Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching! You know we love a list here at The Southern Mercantile, and we love Pinterest for great ideas and inspiration! So, here’s our Top 5 list for Valentine’s Day ideas, sparked by our latest Pinterest board, “Bless Your HEART!” On this board we’ve gathered some of the cutest suggestions on Pinterest to celebrate Valentine’s Day with all your loved ones!

Look for all these ideas and more on The Southern Mercantile’s Pinterest board, “Bless Your HEART.” Be sure to follow us on Pinterest - maybe you’ll find a new tradition or two to celebrate the day dedicated to LOVE!

Seems like wise advice, right? I would try to apply such goal-setting principles, with some success, but I never felt like I was really accomplishing my resolutions. I always ended up feeling like I was failing because I never completely met my goals. For several years, I made resolutions, knowing I would not keep them, just to be able to say I at least made them. Last year, I basically resolved to keep doing what I was already doing! ​

I'm currently reading a devotional on my Bible app called "Breathing Room" by Sandra Stanley, and on day 3, she says, "Knowing that your time is limited forces you to limit what you do with your time." ​I want to enjoy the time I have with my children, and I realize my parents won't be around forever, so I want to give them time together, too. And, that's true about all my family! I enjoy the work that I do, even on busy, frazzled days,  but it's the reminders that the work I do matters to others that I really appreciate. It's the little moments that mean the most in each day, and I am going to try to cultivate more of those moments. I'm trying to cut out the things that suck up my time and zap my energy. 

Happy New Year from the Beech Street Bungalow!  This holiday season has been a busy one for us, but we are finally settling in nicely.  In case you didn't know, we now have a porch!  It is far from being completed, but it sure does make this house start to look like a home!  Look how pretty it was in the snow!

We managed to complete a majority of our list, with only a few minor projects left to accomplish.  Some of the things left to do are important, some are not.  Either way, I'm feeling good about our progress!  One of the most helpful things we were able to do was to finish the closet in the "boy" and "girl" room. ​

The closet in the girl room was a simple project.  The old closet in this room jutted out into the main hallway.  We knew we wanted to remove this obstruction to improve the flow. We were lucky enough to have a convenient place to add another closet --where a small hallway lead from the bedroom to the guest bathroom.  It is simple, but I think it turned out nice!  

​Nesting feels good, nesting feels right, especially in the start of a new year!  Though you may not be in a similar situation as me, maybe you should nest (or re-nest) a little!  Pick a closet or cabinet and go through it--donate or throw away what you don't need, refold or reorganize it!  There is just something refreshing about starting the new year in a clean and tidy home.  Home is such a special place to be, we should enjoy every minute of it.  I am finally getting to a place where I walk in and feel at home--not at a construction site.  It is my happy place.  I hope your home is your happy place, and if there is anything that you can do to make it happier, then do it!  I'll just be over here nesting away.

​Check out more Beech Street Bungalow renovation stories here!

I have been sitting at the computer this afternoon, trying to prepare a blog post for this week.  We’ve got a great blog schedule prepped for this year full of new recipes, gardening tips and more home renovation stories, but we didn’t have anything that seemed just right to kick the year off.  After typing and deleting several starts to several different topics, I decided just to take a look back at 2017 and what an incredible journey it was for our little company and all that are a part of it!

​2017 was a year full of travel, meeting new folks and learning a new side to our business, all while running our brick and mortar store in our little home town of Ocilla.  The Southern Merc girls hit the road this year, managing to travel to ten markets across the southeast.  We had so much fun meeting new people and spreading the love of the south!

​The time we put in to planning and preparing for these shows was a little more than I bargained for, but the end results were so worth it!  

​It has been exciting to watch our little movement grow, and we are so thankful to all of you that have supported us this past year! We’ve also continued to learn more and more about the online side of our business and have become busier with photoshoots, keeping up with social media, and making improvements to our website and online store.  None of this would have happened without the help of my awesome team and their willingness to step outside of their comfort zones and continue to learn and grow with me in this crazy business!

​In July we opened another retail location in Nashville, GA.  Our mini Southern Mercantile is located inside a new store called Shoppes on Davis.  It has been so fun to have a presence in another small, southern town and we are looking forward to growing with them in 2018!  

​We have been blessed to continue to be very involved with our community at home through our retail efforts and our continuing work with Called to Care.  Our downtown shop, The Shoppes at Fourth and Cherry, continues to be a gathering place and safe haven for our community members.  We never get tired of celebrating birthdays, new marriages and new babies, or grieving with those who have lost loved ones, are fighting illness, or just listening to those who are struggling with life’s difficulties.  My husband, Matt was re-elected this past fall as our Mayor, and I couldn’t be more proud.  He has been such an asset to our little town and is working so hard to make improvements both in infrastructure and in business and economic development.  We are both so proud to call Ocilla our home and hope to see it grow in a mighty way over the next four years!  

We celebrated a very special wedding in 2017 as our sweet Katelyn married her sweetheart, Jake in June. This special couple has been a blessing to our community and we have been thrilled to add them to our family!  For those of you that don't know, Katelyn has been working with us behind the scenes this year with content management and design, and we are excited for her to be even more involved in 2018. 

In other big and exciting news, Katelyn AND Jorjanne are expecting!! We can’t wait to add two Southern Merc babies to the fold and are looking forward to celebrating the arrival of baby girl Jenkins and baby boy Paulk.  Don’t worry, we’ll be sharing pictures!

​While 2017 was a great year, it was a challenging year for me.  I don’t remember a time in my life when I felt more exhausted, more unorganized and more out of my element.  I’ve spent most of the last 14 years running my retail shop and becoming pretty good at it.  I thrive on creating beautiful displays for my shop windows and for my merchandise.  We host events like no other stores around us.  I love knowing my customers and keeping up with what’s going on in their lives.  I am really good at running my shop.  I hope that doesn’t sound too arrogant, but it is about the only thing I can brag on with confidence!  With that being said, starting this online business has been a huge challenge for me because I am not good at it, and I don’t like not being good at things.  I have struggled to learn the online shopping world as I, myself, am not an online shopper.  Tara and I have struggled with learning the ins and outs of building and maintaining a website as neither of us is very techno-savvy.  We have struggled to figure out a good system for inventory management.  We’ve pushed ourselves to stay on top of social media and engagement. But, the hardest thing for me this year has been being away from my shop.  I miss my team members when I am gone, I miss my customers, and I don’t have as much time and creative energy to put in to making my shop the best it can be.  While I have loved every minute of meeting all of you and making new friends, I sometimes failed at the balancing act of splitting my time and creative resources between two things.  Because of all of these things, I am feeling pretty good about moving on to a new year.  

​I am looking forward to 2018.  Looking forward to having two years of The Southern Mercantile under my belt.  Looking forward to being a little more organized and having the time to get back to my creative roots.  Looking forward to feeling a little more confident as I navigate this online world! There has been a steep learning curve and a lot of frustration in figuring this all out, but I am looking forward to moving on and to sharing even more of our Southern lives and traditions with all of you.  I love new beginnings and a fresh start.  2018 is sure to bring more travel, more new friends, more learning, and hopefully more growth for our business. I am ready to meet new challenges and new victories head on! So, here’s to 2018, may it be filled with lots of fun, happiness and prosperity for us all!