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 of five years. I went through a divorce after twenty-eight years of marriage. I have since remarried my wonderful husband, Todd and feel so very blessed!
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. As you can imagine, that was the day my life changed forever.
During my “50 something” years, I have covered a few bases. I have been a single, working mom, ran a home business and have home-schooled my boys for twenty-three 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 farm in South Georgia, that belongs to his wife’s family. I have a son in college and the other two are in high school. They are my heart and I am one blessed momma!
I have had to deal a few very tough struggles in my life, such as dealing with a close family member with mental illness and all of the anguish that comes along with that. I also watched my aging father go through strokes, cancer and heart problems and then said goodbye to him in 2011. So, if you have had to deal with either of those issues, I can relate.
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 “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”.
For some, this is a derogatory phrase which they feel degrades women, but to the contrary, I think 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. I had a sign that read, “Home is where your story begins”, until just recently, when I passed it along to someone who had a brand new home and I thought they would enjoy it. I absolutely believe what that sign said. And, 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 both flowers and veggies, keep chickens and any other animals that I can talk my hubby into, “grow” our homestead, 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”!
