PREPARING FOR SPRING 🌷| Spring Cleaning, Visiting The Garden Center & Baking Lemon Blueberry Muffins

We are back to having some glorious weather. How cute are these little daisies? Because that's what spring is all about, right? Well, hello friends. Welcome. Today it is honestly such a lovely day. I feel like we really rounded a corner in the past couple of days where it really feels like spring is on the horizon now. It's getting a little bit warmer, a little bit sunnier, which I have just been absolutely loving. I feel like the dark days of February, you know, I'm happy to be leaving them behind. We did go skiing lunch, which was fun. Yeah, I'm just so ready to embrace the warmer weather to just see the world come alive again. And so over the next couple of days, that's really what I want to do. I want to refresh my home, my life over spring. I want to do some spring cleaning, baking. I came across this really tasty sanding lemon blueberry muffin recipe the other day that I really want to try out with you. I also want to do some gardening too. We'll visit our local garden center, plant some flowers, and then our front porch could really use a bit of a makeover. So we'll do a little mini makeover for that. I do some thrifting for my spring wardrobe as well. Some decluttering. We'll see what we get up to. But yeah, I'm just really looking forward to getting into the spring spirit with you. So let's spend some time together welcoming in this new season. Okay, first things first, I just placed a little grocery order on Thrive Market. Figured we could unbox it together. A big thank you to Thrive for partnering with me on today's video. The first thing I got, and there are quite a few snack foods in here, was really looking for some healthier options for myself and for Oliver. And love that Thrive has so many great, healthier and also more sustainable options. I got this Lesser Evil Himalayan salt popcorn. Honestly, it's probably my favorite popcorn I've ever had. White cheddar chickpea puffs. I'm someone who loves an afternoon snack, so those are both great for that. And a couple of things for Oliver, trying to have more just like grab and go type foods on hand for him. We love these organic veggie puffs from Once Upon a Farm. I love how just easy and stress-free Thrive makes the shopping experience. You can curate it in just a few clicks. They have over 90 different diets and values to choose from. Okay, wait, here, chomp sticks. These are the mini chomp sticks. Love the jalapeno flavor. Coming out of winter and going into the spring and summer, really want to try focusing on adding more protein to my diet. So things like that, really hopeful for that. That's what I did was just filter by that high protein option. And excited to try these. Been wanting to try these Aloha protein bars for a while. Been finding myself reaching for a lot more protein bars as like a quick, easy snack lately. Also got an element variety pack. I'm all about some electrolytes, so wanted to give those a try. I've heard really good things. Then might need to open this. Whole bunch of little peanut butter puff snacks for Oliver. So really excited about this. We're going to be eating well this spring. If you want to join Thrive Market today, just click on my link in the description box below or go to thrivemarket.com slash ashlynne. When you join, you're going to get 30% off your first order as well as a free gift worth up to $60 when you join today. So be sure to check them out. And thank you again to Thrive Market for partnering with me on today's video. Now let's put all of this away and then I want to get on with a bit of spring cleaning. Well, it is so nice out that really, I just wanted to spend all of my time outdoors today, but really need to vacuum, really need to bop. So I think I'm just going to do the bare essentials. We'll do those two things. And then I think we're going to meet up with some friends to go to a local park and just spend some time enjoying the sun because that's what spring is all about, right? Enjoying the warmer weather. I'm really glad that we took advantage of the weather when we did it yesterday. It was just so nice outside when I finished mopping that I didn't really want to do anything indoors or really anything productive. So we just spent the entire rest of the day laying out in our backyard, went to the park with some friends. It was just really beautiful and just such a nice way to enjoy the weather. But today the weather has turned a little bit. It's been pretty rainy on and off all morning. So I was going to go to the garden center, but might save that for tomorrow. But there are a few really fun activities that I want to do indoors today as well. So I figured we could spend some time. I really need to water and fertilize all of my indoor plants, need to repot some of them, just generally give them some love. I feel like all of my indoor plants suffer a little bit during the winter. I think it's because we have the heat on and so just really dries them up. So want to, yeah, spend some time refreshing those. Oh, and I'd love to do some baking too. So we're really going to be making the most of our more indoor focused day today. All my plants are looking so much better, so much fresher, just giving them a little trim, removing all of the dead leaves. It's amazing just how much lighter everything feels now. But last thing that I wanted to do plant care wise today was I have this really pretty little head planter. It's like a little Greek goddess head planter. I think it's so, so cute. But I recently chopped off kind of the end of this. It was getting a little bit long. Didn't want Oliver to reach it. Also grooming a plant leaf right now. But recently chopped a bit of it off and I stuck it in some water so that I would be able to create a new little piece for her plant headdress. So this is the original plant. It used to be at the end of this. This is getting long. So chopped it off, stuck it in some water. I figured we could, yeah, just tuck this into some soil and hopefully it'll, yeah, continue to grow. There's already a root developing there. So I'm just going to bury that in some soil. I'll probably add actually a little bit more soil. And that's, yeah, hopefully going to take root, grow and just help to kind of further bulk up this plant because it used to just be like one long trailing vine. So trying to add kind of a few more pieces in here. Probably going to repeat this process as long as this takes so that, yeah, we can have just a bit more of a full looking plant. So I'm going to add a little bit more water and then I think I'll also add just a bit more soil too. But it's so pretty. Okay, let's do a little baking. I find that at this time of year, I'm always just craving the fresh fruity flavors. I love all the berries, lemon, lime, all of that. So figured we could kind of combine some of those flavor profiles, make some lemon blueberry muffins. This is one of my favorite muffin recipes. I just feel like the lemon with the blueberry is such a good combination. Discovered this recipe, I think a year or two back and it was so good. It's one of those ones that I wrote down and added to my recipe book because I just knew I was going to want to make it again and again. So here we go. If you want to make it yourself, this is the recipe here, the ingredients. You can screenshot that and the instructions. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour. I feel like whenever I'm baking, I always look at whatever time it says it's going to take and then add like 15 to 30 minutes because I don't know if I'm just really slow or what. It always just takes me longer. It makes 12 muffins. Let's get out everything we need and give this a go. Okay, muffins are done. I just added the glaze. How delicious does this look? Let's give it a try. Mm, oh, wow, it's good. You really just can't beat lemon and blueberry. Made my cold brew with a little pistachio oat milk creamer this morning, a little different, but so fun. But today we are back to having some glorious weather. I swear the weather in North Carolina, I mean, really at all times of year, but during the spring, especially, it's just all over the place. One day or even one morning, it can be so dark, so dreary. And then within hours or in this case, within 24 hours, it can be, yeah, just so beautiful again. So today we are going to capitalize on that. I think as soon as Oliver wakes up from his nap, I want to head off to the garden center, just pick up some fun plants for spring. I love, especially at this time of year, just checking to see when they start getting their spring orders of flowers, because I'm one of those early birds who loves just as soon as that kind of thing comes out, just introducing some color, some life into my garden. So I want to pick some fun things up. Also, I really need to do some garden maintenance. There's a lot of things that I just forgot to cut back last year. So we're going to do that, refresh our porch. Today, we're really just going to be spending a ton of time outdoors, just getting our garden, our porch, all of that just ready for spring. So I'd call that a successful trip to the garden center. They didn't have a ton of their like true spring blooms out yet, but they did have a bunch of bulbs and like kind of like the late winter, early spring flowers. So picked up a whole bunch of tulips, which I'm so excited about. These are all going to be pink tulips, purple. I've actually got one more of these two and yellow. I feel like that's going to be just such a fun pop of spring color. I love the idea of, yeah, just combining different colors of blooms and tulips, even though they don't really last all that long. They really only bloom for a couple of weeks. They really are one of my favorite flowers. Growing up in Canada, we used to go to a tulip festival every year and yeah, it was always my favorite. So love the idea of planting some in my garden and they're perennials. So hopefully they'll come back year after year. And yeah, they're just such a beautiful pop of color when really the world hasn't fully turned green yet, right? Like they come out before the leaves are on the trees. Our grass is green because we've got Bermuda grass here. So love, love the idea of that. And they're all getting ready to bloom right now. So not a ton of color today, but I'd imagine in like a week or two, they're going to be stunning. And it actually works out perfectly because I planted some daffodils last year, which right now they're blooming. I think I may have included some clips yesterday for you to see, but yeah, they're so pretty right now. And then the tulips will come up after that. So I love that idea of just kind of like, yeah, just having cycling in and out color. So got that. That was kind of all of the flowers that I picked up, but then also picked up this giant. Every year I like to get just a really big Boston fern to go right here on the porch. I feel like it is just like that nice punch of color. They're really easy to keep alive in our area. They are annual here, but you know, looks great during the season. So they usually last until honestly, I'd say ours looks pretty good until like November, early December though. So really does like last pretty much the entire growing season for us. And then the last thing that I picked up, this is kind of like an investment piece. Found this really big, pretty blue star juniper. And our flower beds wanted to have a nice pop of like blue green color right in the corner by our driveway. So figured we could plant that and it gets like two to three feet wide. So I feel like it'll take up a nice amount of space without getting too big. Give us that color and junipers are just so easy, again, to take care of. Cause I love things that just don't require a ton of effort because as much as I try to remember to take care of my outdoor plants, like I'm not as consistent as I'd always like to be. So here is our little hall from the garden center, but now spend a bit of time tidying up our flower beds. Need to do some gardening and then planting these. Forgot to clear these up before winter set in. So only got into it now. You can already see some green growth at the bottom. I mean, that's a good sign that it's still alive. We just need to cut back all the dead growth. There's a bunch of plants like this. ♪♪♪ So just planted, I think it was 30 or 40 tulips that we put in the ground. It's going to be so much fun just watching our beds fill up with color in the next couple of weeks. As the daffodils phase out, I love just kind of having things planted that can replace as blooms, they flush out. Just having new things come in their place really just makes it so that your garden is just always filled with so much beautiful color. So really excited about that. But now want to tackle this little front porch situation. It really does just need a little bit of a spring refresh. We still have our Christmas wreath up here and there's just a lot of like little leaves and things like that. The one thing I am really happy with though is all four of the plants that we have in here made it through the winter season, which is so exciting. For a couple of seasons, I kept having the plants that I had in here die. Either they weren't getting enough sunlight or they weren't winter hardy, whatever. These boxwoods have done so, so well. And these, I swear our garden center actually sold them to me as annuals. But they've now made it through, I think this is their second winter. So love that. And yeah, I just love the all season color that these provide. So there we go. Nothing too crazy here, but I did swap out our wreath. Love the little dried florals in it. Then I also switched out our little doormat here. Just the one that goes underneath, which actually I think I am going to try washing it because it's still a bit dirty from last season. I think I meant to clean it, but forgot to. So yeah, I might try popping that in the washer and then I set out. This cute little pillow has some daisies on it, which are my favorite flower. Yeah, I think it's cute, simple, but yeah, just makes a nice little welcoming entrance to our home. So it is a good bit later, just winding it down for the evening. I think I'm going to watch a show with Christopher in a bit, but I figured while I do, I would work on a little bit of a project. I love working with my hands and yeah, just having fun little things to do while I'm watching a TV show and really been getting into embroidery. I'd say again, because a couple of years ago, I went through a bit of a phase with doing a lot of embroidery and then more recently I've been picking up. I did a embroidered pair of overalls for Oliver back in the fall, made a little ornament over Christmas. Love, yeah, just doing fun things like that, but I thrifted this really fun shirt. I love the like bright green color of it. I feel like I am ready to introduce. See, here's the thing. I don't know that I'm ever going to be a like super bright, colorful wardrobe type of person. I do love a neutral and my preferred color palette. I've never been a really big pinks and purples person. I like some pastel pinks, pastel purples, but I've always loved the blues, the greens, yellow, kind of like the more like traditionally masculine colors. Those are the ones that I gravitate towards, but I picked this up. I liked the fact that it was a little bit more brightly colored than I would typically go for. It's like a, I mean, honestly toothpaste green, but I think it's like cute, more brightly colored green. Let's go with that. It just feels very spring to me. I thought it would be really fun. It has this little pocket. So I thought it would be, yeah, just such a fun detail to add, to have some little, I don't know if I want to put it on the pocket or like coming out of the pocket, but I want to embroider some little daisies, I think is what I want to do. So I thought that that would be just a fun little project that I could work on while I watch a little TV. We're going through the office. We're almost finished with it. Going to watch that with Christopher and then let's add some little daisies to this pocket. So it's now a couple of days later, but I just realized, I don't think I ever showed you what our completed embroidery project looks like. So here you go. This is the completed shirt. How cute are these little daisies that we embroidered on the pocket? There's just three of them. I feel like it's so cute. Like it was meant to be there. I feel like this took what was already a really pretty spring shirt and took it to the next level. Just so fun, seasonal. I am sure I'm going to be wearing this all spring and summer long. So hopefully this can maybe give you some inspiration if you've been wanting to try embroidery or just having fun with some of the clothing that you already have. I feel like something like this can be a great little project or way to do that. But thank you all so much for watching, for spending the past few days with me as we welcomed in the new season. I really hope that you're doing well. And yeah, just that you're able to enjoy this. Yeah, just very life giving time of year. Before I go, I did just quickly want to remind you to check out Thrive Market. If you haven't already, I'll have all the details for them linked up for you in the description box below. But that is everything that I've got for you today, friends. So wishing you all an amazing day. Thank you for watching, for being here. And I'll see you all very soon. Bye.