This past Monday was March 1st. I have decided (when did I decide this?? I don't know.) that that is the start of spring for our household. (It could also be remembered as the day I had my first foot surgery which was then followed by the most beautiful March I've ever remembered, where it was 70° most of the month and I recall that at least once on the blog every March since.)
I have been leaning HARD into marking and separating out the seasons lately. Part of this was brought on by our COVID life that started almost exactly a year ago. So much of life was feeling the same that having obvious markers to the seasons changing was very helpful and therapeutic. The weather outside doesn't (rarely) cooperates with what season I think it should be (that's what we get living in Indiana!) but at least inside our 4 walls I can control what the seasons feel like.
Last year I did a 3 part series on marking the seasons (Living Seasonally, Changing with the Seasons, Opening/Closing Ceremonies) and a few years ago I did a seasonal series on Senses of the Seasons (Christmas, Spring, Summer, Fall). So maybe this isn't just a COVID thing. I also love a good themed item (how I shocked Matt & Luke by buying a large bag of red, white, and blue Sour Patch Kids last summer, just in time for the 4th. I think I ate about 3 of them) but also don't love storing a lot of things or spending a lot of money. But I also like to really feel the change in the seasons.
Since I was just talking about seasonal book storage last week and then this past Monday I did a HARD dive into all things spring, I thought I would take you along to many of the things that I am switching out around the house as I mark this beginning of spring (I still have snow in my backyard too, but not much).
I didn't realize until I started this process how much of it was based on our enclosed front porch. We use our porch a lot in the warmer months but hardly at all in the winter, just to get mail and packages. So it makes sense to me that welcoming spring into our home is also opening the porch back up to use. It's a wonderful place to enjoy warmer weather but avoiding the mud that is rampant right now.
On the porch I took down the lights that have been surrounding all the front facing windows since Thanksgiving weekend. These were still on a timing to turn on twice a day through the morning of March 1st and really did help to make those dark winter mornings a little lighter. So those lights came down, the paper snowflakes in the windows came down.
I switched out some of the art, decorations, and pillows (I have a little more tweaking to do with those.) The table decor will change up a bit too, I constantly tweak those!
Next, coming inside I switched out the seasonal book basket with what we have so far, all just general spring books since we won't do Easter until actual Easter. And I'm waiting on some St. Patrick's Day books at the library.
Switched out the pillow cover on the chair next to the book basket too.
The couch also got new pillow covers but the blanket stays for now because it is still chilly some days!
In the kitchen I switched out my Instagram gallery wall by the back door.
And switched out the snowman salt & pepper shakers for general ones.
Over the weekend, on laundry day, I had pulled out the last of the snowman towels to wash and store away until December.
I even switched out my lip balms from winter-y feeling vanilla and cinnamon to more spring-y strawberry (and plain, it's what I had).
And I synced my phone to iTunes for the first time in almost 2 months maybe to add songs I had downloaded (thanks, free Amazon credits) and move my Spring playlist near the top of the list. I even updated the playlist's picture.
These might not seem like a lot of changes (even though it took me a couple hours to do it all!) but they all add up to making our house feel like it's waking up after a long winter. Spring weather is going to take a bit to stick around for good but we are embracing the parts of spring that we can now! It's such a wonderful feeling!
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