Spring Fever

 

The birds started it.  I went outdoors yesterday morning, and they were fairly screeching in their excitement to start their housekeeping.  

I have been a dynamo this morning and though I've only been up about 3 hours at this point in the day, I have accomplished a great deal.  I've only just sat down to have a late breakfast and to sit here and brainstorm my way into this new season ahead...I am ready for a fresh wind to fill my sails for Spring.

We are on the cusp of a new season.  I am ready for the changes ahead.

Today I've not only tackled my Morning Pages (first thing in the morning yet!) wherein I admitted I was bored, so bored!  Then I brainstormed ways to not be bored and got busy. I've already made good on three of my promises to myself for March.  And I've tackled housework and have all the basics of a Monday house blessing done.

What am I bored with?  I'm bored with my play time.  I'm bored with our meals.  I'm bored with my wardrobe.  I'm bored with the way the house looks.  I'm bored with some of my creative pursuits.  I'm ready to make things fresh for this new season, in all the everyday things.

Meals:  Just as I begin to long for the hearty slow simmering dishes in fall and winter long before it's even started cooling, here I am at the end of late winter starting to long for a bit of Spring on my plate.  Asparagus and strawberries are coming into season just now which is a help.  

But it's not just the seasonal produce I want.  I cook differently in different seasons.  I make different soups and different entrees than I do in the cooler part of the year.  I want salads more often.  I'm less inclined to heavy hearty meals and to meals that are a comfort food but also light.

I'm going to flip through my recipe notebook and my cookbooks and look for recipes to make once more or to try.

I want to streamline meals a little more, especially breakfast.  I find that to be the most difficult meal of the day.  I like breakfast and so does my husband.  But darn this business of cooking a big meal first thing in the day and then cleaning up behind it and then having to start the next!  It's too much.  Nor am I inclined to rely on cold cereal and toast.  I want something more.  It's finding the balance that stumps me and I can't be expected to have a balanced frame of mind first off in the morning while I'm still nursing my first cup of coffee.

I'm going to make some things ahead to streamline that process and allow me to have the sort of things I crave but don't want to take time to make from scratch at the very beginning of the day.   I think that will help.  If I have things made and frozen and I can easily thaw overnight and heat the next morning.  That will allow me the peaceful easy start to the morning I most want and the sort of breakfast I enjoy best. 

Creative/Play Time:  I've enjoyed junk journaling my way through each month.  My other idea of just making a junk journal with little or no purpose...I'm going to back off that for a bit.  I'm going to set my coloring aside, as well.  

I think this month I'm going to buy myself a jigsaw puzzle to put together.  I've been threatening to do it for two months now.  It's time.  It will give me a fresh interest for my downtime.  And because I find jigsaw puzzles to be a meditative sort of task, one I'm forced to slow down to do, it will pay off in terms of slowing my mind and allowing me time to be more contemplative.  And just possibly more inspired.

I'm going to try my hand at collages, too.  I've been just longing to work with collages once more and kept saying, "But I haven't any magazines to work with..."  And then three arrived in the mail!  Somehow, I've been signed up to receive two different subscriptions.  Companies do that now and then, to swell their subscriber lists in the hopes that you'll subscribe.  They also sometimes bundle one magazine subscription with another.  

However, I came to have them, I'm happy to say, that I now have magazines I might work with.  I can combine images with some of my papers and such I've collected for junk journaling and make collages.

I haven't mentioned, but I've also got a small sketchbook in which I do various paintings, doodling, and drawings each month. Sometimes utterly random, sometimes following prompts, sometimes with themes.  I don't share it because my efforts are all very amateur, but it is a fun bit of playtime for me and because I know I'm not good, I can relax and not worry about being perfect.  And sometimes I find myself surprised at good I can be at something random.

I'm going to designate my weekends as genealogy days.  I tend to try to avoid writing on those two days unless I am unusually inspired because I can easily make writing hard work rather than enjoy it.  But I'll also push off genealogy research because I don't have time to get lost.  Well, I've plenty of time to lose myself on a weekend!  So, I'll return to making the weekend my family history time.

Wardrobe:  I think just I can now swap out the heavier sweaters and blouses with some of the lighter things that are suited to layering for cooler days or wearing singly for really warm ones.  

It's time to admit that the things I didn't wear this winter just might not be needed in my wardrobe at all.  I find that it's not always what we add to our wardrobe, but what we subtract from it that changes our opinion of it.  Suddenly I'm not faced with all the things it's too warm too wear, or that I obviously don't like to wear but the things that I do.   I feel less like I need something new and can better see the possibilities in using what I have instead.

One of my promises to myself this month is to set up new outfits.  I'll go ahead and play with the things in my closet to create new to me outfits.  I'll try new color combinations, pairing accessories with pieces I've not worn them with before, altering how I wear some pieces, etc.  

And I'll be better able to access what it is I do need in order to make my wardrobe work doubly hard this season and next.

House:  It's not the routine cleaning that has me bored.  It's the decor.  

It's time to freshen things up a little in the rooms we live in. In autumn and winter, I tend to accessorize heavily and use warmer, richer colors.  In Spring, I want to have a little less, go a little lighter

I've already started thinking about what I want to change.  Just as with my wardrobe, it's the subtraction that makes it easier to see what I have.  Fortunately, I seldom buy anything.  I've a choice of items I rotate in and out again and they always seem fresh to me because I've not been looking at them for years upon years.  

One other thing I can do to bring a bit of freshness to my home is to repaint the main entry doors.  I've had a color chosen for a couple of years. I purchased one of those sticky backed samples to try it out.   I think I can safely say that I really like the color.  I need only a buy a quart of paint.  That seems affordable.  The job will take less than an afternoon to do both doors.    I think it's time to get it done.

My mind is running away with possibilities already.  I've just seen how I want to begin.

Now I'm ready to get started on my little life glow up for spring...