joy in seeing his hand in every part of our lives. I am thrilled to encourage women in the home! Any little bit of wisdom or experience that I can pass along to help wives and mommas fulfill their desired roles, makes my heart so happy.
So, there you are.
There is a snapshot of “me”. I have so much that I want to share with you in this blog.
Y’ all, please stop by often so that you don’t miss a single thing. First off, I ask you to sign up to be on the most fun email list ever! I want you to know when I share something new around the farmhouse, recipes, fun decorating tips and ideas, seasonal home tours, encouraging devotional thoughts, DIY inspiration, gardening projects, homesteading trial and error, my parenting mistakes and successes, homeschooling advice, along with some product reviews that you might enjoy, my original artwork and other original products such as e-books, t-shirts, but best of all, there will be GIVE A WAYS!!!
I pray that you will enjoy what you find here,
I hope you will come often
and stay a while,
and when you are here… as we say here in the south… Y’ all come on in and make yourself at home!
