"not yet spring" season

I love decorating, always have and always will.  During the long winter months, decorating becomes my hobby and that includes the outdoors.  So, now that it's passed Christmas, not yet Spring or Easter, how do you decorate outside?  While the St. Valentine's Day look is festive, it's not for the long run and what do you do after February 14th?    

You can liven it up inside with flowers and bright colours, but it might not be a good fit for the outside with all the snow and cold temperatures still around.  At the same time, it's time for a little colour to liven up your spirits.  We need a little spirit lift because the snow here can last all the way up to May.

Here in Canada most people leave behind their outside arrangements from Christmas.  I have tweeked ours to transition from Christmas to "not yet Spring" season, while not committing to a specific holiday either.  I love green, therefore making a monochromatic arrangement of different shades of green really appealed to me and it made sense of the old pine branches.  So after buying a few bunches of long leaves from Ikea, spray painting old decorative twig balls bright green, and reusing the pine branches, we have a new outside arrangement.  Ta Da!

Now onto decorating the inside...

blue, green and tantrums

Lately I haven't been able to get enough of colour, so for the Christmas season our outdoor decorations are all blue and lime green.  This year I wanted to be able to see a wreath on our front porch from the street so I assembled something matching our colours.  I wrapped a simple twig wreath with an old IKEA boxwood garland, added sparkly blue plastic branches from Micheals along with three lime green balls from Wallmart.  I used a wire to hang the wreath at the exact height that I wanted.

On our plum trees my son and I hung blue and green plastic balls.  It was hard for my son to hang the balls with his large mitts, but it was fun watching him work outside and smile at me and give me the thumbs up.  It didn't take long until the toddler temper tantrum appeared but that is to be expected.  Blue, green and tantrums is the theme for our Christmas season.