MATTHEW BURNETTE

Staff Writer

From the smell of a scented candle in the air to the cozy atmosphere, Southern Sundays, a new home décor store located at 320b Murfreesboro Hwy., immediately strikes you as a place where you can slow down and spend some time.

That’s the atmosphere owner Elizabeth Sunday intended when opening the shop back in June.

“I wanted to bring something that the community didn’t have, and it’s something that I’ve always liked to do, to have little bits and pieces that make your home a home,” she explained. “I wanted to have a place where it was affordable to everybody, so there’s a price range from I think the cheapest thing in the store is $2.99 to I don’t even think I have anything over $100 in the store.”

Sunday, along with her husband and son, moved to Manchester in January of this year when her husband accepted a transfer to the Morrison branch of McNeilus Steel, the company he worked for in Minnesota where they are originally from.

Despite not originally being from Coffee County, Sunday says that it has been great getting to know people in town.

“People come in and they’re like ‘Wow, you just moved here and you opened a business. You’re ambitious!’” she said. “It was a risk because when you build a business it’s word of mouth or it’s people you’ve had in your corner for years, so all of the advertising and all of the stuff I’ve had to do on my own organically because I didn’t know anybody.”

“It’s been great,” she added. “I have regulars from Estill Springs, Winchester, Tullahoma and here in town, so it’s been awesome.”

Sunday worked in government for 20+ years and was a 911 dispatcher in Rochester, Minnesota, the third largest city in Minnesota. She continued her work after moving to Manchester but decided that the field wasn’t where she wanted to be anymore.

“I’ve always been kind of behind the scenes at my previous jobs, so it’s really just getting to know the people in the community and becoming part of the community like sponsoring a softball league team this fall and seeing how appreciative the people were that I chose to sponsor their team,” she said. “It’s been great being a part of something bigger than myself.”

Though her 16-year-old son and her husband do help with the store when they can, Sunday runs the store on her own in order to keep overhead low but hopes to eventually start adding some employees, specifically younger community members.

“My goal is to give opportunities to the youth to show them entrepreneurship,” she explained. “That’s really where I want to go is just to get that opportunity to the kids because I know when we moved down my son, he’s worked since he was 14, and to find a job down here was really tough, so I really want to be able sooner rather than later to be able to offer an opportunity to some high school kids to find a passion and see if maybe in the future this i what they want to do.”

Being a part of the Historic Manchester Square was also a goal of Sunday’s since the ‘Square culture” wasn’t really something the family got to experience much when they were back in Minnesota.

“It wasn’t easy finding a space, but I met Mark (Williams) by putting a post out on one of the Manchester Forums and said I’m looking for a space, and he reached out to me and said he had something, so it was good because I was knocking on doors, trying to find out why Henley’s was still empty and tried to get in contact with that owner,” she recalled noting how awesome it was to find her location.

Southern Sundays operates with the motto that every day can be a like a Sunday: slow, relaxing and enjoyable.

“We’re in the south. Yes, I’m from the Midwest, but we really wanted this life,” explained Sunday. “It was something that my husband and I were hoping for and praying for to have an opportunity to come down south and it was provided to us, so I wanted people to be able to take a moment and stroll just to relax a little bit.”

The logo for the shop is a honeybee and a sunflower which Sunday created in honor of her older brother Gary Schroeder Jr., a police officer in Minnesota who unfortunately passed away from PTSD related suicide.

“On his hobby farm, he raised honeybees, and the sunflower represents just beauty and a reason to smile, and he would send me pictures of flowers and just say ‘a little something to brighten your day.’”

Also in honor of her brother, Sunday raised money for the Out of the Darkness Walk that is coming up in September. She hopes to eventually hopes to work with the local police department through some mental health connections that she has.

“My brother was a police officer in a small community, and they’re important, and I think they get forgotten a lot, so really that’s a place that I want to touch a lot on,” she said.

While the goal for every business is to make money, Sunday says that she doesn’t expect anyone to come into the store just to buy something.

“I just want it to be a space where you can say, ‘Oh, there’s this cute little shop where I can buy something for my mom or my sister or my best friend’s having a bad day and I want to get her something cute to brighten her day,’” she explained. “That’s really what the space is about: giving an opportunity for the people of the community.”

“We’re all so busy and having to travel to Murfreesboro to find something is not always accessible to some, so I just really wanted something here for our community and to bring people into our community and grow the square,” added Sunday.

“They can stroll the square on a Saturday afternoon and find me and Owen’s and Wisteria Hill and Reese’s Genes and all the little shops and make a day of it with their friends and really take the time to slow down.”