We've been doing our spring cleaning this week, which is one time in the year that I am very thankful to be living in an apartment. No yard work, no outside work at all, and then as if by magic, beautiful healthy flowers, green, manicured grass, tidy shrubbery and hanging baskets just appear. Oh, wait, it isn't magic after all. We do pay for it when we write our rent check every month. But still, it's pretty painless and the building managers go way over and above any of the standards I would have for my own house. Josh is so looking forward to getting a house once he graduates and we get re-settled in a new place, but I could happily live this way for a while. So much less work! Our spring cleaning consists of opening the windows, re-arranging all the furniture, lots of vacuuming, scrubbing and dusting those little forgotten corners (how can a 1,000 sf apartment have so many forgotten corners!) and just adding some little spring spruce-ups.
These new junk-hiding curtains were a little spruce-up project for the kitchen. The old ones were a bright African inspired print of red, green, black, yellow, and white, so this pale Amy Butler floral print made a huge difference in our tiny little galley kitchen.
I also cleared off our kitchen bulletin board which we usually use to hang postcards and photos and artwork and gave it a little Easter egg theme. Ivo loved it and has spent many moments looking at the eggs. The little shelf is to hold objects that sort of relate to the theme, in this case eggs, but we haven't decorated any yet. Can you tell I made the Easter egg sign with those block-style Stockmar crayons we bought last fall? My handwriting is usually a little nicer than that, but those crayons are clumsy for writing. They do last a long time though.
And one more picture of the nature table, which Ivo has joyfully participated in creating and maintaining. In the foreground of the picture is his St. Patrick's Day present, a shamrock, in a pot painted for him by my awesome friend Molly, and way in the back is our eggshell and moss garden that we copied from The Little Nest. In between are two little clay nests that we made together, pinch-pot style. One holds a pompom bird named Quinn Bird that Ivo made a few months ago and has cherished ever since. In the other is "tiny Wilbur" (borrowed from our Pig Mania game) and an acorn cap ("Wilbur's pillow"). And I also noticed that Ivo re-arranged the two brown bunnies so they are kissing. Sweet!
