Sunny and Toasty

Supplying What's Missing: Greenery

When I ask myself what's missing in winter, one of the first things I think of is leaves on the trees, flowers, and green plants of all sorts.

Now, I'm not very good with house plants. I always feel like a bad mother with them. I forget to water them, or I over water them, or more likely, do both. They sometimes come home with me with little bugs I don't see (probably little unseen eggs for little bugs that then hatch out in wild abandon) which then infest them and their neighbors, and I have to figure out whether to toss them, douse them, rinse them, or try not to think about it.

Add to that that I've told my body I'll avoid molds and mildews so I won't need to respond uncomfortably to them. That leads me to sniffing the dirt around the plants in the store to see if it there is a hint of mold, and probably also leads to my not watering them enough, afraid I'll encourage mold to grow in the dirt.

But, plants do make me feel happier in winter if none of the above has a counter effect big enough to cancel it out. And they also make indoor air cleaner, more free of airborne toxic fumes. So, if you can stand em, get em. Get lots of them.

Spider plants are among the top air cleaning plants, as are rhododendrons. Ferns do their job too. I find them easy to grow and have a nice Boston fern on my front porch, unfortunately, instead of in the house where it would not have been killed by frost. Got to buy another one, will have to go to the store and do some dirt sniffing I guess.

Do you have a sunny room you could use as a semi greenhouse? Or a sunny bay window to fill with plants? Or, can you install a shelf or series of shelves in front of a window? Or, make it bigger, how about adding a little greenhouse to your southern exposure part of your house? 

If you cannot or don't want to go the more plants indoors route, or, in addition, you could add pictures of plants for your walls, even paint or wallpaper a plant and flower mural on one wall.

How about a set of flowery print sheets for your bed? Look around and see where you can add plants, in whatever form. It will bring some Spring and Summer to you whenever you see or touch it.

Color And Space

Modern Scandinavian design is warm and spacious, with clean lines and elegant simplicity.

Clean, uncluttered visual environments create an open and uncrowded atmosphere, countering the feeling of being cooped up inside, restricted and limited.

Look around you at your own home and work environments to see where you can create the illusion of space and distance, and simplify and harmonize what is already there. What could be added or changed to enhance or create a peaceful, yet vibrant and warm atmosphere?

Scandinavians also use color to make their inside
  environments lively and energetic.

Carl Larsson's paintings show his use of the color red as an enlivening element in  clothing and interiors.

Ingmar Bergman's award winning movie Fanny and Alexander is filled with rich

color and open airiness in the home of the happy and lively Ekdahl family, contrasted with the drab dullness of the antagonist's home.

Add color to your winter environment. Buy a red scarf, a red cap, add a glowing red glass bowl to your dining room table, filled with colorful ornaments, flowers, or fruit.

Golden reflective accents add light, faceted crystal light catchers suspended at your window create rainbows on your walls and furniture when the sun hits them.

Add color, bold and lively color, choosing the colors that give you joy--your own personal good response colors.

Subscribe To The Email Discussion List

To provide a medium for participants to interact, share, and converse more quickly and easily, I've created a Yahoo Groups email discussion list specially for the Winter Makeover Project. Subscribing is easy, and you are welcome to lurk on the list and post often or not.

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Pat

About The Winter Makeover Project

This is the place to make winter better for you, and to share with other people so they can do that too. It is born of my own distaste for winter in a cold winter state (I don't like winter in any state, but it's worse in a cold one.) I thought I'd create a project for my own benefit, to make winter better for me, and share with others at the same time I gain good suggestions and advice from them. Win win.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, where it's just now starting to be winter, will get first use of the material here, and those in the Southern Hemisphere will have it already in full swing when they need it.

I've named the blog Sunny and Toasty because that's the way we want winter to be. Our job, as I see it, is to make it that way for ourselves.

Pat Gundry