when your home is your canvas
…bring May flowers…
Isn’t this an adorable door hanging? I think so!
Took my son to the pediatric dentist, which is always great fun, since everyone there is great, so it’s like a mutual admiration society when we go there! My buddy, Christa, the hygienist, shared this picture of Ginger the hygienist’s front door and the adorable floral display she made with an umbrella.
Perfect for spring! Great job, Ginger!
Sometimes, uniformity and repetition is perfection. For one week in springtime, my street is that perfection.
Robin’s egg blue. Sky blue. Tiffany box blue. I love all of those gorgeous blue hues. But there aren’t really any rooms in my home where an entirely blue room would work well. So I decided to create a little vignette at the bottom of the stairs that isn’t really part of any room, but the perfect place for a splash of robin’s egg blue.
And because I have a bird problem, when I think about robin’s egg blue, I start getting all literal, thinking about eggs and nests and feathers and birdhouses and branches…need I say more? I’ll just show you…
I decided to create a vignette that brought a bit of the outdoors in. Most of the items in the vignette I already owned. Only had to purchase the nest, eggs, and feather, so this whole arrangement cost me less than $5.
This small square glass plate is from my old house, where I used it as a candle dish on the mantel. I think it set me back a whopping $1.99 at Home Goods.
Then there’s this gorgeous blue & black floral bowl. Another inexpensive Home Goods find.
My favorite part of the vignette is the nest with eggs, and the branch with a feather. I simply hot glued the eggs into the nest, then tied a little floral wire on the back of the nest so I could hang it on a nail.
When I got the bug to do this project and needed a tree branch, I took a walk on the path that goes around our neighborhood, which backs up to a tree-lined corn field. Whenever I ride my bike along the path, I have to dodge fallen branches, so I figured I’d find something good there, and I wasn’t disappointed. I hammered some nails strategically at the joints of the branches, so I wouldn’t have to nail through the branch itself, and risk splitting it.
To give the illusion of a bird, I used a colorful feather, which is actually a Christmas ornament, tucked behind the branch. Who would decorate their Christmas tree with bird feathers? Me! Guilty as charged!
Rather than try to hide the thermostat, I just incorporated it into the vignette, and it more or less becomes unnoticeable.
On the little black table sits a metal candy dish with a bird perched on it, a picture frame, and the lid from a china teapot. Yes, that still is the fake photo in the frame from when I first bought it, even though I’ve had it for a solid 4 years! Eventually I’ll get around to finding just the right photo!
The teapot lid has a story to it as well. Someone – a child or pet, but I can’t quite recall – accidentally sent the whole thing flying across the room on a collision course with a tile floor, and I had to piece together the lid with ceramic glue…now that was a project! But I loved it so much, I couldn’t bear to call it a loss and toss it in the trash. It lives again in this fun vignette, full of robin’s egg blue.
Do you have something in your home that’s inspired by good ole’ Ruby Redbreast?
PS…this post was inspired by Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors…she’s having a Robin’s Egg Blue link party, so check it out!
People get a first impression of your home before they ever step inside. The outdoor decor of your home says as much as the indoor style.
After eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring, it’s finally time to add some flowers to our front porch!
Once I found the right planters which I picked up on sale at Joann, Etc., it was really a simple affair, even for someone with a brown thumb! As simple as picking up plants from the local nursery. Here’s the end result:
It’s a simple recipe. I picked out some plants that I thought would look nice, a combination of taller & shorter plants, as well as some vines that will eventually trail over the side of the planter. Also a combination of flower colors.
I chose more than one of each plant – two or three of each – so there would be symmetry around the planter. Honestly, I don’t even know the name of all of the plants I chose – I know a couple, like the Wave petunia and geranium. More important was that all of the plants were full sun, so they could live happily together!
Then I filled the planter about 2/3 full with potting soil. Then came the simple part. I started placing the plants in the planter, starting with the spikes in the center – yes, they’re actually called spikes – followed by a geranium plant on two sides of the spikes.
Next I placed a Wave petunia next to each of the geraniums. After that I filled in the areas that still had holes in the dirt with the daisy-like plants. Finally, I placed the trailing vines & tiny trailing petunias around the edges of the planter, so they could do their thing & trail! A couple handfuls of potting soil to fill in any remaining blank spots & voila!
A view from above…
It took a grand total of maybe 20 minutes to complete both planters, and they look fabulous & add interest to the front porch.
It’s the simple stuff that makes a difference!
Since spring has indeed sprung here in central Ohio, I decided it was time to spruce up our front porch with flowers.
Ever since we moved to our new home, I had a picture in my mind of the type of planters I wanted for the front porch.
Imagine my delight when I saw my dream planter in the Target Sunday newspaper flyer. And it was on sale! Here it is…
Well, imagine my surprise when I placed the planter on the porch & thought, oh no, it doesn’t work!
My dream planter was way too fussy for the style of our front porch! I couldn’t believe it! Slouching, I dragged it to the garage, where it awaits my next trip to Target to return it.
Eventually, I found a different set of planters that weren’t my dream planters, but they worked much better ~ not fussy at all!
The moral of the story is that even a pro sometimes needs to try it on for size. Occasionally, our mental picture works just right, but reality hits when you see it in real life!