Skipping Ahead to Spring

It was in the 60's here Saturday while the northern half of the country was being buried under snow, so I decided to give up on coming up with a late winter theme for the banner in the dining room and just go ahead and accept the early arrival of spring (thus guaranteeing 6 inches of snow sometime in the next few weeks).

Before Christmas, you'll recall, the dining room looked like this:

And then on Saturday, a third of the way into February, it, uhh....still looked like that.

I thought about doing a quick and easy Valentine's banner....I mean, a few hearts cut out of scrapbook paper or something....easy, right? But then I didn't do it. And I thought about presidents for presidents' day, but I never got around to tracking down fun printable president heads either. THEN I thought: chicken breeds! For spring! I love chickens! ....but I couldn't find the right sort of printable chicken drawings, either.

So how about flowers? Flowers show up in spring, and they are nice. We just won't mention to flowers that they were my fourth choice.

I turned again to Botanicus.org, where I found the plant art for Milo and Gus' room and the birds for the master bedroom. I browsed around there for a bit and found Favourite Flowers of Garden and Greenhouse, with many lovely color illustrations.

I downloaded the file, picked out my fifteen favorites, and used up the rest of the ink in my printer printing them out. Printing them out was frustrating, since, unlike with the birds, I didn't want them to print on a full sheet of paper. I tried various methods of getting them to print two per page, but it just wasn't happening (or at least, it wasn't happening in any way that wouldn't take a hundred hours). In the end, I just flipped the page to landscape and printed one per page. This gave me the size I wanted, but it used up twice as much cardstock as I wanted. Oh well.

Anyway, the advent calendar is finally gone, and I don't need to change out the flowers until fall unless I get inspired (Revolutionary War clip art for the 4th of July!). Now I just need to do something about that Thanksgiving/Christmas/Winter centerpiece that's still hanging around.....

Linking with:
Tuesday's Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
TwelveOEight's Pretty Things Party
Tutorials and Tips at Home Stories A to Z
From Dream to Reality at the DIY Dreamer
Tutorials, Tips, and Tidbits at Stone Gable Blog
Hookin' Up With House of Hepworths
Somewhat Simple
The Inspiration Gallery Link Party
Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt It Friday
The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Countdown to Spring Party at Sand and Sisal
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-Up Party
Funky Junk Interior's Saturday Nite Special
Six Days of Spring Link Party