Spring is here and you’re the first people to see my home other than food and package delivery folk and my parents in…oh, about a year. Welcome to our 2021 Spring home tour, showcasing how I’ve incorporated Spring decor around our home, with sources. Come take a peek into our main living areas.
Since we just took Christmas decorations around two weeks ago, I’ve just finished getting things looking intentional without all the garland, snowmen and Santas filling in the nooks and crannies. The airy, open feeling that follows taking down all the holiday decorations always feels off for me until it warms up here and we start getting more fresh air and spring decor in the house.
Entryway Spring Decor
Our front entry to the house leads into this hallway. It’s quite dark unless the sun hits just right since we have a front porch – it’s actually brightest in winter.
I tend to change something major in here and shop our house for improvements every month or so; it’s just never come together in a way that’s stuck. But we’ve done a lot of furniture rearranging in the past month between taking down the Christmas tree and transitioning from a shared home office to a dedicated studio/schoolroom, which allowed us to swap this antique thrifted cabinet out from under the TV last week. I have to say it’s finally feeling right in here. As an added bonus, the cabinet is a bit shorter than most modern pieces, so it makes it feel like I’m giant Alice in Wonderland the ceiling feel a bit higher than its standard 8 foot height.
The bookcase at the foot of the stairs houses a stash of our kids’ books, so it’s easy for them to grab something to read on the way up to bed. I should probably keep it neater to avoid a risk of falling books becoming sliding hazards, but we’ve made it thus far. These are admittedly a bit of a disaster, but I’m typically not too picky about bookshelves being perfectly styled, I find charm in overloaded shelves that show the books are actually being read. Look at me rationalizing and justifying my mess.
ENTRYWAY HALLWAY SOURCES: Similar Oval Mirror (vintage – top image) / Similar Stair Step Basket (vintage) and here / Similar Post Box / Runner / Similar Pineapple Basket (Target – discontinued 🙁 ) 1 2 / Similar Copper Vase (vintage) / Similar Faux Greenery (vintage) / Vintage cabinet / Similar Handthrown Ceramic Bowl (local artist) / Similar Landscape Art (thrifted) 1 2 / Similar Bronze Pendant Light (original to house) 1 2 3 4
What a sign of the times: our runner is such a shifty mess in the middle and I didn’t even realize til I was trying to brighten up the photo because I never think to make it presentable now that we have no visitors! But let’s cast blame for the wonky runner not on my lack of observation, but on the real culprit: our Roomba, Lurch. He’s determined to defeat it and eating its beautiful flatweave bit by bit. The rug itself actually held up really well to foot traffic for a main thoroughfare pre-robot vacuum, so I can recommend it if for robot-free homes.
To break up all the similarly toned oranges, I brought a hand-tossed ceramic bowl that came in a set of 3 I got at a local artists’ showcase – another event missed due to COVID this year. Here’s to hoping 2021 allows a return to local finds and thrifting, but until then…
It wouldn’t be a Spring home tour without some greenery and flowers. Did you peek at that source list and notice the strange vintage item? You read it right: that’s a branch of vintage faux greenery. In pre-pandemic times, I’d grab a bouquet or two from the the grocery store every week. Before relenting to lockdown and buying more artificial stems this year, I was lucky enough to peruse the storehouse of Mom & Dad, and take some dusty old silk plants and flowers and old vases off their hands before assessing what to buy to round out my collection. It turns out it’s not hard to salvage even the dustiest and most forlorn looking silk flowers with a bit of TLC. If you need to freshen up your old artificial flower arrangements, you can read about how I clean mine here.
Spring Mantel Decor
Spin round to face opposite the staircase, and through French doors you’re in the TV room, introduced here. I’m planning a post on this room separately to show plans and updates soon. Can you guess the theme that’s unfolded in here? It’s so very subtle, I’m sure you won’t get it.
For our Spring mantel decor, it’s as much about what I’ve taken away as what I’ve added. I’ve majorly pared down the mantel to let the silk orchids do their thing and just open things up for some breathing room.
In front of the fireplace, I’ve flattened out our wooden screen and placed a vintage trunk in front of it – thrifted for $23!! – completely disregarding functionality of the fireplace, because it turns out it’s in need of repairs. Of course this was unearthed in 2019 (and will be possibly a major repair – ugh), which we were set to schedule last March. Since we’re still not comfortable having workers in the house, this works for now.
That sweet little rocking horse is a favorite here, and still used regularly – a testament to its quality since the kids are 3&5!!! I found it on Zuliily a few years ago, and it’s made by a UK company. Their site says our style is due to restock mid-April, so hopefully it will be available stateside here around then.
My last mantel update before Christmas took over was much more eclectic. I decided to store away the ceramic houses for a less farmhouse, more classic look this time around.
The alabaster horse bookends are a long-admired passed down item from my childhood, and there are quite a few of the same ones to be found in the vintage market online – just search for “stone horse bookends,” sellers have labeled the stone as everything from onyx (??) to marble. One of the poor little guys is beheaded from his base – I have to try more super glue or maybe an epoxy.
I love the juxtaposition of my polka dot print pillow on the antique toile chair – I swap out other pillows, but I keep coming back to this little guy. Between the playful print, hint of yellow on the orchids and colors in the corner between the artwork, lamp and vase, it doesn’t scream Spring decor in here but it feels cheery.
Dining Room Spring Decor
Next up, the dining room, AKA silk florals arrangement laboratory. Here it is in the midst of the action (flowers and vases are sourced throughout this post, you can check image captions for details):
See the copper vase from the entryway seen earlier on the buffet after I stole his flowers to re-use?
I keep this room simple year-round, and my trusty silk hydrangeas usually stay here in one arrangement or another. The Spring decor is accordingly simple on the buffet (yup, a neo-classic IKEA Hemnes dresser). I think books should be in every room, if possible. You can see my pink post-it notes sticking out of a couple of my beloved coffee table decorating books here (tip:shred full-size notes vertically to make little page markers) – SO many ideas to glean from these. I started adding them to my Christmas wishlist a few years ago to build up a trusty library of inspiration that can’t be manipulated with algorithms.
I bought our silk hydrangeas years ago at Michael’s, and I’ve always wished I’d bought more – turns out they’re way cheaper on Amazon now, score! I’ll probably get more since I have killed every hydrangea bush I’ve ever planted so I can’t cut my own.
In the corner I have one of my favorite thrifted pieces – a barley twist leg quatrefoil table (say that ten times fast) – topped with a mix of old and new silks and faux greens in one of the best things I ever got from the Target Opalhouse line – sorry I can’t find any good comps!
Breakfast Nook with Simple Silk Flowers
And I’ve got just a couple peeks into the back of the house, which I haven’t shown before because it’s our main living area and chronically a dive and a half. So much of capturing these photos is spur of the moment when an opportunity of tidiness meets lighting and timing. Here’s the breakfast nook, artfully cropped to avoid our backdoor shoe area. The main kitchen L/island are to the right – to be shared soon in another post!
As far as Spring decor, it’s pretty simple in here – just keeping it fresh with a simple stem of silk florals. It feels Spring in here overall with the yard in bloom, especially in contrast to the Christmas garland strung with gingerbread cookies hanging across the cupboard we just took down.
Sunroom Touches of Spring
Here’s a corner of the sunroom, which is just as often called the playroom. 90% of toys in the house are kept back here, and we fold 95% of laundry on this daybed. (Full disclosure: there was probably a pile shoved to the side for this shot) The Target dollar bin Christmas window clings are important to the kids, so they stay!
Silk florals strike again the Spring decor department – these are gardenia-like silks I’ve had a few years that up close actually have bleached burlap petals mixed in so they’re completely unconvincing, but I love their shape.
Here’s the opposite corner of the sunroom. The sofa, lamp, and bamboo shade are the only things bought new in this shot. Well, the pillow cover too, but I made it so I don’t count it. More vintage flowers bring some life into the room, making it cheery even on the rainiest of days.
Behind the roses is an original painting by my Dad of an old man catching his hat in the wind.
Shameless plug: I have my own collection of original fabrics, throw pillows and masks. That pillow is in my signature monogram fabric (see the interlocking M from the Motif Motif logo?). Let’s zoom in on that puppy. OOOOOH. AAHHHH.
Behind the Scenes of the Official Spring Home Tour
No, this isn’t a “the making of” documentary. It’s a look at the little tricks to show you how easy it is to show just the good stuff. I haven’t shown you full room shots of our house yet for a reason – sometimes angles aren’t interesting or relevant. (I confess I shockingly have not decorated every corner of our home with a theme for a bloggable Spring home tour.)
Sometimes, I’m intentionally hiding parts of the house because they’re future content or otherwise unpresentable, or just because they’re a mess. Remember how I said most of my photography is relatively spur of the moment, snapping up opportunities to take photos when optimal conditions allow? Well, most of the time occasionally they don’t come together, at least not in the tidiness department.
Lest you ever feel envious or intimidated by home decor bloggers and their seemingly perfect homes, let me show you a momentary “no-makeup” look, if you will. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting to blog, it’s how easy it is to hide things from the camera, totally unbeknownst to all of you – and it made me realize that most home bloggers are probably doing it. Here are a couple things just out of frame in the shots above. And trust me, there are many other moments like these that I just didn’t have the presence of mind to document.
What would happen if you actually approached the sofa in the sunroom to sit instead of crouching down to take a picture? You’d see some games that haven’t quite made it back into the wicker game chest, for…quite some time now. I haven’t even bothered to stack them.
And that’s only if you make it over to the sofa through the mess on the way over…
And this is also cropped to not show the whole mess (winky face or whatever). As you can see I have yet to commit to wall art to round balance out the Buckingham Palace effect I’ve got going in here with the stacked mirror and landscape behind the sofa.
And, if you had looked down mid-shoot in the living room/TV room, you’d see the trays we use for drinks and snacks since we don’t have side tables in here all tossed to this side of the sectional instead of actually styled or placed in any sort of way that isn’t haphazard.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my first ever Spring home tour and gotten some ideas from it – or at least been entertained for a minute or two. C’est tout, happy Spring everybody!
Maura
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