Cozy Updates to Transition Your Home From Spring to Summer

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Summer still seems pretty far off into the distance here in the northeast but that is not stopping me from styling our home for summer or wishing for hot days, sundresses, and sandals. Summer is such a special time of year that to me, the longer we can enjoy it, the better.

What makes summer so special? For our family it is no school for two months (hello no homework!), warm air, heading to the pool & beach for swimming & sunbathing, taking & enjoying vacations, firing up the grill daily for hamburgers or hot dogs (or other Americana cuisines), the smell of freshly mowed grass, and life in general just seems good. Maybe it’s the abundant sunshine & heat, but summer just feels different than any other time of the year or season.

And while we all might be spending more time outdoors during the summer months, our homes should reflect the season and there are a few, simple things you can do to update and add that feel-good summer feeling to your home. What summer looks and feels like to you may be different than what summer feels like for me & my family, so what I am sharing today can be customized to fit the style of your home and what you love. Think of this as a jumping off point to start bringing those summer vibes to the inside of your home. I’m welcoming summer with open arms!

Summer Living Room
Summer Greenery
Summer Table Styling

Splashes of Blue for Summer

Blue has always been one of my favorite colors to decorate with so I enjoy adding splashes of blue throughout our home when I style it for summer. Let’s not forget…I have a bathroom with blue wallpaper and a bedroom with a blue floral accent wall, so my love of blue runs deep! However, the rest of our home is neutral so adding these little pops of blue here and there for the warmer months is fun and refreshing. Why is blue a summer color and why do I find it so refreshing? Think about summer vacations. Where do most of us go on vacation during the hot summer months? Typically somewhere near a body of water such as a lake, river, ocean, or even a pool. And what do most of us wish for on vacation besides rest and relaxation? I would venture to say bright, blue, sunny skies to enjoy the cool refreshing water we are vacationing by. The common denominator…. the color BLUE! Blue water and blue skies. If blue is a color you have never used in your home, I challenge you to give it a try, especially during the summer months. Here are a few examples of how I’ve incorporated the color blue into our home.

Pops of Blue
I styled books with shades of blue to our console table to add height and visual interest.
Blue Striped Ribbon on a Swan
I tied a simple blue grosgrain ribbon to the white swan centered on our console table.
Blue Lettered Throw Pillow
I placed a white throw pillow with blue lettering to the couch for just a small pop of color.

Seasonal Florals & Greenery for Summer

I have flowers and greenery in our home all year long. I love the freshness and coziness that they bring, and so our home is always filled with some sort of fresh flower. While I like to have fresh flowers, I can’t keep a house plant alive! So, in our home we have fresh flowers and faux plants. It’s ok to have a mixture of both. The key to creating a summery home with florals is to style your home with summer-blooming flowers. The easiest way to do this is to bring the flowers and greenery you have growing right in your yard, into your home! Bring some of that outdoor beauty inside. Some of my favorite summer flowers are hydrangeas, peonies, and dahlias. These flowers have big, beautiful blooms that will fill up any vessel quickly. However, if you don’t have flowers you can cut in your yard, I’ve also been known to cut down flowering weeds & wildflowers along our woodline. Sometimes weeds & wildflowers can be just as beautiful, and the best part…they are free! (Just be careful you don’t get into poison ivy or anything else you may be allergic too!)

If you are someone who would rather invest in a flower that lasts season after season, there is always faux! They last forever and you can reuse them year after year. Just make sure you change your faux flowers each season so that your home stays current and fresh. Afloral has beautiful, realistic looking faux florals. They might be slightly more expensive than some other more popular craft stores, but they are worth the investment. Their flowers are incredibly realistic looking! Here are a couple of my favorites for summer; this beautiful ivory dahlia, this gorgeous cream white peony, this stunning taupe beige rose, or this amazing soft green snowball flower.

Hydrangeas
I purchased these hydrangeas from Trader Joe’s but once our hydrangeas start blooming I can cut a few growing in our backyard!
Cherry Blossoms
These cherry blossoms are not summer blooming, however I wanted to share with you that we cut these down on the side of the road in a wild growing tree. These are so beautiful and they were free!
Blue Floral Vase
This pink dahlia was cut from my garden. Do you see I styled it in a blue vase?!

Treats for Summer

Some of my favorite summertime memories are from when the kids where little and I was a stay at mom.

On the days in the middle of summer when it was too hot to go outside, I would make homemade Wendy’s Frosty’s. We would curl up on the couch in the cool air conditioning and watch Harry Potter movies all afternoon while sipping on our Frosty’s. Or, after a long day by the pool we would skip dinner and head to the local ice cream shop for bowls of ice cream to fill our bellies.

It’s these simple summer memories that I love, and think of often, which is why I love making treats for my family in the summertime. There are just a couple of requirements for a true summertime treat. One, they should be easy to make and two, should feel refreshing on a hot day. Some of our families favorite summer treats are strawberry shortcake, homemade ice cream (check out the rosemary ice cream I made last year here), s’mores (I made s’mores donuts last year here), Frosty’s (my favorite recipe for that here), ice tea, and a good old fashioned glass of lemonade (adding recipe below).

With summer on my mind, I made homemade lemonade yesterday and boy was it delicious! It really had me wishing for heat, humidity, and the pool! What are some of your favorite summertime treats?

Homemade Lemonade
Kitchen View
Homemade Lemonade

These are just a few updates you can make to your home to welcome summer into your home. Some of my other favorite things to do include opening the windows. There is nothing better than letting the fresh air into our home after months of being buttoned up from the cold. Change your bedding! Swap out the heavy blankets and duvets for lighter more breathable fabrics to help you stay cool on those hot summer nights. I love cotton and linen fabrics during the summer for their breathability and texture. Have fresh herbs available. There is nothing better than snipping a few fresh herbs from the garden and adding them to a meal. Swap out artwork. Choose art that features summery blue skies, tranquil blue water, or any other picture that just speaks summer to you!

Table & Hutch Styled for Summer
Books
Wooden Bucket of Cherry Blossoms

Tell me, what does summer feel like to you? What do you do in your home to bring that summer feeling inside? Leave me a comment, I would love to hear from you!

Refreshing Summer Lemonade

Lemonade

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 cups Water
  • 2 cups Sugar
  • 2 cups Fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 8-12 lemons)
  • 5-7 cups Water
  • Ice (optional)
  • Lemon slices (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Create a simple syrup by bringing 2 cups of water and 2 cups of water to a simmer in a small pan at medium heat. Whisk occasionally.
  2. Once sugar is dissolved, remove pot from heat and set aside to cool.
  3. Pour the lemon juice and simple syrup into a large pitcher.
  4. Add about 5 cups of water to pitcher and stir well. Add more water if needed to obtain desired taste.
  5. Chill for 1-2 hours or add ice cubes.
  6. Garnish with lemon slices.

Links to products featured in this post can be found in our new “Shop Our Home” page. I hope this page makes shopping our home a little easier for you! I do earn a small commission when you make a purchase from one of our LTK links. Your support helps me continue to create meaningful content for you!

I look forward to sharing more of my home with you and inspiring you to have a well loved home! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LIKEtoKNOW.it.

The Tale of an Easter Bunny Pillow

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What better way to welcome spring than with a Spring Fling Blog Hop! I am joining a few Instagram/blogger friends this week to bring you tons of spring and Easter inspiration to start off this new season. Continue reading to the end of this post to meet my talented friends joining me in this blog hop, along with links to their blogs and blog posts!

In keeping with the “hopping” theme, this week’s blog post features one of my favorite purchases this spring, an embroidered bunny pillow. I thought it would be fun to take this pillow and have him hop around the house from room to room to show you how versatile one cute, little bunny pillow could be. When I saw this pillow, I fell in love with the intricate, embroidered details and the memories it evoked of Easter growing up. I think it was the embroidery on this pillow that reminded me of the Easter dresses I would wear as a child, and that took me down a rabbit hole of other, Easter memories.

One of my favorite springtime memories is my mother reading my sister and I Beatrix Potter stories. Sometimes, the three of us would curl up in my parents bed and my mother would read us one or two of our favorites stories which included The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Two Bad Mice (we loved the mouse named Hunka Munka!), and the Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle the hedgehog washerwoman. We also loved reading the book The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes. I would imagine living in the little cottages within the stories and how cozy and warm they would be (my love of all things warm and cozy started as a child)! I also remember going to bed Easter eve with curlers in my hair, and my sister and I waking up early Easter morning to search for our Easter baskets that the bunny had hidden. My sister and I would eat the candy from our baskets in the wee hours of the morning filling our bellies with Peeps, chocolate eggs, and jelly beans before sunrise. Once our parents awoke, we would put on our Laura Ashley Easter dresses with our curly hair and head off to church for Easter service. After church, we would go on an Easter egg hunt (the gold egg with money inside was the egg to search for) and then dine on Easter dinner which typically included honey baked ham, creamed corn, homemade dinner rolls, and deviled eggs (my least favorite food ever!!!). The day would end with naps on the couch, The Ten Commandments playing on the TV, and Easter baskets full of empty candy wrappers. Isn’t it funny how one little bunny pillow brought back so many fun Easter memories from my childhood?!

My sister Carrie (left) and I (right), Easter 1987.

While it’s fun going down memory lane, let’s get this pillow hop started! The first stop, is the library and a basket full of blankets. I always have a basket or two (or sometimes three) of blankets near the areas we relax and unwind. I love being able to pull out a blanket when I am feeling cold to snuggle up with on the couch (Eleanor does too!). A basket full of blankets adds coziness to our home even on the coldest of days. I placed our bunny pillow in this basket of blankets next to the couch in the library. He looks so cute and cozy snuggled in the basket, and the embroidery of the pillow adds a pop of color against the white couch.

The second pillow stop, is our entryway. Our entryway is small, with little space to come in and remove shoes and jackets. So, I added a small vintage chair in warm wood tones here so that we have a spot to sit down after coming in or a place to hold a backpack after school.

Adding the bunny pillow to the chair here provides a little touch of whimsy and coziness to our entrance. I love all of the textures in this space; the embroidery of the pillow, the old wood of the chair, the olive leaf wallpaper, and the basket overflowing with fresh, white hydrangeas. Adding layers of textures makes this space feel cozy, welcoming, and a place I want to come home too just like the cottages in the stories my mother used to read to us!

The next stop on our hop is our master bedroom. This may be my favorite place that I styled our embroidered bunny pillow! He looks adorable nestled amongst the duvets on our bed, as though we’ve had him for years. This pillow may have been made specifically for our bedroom (thank you Target!) to match the floral wallpaper and our white bedding! This bunny pillow would be so cute in a nursery or styled in a little girls bedroom too.

The final stop on our hop around the house is our living room, the most lived in room of the house. I would be lying if I did not tell you this little pillow has been thrown around the room a couple of times and has held up beautifully! I love that this pillow is a small touch of Easter and goes with our neutral décor perfectly. The embroidery of the bunny pillow coordinates so well with the other stripped and patterned pillows on our couch.

So, that’s our hop around the house! You’ve seen an Easter bunny pillow styled in a basket, in the entryway, in the master bedroom, and our living room. I hope I’ve inspired you to add this cute, versatile, and cozy bunny pillow into any room of your home! He will fit in with just about any décor, neutral or otherwise!

I could not wrap up this blog post without including a couple photos of Eleanor Roosevelt. I was photographing our bedroom, left for a few minutes, and came back to her on the bed snuggled with the pillow. She looked so cute, so of course I had to take a photo or two! This bunny pillow could also serve as a pillow for your furry friends, Eleanor certainly thinks so!

Looking for more spring inspiration?! A few friends of mine are sharing their spring blog posts today as well! Robyn at Robyn’s French Nest is sharing how to make a unique table runner with grass, Stacey at Green Valley Gable is sharing 10 Easter ideas for your country cottage, Brittany at White & Wood Grain is sharing the best smelling simmer pot recipes to freshen your home, Diana at Diana Marie Home is sharing DIY garden cloche, Shannon at The Little White Barn is sharing 4 fun ways to use an Easter basket, Cynthia at Vintage and Grace Living is sharing 5 easy ways to decorate your entryway for spring, and Ali at Country Chic Homes is sharing a touch of spring.

Links to products featured in this post can be found in our new “Shop Our Home” page. I hope this page makes shopping our home a little easier for you! I do earn a small commission when you make a purchase from one of our LTK links. Your support helps me continue to create meaningful content for you!

I look forward to sharing more of my home with you and inspiring you to have a well loved home! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LIKEtoKNOW.it.