About

Hello, welcome, and picture this in your mind if you will:

…a rural, sunshine-splashed, extra large neighborhood with small towns surrounded by communities of side-by-side small farms, strung together by tree-limb-shading, dirt roads dissecting forests and open fields.

In rural South Carolina, this was my life where everyone basically knew everyone. You couldn’t get away with anything, because your parents knew all your friends’ parents. It was a place of hard work, safety, and numerous adventures with brothers, sisters, cousins (who were like more brothers and sisters), and friends.

It was work and school during the week, long Sundays with fried chicken, homemade biscuits, and long, beaded glasses of iced tea, front porch swings with chatter, and sometimes fights. But it was all good as it was permeated with the atmosphere of love. Those memories are always alive and fresh, coloring my world with the gladness of those times. In my mind I can still hear the voices, words of family and friends that have passed on, painting my world.

Hi, I’m Della: author, wife, mother, and grandmother. Each of these roles I dearly love. I’d like to say to know me is to love me, (some people might disagree, and I smile here), but I normally let people make their own minds up.

Why my blog is called Romance & the Homestead: I’ve learned to be myself and tell myself is it okay to love the things I love, regardless of approval from others. So, here on my blog I want to share the honesty in that, and that it’s okay to love and pull together the things in your life that you dearly love to make you happy. It took me a long time to get from that first rural area, through difficulties, to here. But I did, because I never gave up on my dream to live on a farm again, eat fresh food, as I did in that rural area, love my family, and read and write books till my hearts content. So here is where I live with my husband I fondly call “Homie,” my chickens, my Chihuahuas, and write all my books. And I love it!

Notwithstanding, my life today, either looking at a computer screen, writing, or staring down one of Homie’s garden rows, is filled with much the same: husband, children, a grandchild, and some of those same friends and family.  Trying to recreate some of those rural times with my family is always fresh fun, sharing their heritage; giving my children a deeper, and wider, foundation of who they are. Heritage is powerful. So are words.

So, here on the homestead I pull together the essence of my life, the things I love. Books; fresh, nourishing food straight from the garden, packed with nutrition and sunshine; my family, my faith, my home, my chickens and Chihuahuas, and the God given freedom to become one woman, beneath the wings of Grace, full of words, thoughts, and love.

Writing! I love writing, sharing, and becoming a self-published author. Words are powerful, and I want to assure you I always want to paint, with great, colorful, and positive words, pictures in your mind that will amuse you, challenge you, make you laugh, and sometimes even cry (in a good way here.)

We all paint pictures with our words, not only in our minds, but also in the minds of others, whether they are good or bad. Some paint hilarity, not only in people’s mind, but also their hearts.

Proverbs 17: 22 “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

God spoke the world into existence and at the end of the sixth day He said everything was good. And it was…perfect. He painted the whole world and universe with His words, which came from His thoughts and His heart.

Whether written or spoken, we all paint pictures with our words, whether poetic, literary, everyday language, or cursing, maligning, or untruths…we paint. As we speak, we paint and create blessings or cursing.

I don’t know about you, but, with regret, I’ve done both. But with hard work, I’ve tried to change the last.

So, to you, from Romance & the Homestead, I hope my blog posts and books paint you many blessings colored with life, love, the pursuit of good food, gladness, and pulling together, into one place, the things in your heart as YOU paint your world with LOVE.

With Love from Romance & The Homestead,

Della