Hello Spring Home Tour

Whenever I’m invited to participate in a spring home tour blog hop, I go back and forth about it, because–truth is–I’m not much of a spring decorator. But do you know what I AM? A procrastinator. So I like to look at spring blog hop time as a chance to finally put away the last remnants of my Christmas decor and actually put something in its place. It’s true: until this past weekend there were sad, straggling bits and pieces of Christmas still lingering in my house. But that’s all over now! Because it’s SPRING, by golly. I’m joining in on the Hello Spring Home Tour, hosted by Carrie over at Lovely, Etc. Stick around at the end of the post for links to a bunch of other spring home tours, with nary a Christmas tree in sight!

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: front porch with new welcome mat from Target

Here’s my “welcome to the house!” photo. I just bought that doormat at Target today special for this tour. Also because the old one was literally falling to pieces. And those are blueberries in the planter box. We went a little nuts at the landscaping place over the weekend and came home with four blueberry bushes (among other things)….then I realized that we’re going to be gone for much of the summer and will probably miss out on all the blueberries. YOU’RE WELCOME, house sitters. Oh well. I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about the blueberries when it’s winter and they don’t have any leaves (the planters may move to somewhere less visible then), but all the little blossoms are pretty for now:

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour--blueberry blossoms

My Christmas decorating tends to have a lot of color and kitsch and…..stuff. So by spring I’m ready for simple. The foyer is one place that was still sporting remnants of Christmas decor until a few days ago. The main issue was that I didn’t know what I wanted to hang on the wall above the dresser here. It had held vintage Christmas sheet music and, back before the seasonal decor, a mirror. But I didn’t want to put the mirror back up. Then I came across this Audubon poster at the thrift store and decided it would be perfect here.

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour--Audubon print in foyer

I know what you’re thinking: “didn’t Emily Henderson just list ‘generic prints of famous works’ as an example of a design mistake in a blog post last month?!” Well. Yes. But she also said it was okay if it was on a poster from a specific exhibition, and do you know what it says on the bottom of my poster? It says, “A Georgia Tour sponsored by the Chattahoochee Nature Center, 1984.” Now, I have no idea if this counts as an “exhibition” (I was 9 in 1984 and not paying a lot of attention to the art world, so I have no idea what it was), but I’m also not sure the poster counts as a “famous work” of art, either–it might be an illustration that was mass produced. So, anyway, I think it’s okay. Especially since we spend a lot of time at the Chattahoochee Nature Center AND we like birds.

So there’s that poster. And also a fairy garden/terrarium thing. I’m going to do a separate post on making this, because the kids (including my 15 and 13 year olds) had so much fun doing it. I found the glass sided house at the thrift store and most of the things inside at Michaels:

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: fairy garden

Moving on to the kitchen:

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: kitchen

The copper shelves are another space, like the dresser in the foyer, that I like to change out seasonally. I went with mostly white with just a few touches of color (largely in the form of fruit) for spring:

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: copper shelves Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: owl salt and pepper shakers

I found these little cockatoos at the thrift store the other day. I’m not sure they’re going to land here permanently, but they’re hanging out in the kitchen with some apples and flowers for now:

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: vintage cockatoos

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: bowl of apples Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: mums and dough bowl in kitchen Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour--mums

And, finally, I added a few new additions for spring in our den. We use two ottomans in place of a coffee table, but I knew I wanted a tray on one of them to hold drinks and stuff from time to time. I had an acrylic tray in mind, but then I found this wooden one with fabric lining it at Homegoods for only $20, and I was sold:

Boxy Colonial Spring Home Tour: tray with succulents

The den is full of dark, moody colors, so throwing a bunch of traditional spring colors in there doesn’t really work very well. I went with this planter full of succulents instead to fulfill the “growing stuff” requirement:

Also this teeny tiny hedgehog planter full of fake succulents (from Michaels):

The only other change in here (this is one room we actually DID get all the Christmas decorations out of in a timely manner since I did a room tour of it the other week) is that I grabbed a vase with some branches I clipped from…what I think is a crepe myrtle in our backyard from another room and stuck it on the mantel. FYI: crepe myrtle branches seem to preserve pretty well. Also, I didn’t do this on purpose, but the branches I clipped are kind of running into the painted branches of the tree in the painting in a cool way:

And that’s it for my tour, but there’s lots more to see! Spend some time checking out all the links below from the other participating blogs (and check back in throughout the week for more), and happy spring!


 

 

 

Save

Save


Comments

Hello Spring Home Tour — 24 Comments

  1. I am really loving the boldness in your den – makes me want to pull out a great book and just read in there all day ha! But those copper shelves are amazing! Love the color it adds and the versatility of the open shelves. Beautiful!

    • Thank you! We still have fruit trees waiting at the nursery for us to pick up and plant; I’m going to be sick of planting by the time we’re done!

  2. Gretchen,
    Your open shelving styling is amazing….the cockatoos are cute, but I am a real owl freak so I am having a fit over your owl bowl and shakers. The succulents are such a nice, subtle touch of spring. Great tour!

    Much Love,
    Erica

    • Thanks so much! I usually have the owls out in fall and put them away in spring, but owls in real life stick around for spring, too, right?

  3. I absolutely love the rug in your den! I just adore looking at photos of your home when we do these tours. Everything is so cheerful and fun! Also, not to sound like a creeper or anything… while browsing your blog I realized something. Is your husband a math teacher? If so, he was my geometry teacher in high school! Let him know that it’s a good thing I had such a good teacher because I use geometry almost everyday in my woodworking plans 😉

    • He is a math teacher! That’s so funny! He’ll be very excited to hear that the geometry was not a waste of time for you :). And thanks so much!

  4. Great tour Gretchen! If it makes you feel any better I just realized I have Christmas wreaths still hanging on 2 of our outside windows so you are not the only one taking down your Christmas decorations :). Yay for blueberries and I love that Audubon print

  5. I was pretty Audubonned out by my grandparents’ prints, which did not, to my childhood eye, look like real birds. (I liked to be read to sleep with the bird book.) But Audubon overrules all rules. I love the terrarium! But where are the dinosaurs? They belong in there.
    I love the cockatoos, but I’m glad they have not displaced the owls.

    • I let the kids make all the terrarium decisions, and, alas, dinos didn’t make the cut! I also thought of putting the bunnies I painted gold last year in there. Maybe a bunny vs. dino showdown in the terrarium next spring? 😉

  6. Love your spring touches – and your reason for joining. Sometimes we all need a good reason to finally pack up all the Christmas. Or in my case, actually replace it with something else!

  7. Your home looks great! I love how you styled the open shelves in your kitchen, those owl bowls are awesome! I need to go thrift shopping with you, so many cute things! That terrarium, the print, the cuckatoos… Love them!

    • Thank you! It’s funny–I went to Homegoods to look for a few things for the tour, and I was completely overwhelmed. I do much better in thrift stores where there might only be one or two (or zero) things I want to bring home with me.

  8. Love it all! And that tiny hedgehog is just so cute. Oh and I don’t think the housesitters will get many blueberries either but the birds will thank you 🙂

Like all human bloggers, I love comments :)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.