A spring welcome

Hello there! How the heck are ya? Hope you had a GREAT weekend! I thought the Hunger Games was awesome – I felt like an idiot cause I knew what was going to happen (duh, read the book!), but I still was jumping out of my seat one minute, nervously covering my face the next, moving around in my seat with anticipation…it was just ridiculous. But it was GOOD. :)

Anyway, today we are partying up with Rhoda for her part of our Spring Fling – spring door decor:

I showed you the grassy, fluffy wreath I made last week:

It was up on the front door, but I tried it in our foyer instead and LOVED it.

Too darn cute!

So I needed to fill the front door, and have had an idea I’ve been wanting to try for a while now.

It involved the Southern Living bucket I’ve used on our door forever. I LOVE the thing and have had it for about eight years – I sold Southern Living (now Willow House) as a second job when we were saving up for this house. :)

I’ve always filled it with lots of goodies during fall, and it looks amazing. For the rest of the year, I use faux stuff -- but I wanted to try something LIVE this time.

We have this bush on our property that I planted a long time ago:

It’s been so long, I have no idea what it is. All I know is it does great in part sun and it grows FAST.

And it bursts with these ahhhhmazing blooms every spring:

And they smell absolutely divine. I walk by it and take in big fat whiffs cause it smells like SPRING.

Anyone know what this is?

Anyway, I have to trim it up big time every summer, and since I knew I was going to do that anyway, I decided to take full advantage of these beautiful blooms right now.

I have never tried to put anything live in the door bucket, so I didn’t know if it would hold water. I ended up sticking a couple plastic cups down in there and filled them with water. Then I just stuck a bunch of the cut branches in:

OH MY, I love it!! I love how full and beautiful it is!

On a side note, I also love the natural patina on that bucket. :)

We’ll only have these blooms for about a week, so I have a wonderful few days of this gorgeous door decor, courtesy of Mother Nature:

It was in the 80’s all last week (a couple all time record breakers for central Indiana), so today’s temps in the 50’s felt positively frigid.

But the Bub and I didn’t let it stop us! We found a couple super easy hanging baskets at WalMart for the front porch:

I don’t feel like I do a great job mixing flowers in my pots and flower boxes, so this was a welcome change – it was all done for me! I love how they trail down the sides of the planters.

I also love the little white blooms that are so similar to those on our door:

Tonight the flowers will come in for what I’m hoping will be the last cold evening for a while. Tomorrow I need to pull out the American flag and get that back up! I feel like the front of our house doesn't look right without it. :)

Best part of this door hanger project was that it cost me nothin’:

My goal as we continue to plant around our home is to use bushes and plantings that will make for good cuttings I can use throughout the seasons. I did it at Christmas and loved using the fresh clippings!

Are there specific plants you love for cuttings in flower arrangements? Do you have any idea what my pretty plant is? :)

Don’t forget to link up your spring door decor up at Rhoda’s tomorrow morning!

P.S. I painted our front door red last year -- you can find out more about the paint color and process here.