Projects to Beautify Your Home

I love spring. The new life, new growth, and beautiful flowers that spread cheer and beautiful colors everywhere.

Just lots of visual happiness after a long cold winter. Not that I mind winter much since we moved.

We used to live in a very small home in an area where the winters were so cold that I didn’t want to take the kids outside most of the time. One winter, we had several weeks where we thought it felt warm when we got up to zero.

Warm, huh?

Anyway, we now live in home where we aren’t stepping on each other constantly, and even when it’s snowing, my husband will run outside barefoot.

Like last week. He wanted to get the mail, which is clear down at the other end of the street, and didn’t put shoes on. He thought he could go and be back home again before any of the neighbors saw him.

Except that he chose the exact time when kids were getting out of school and everyone was stopping to get their mail.

No wonder our neighbors all think we’re nuts!

Not really. Well, maybe they do but they’re all good at not showing it.

Enough sidetracking.

Several weeks ago I got thinking about my yard again. We moved into a home with an unfinished yard that we got to plan from scratch and I have loved the planning process.

Still doing it. In fact, I think I may want to be a horticulturist when I grow up. Or a landscape architect. Anyway, something with yards and plants.

We finally got the sprinkler system and grass in last fall. Now as soon as spring arrives, I need to do soil prep and then start on the really fun part: all the other plants!

This excites and delights me so much! Like, seriously. I love to pore over plant magazines and have been collecting them over the years as I bide my time.

I’ve got quite a collection now and wanted to share my passion and love with my kids, so I pulled out all the older ones (this year’s I’m keeping because I may actually be ordering soon! Yay!) and rounded up scissors and glue and let the kids have at it!

It was so fun to see them go through page by page and pick their favorite plants. It was interesting to see which plant collections the different children chose.

One child wanted to paste a lot of vegetables. Maybe we did our project too close to lunch and he was hungry. Lol.

Actually, he takes eating very seriously and is always asking what I am planning for the next meal!

Another loved the more ornate, colorful plants.

Still another preferred my native plant catalog. I think he liked to see all the bees and hummingbirds in the pictures.

One of my kids chose to add trees and vary which way was up when he pasted on his pictures so that something would stand out no matter which direction you looked at it.

I loved seeing their different personalities come out in this project and I feel like I got to know them a little more deeply.

And now I have many colorful beautiful gardens hanging on the wall in my kitchen that I look at all through the day. They bring me joy not only because of their beauty, but because of the memories made in creating them, and the promise they hold for spring.