Spring Clean Slate

It's 7:00 in the evening, and I'm sitting on our back porch.  The weather in Texas is famously fickle, bi-polar and unpredictable, but one thing you can be sure of:  when spring comes to Texas, and Texas wants to play ... it's blissful.  The crickets are chirping, the birds are singing, the tiniest bit of breeze is blowing and suddenly my passion for autumn seems silly.  Spring!  Spring is the best!  Nevermind the cleaning ... Spring!  Spring is the best!

I made the switch from winter to spring decor on schedule, even though holding out through sunny days of 70 degrees in late February felt ridiculous.  My spring decor comes out for March, April and May regardless of the temperatures - it's my way of creating four seasons, even if Texas doesn't cooperate.  The switch from winter to spring always makes everything feel a little sparse, and nothing so sparse as our long and unbedecked hallway that's the view front and center from the front door.  It's decidedly uninspiring.

Since we moved in, this long hallway has been an undecorated chute.  It's a design challenge, because I didn't want to put something on the walls that could be bumped and knocked down and yet having nothing at all isn't very pretty.

I've longingly dreamed of painting an entire wall with chalkboard paint, and even considered making a chalkboard myself out of something creative and obscure, but our textured walls threw me for a loop and really and truly I'm not a big DIYer.  Our kitchen island is a good case in point.  I shopped for and ordered it from Amazon, and in my world, that totally counts as a DIY project :o)

When I found a big chalkboard at Hobby Lobby for 50% off, I was elated!  I didn't really have an idea about where it would go, but at home it was clearly the answer to my long and lonely hallway problem.  I realized I'd always wanted something interesting and interactive there, and viola!  Now we have it, even if it did take several years :o)

My kids asked me what this chalkboard was for, and the best way to answer the question is that it's for graffiti.  I want everyone to feel free to doodle on and mark it up.  It's a place for creativity and humor, rather than perfection and seriousness.  Years ago I would tape butcher paper to the kitchen counter, and put out colored markers and crayons for the kids to color on it.  When the paper was filled up with art and words and color, we'd start all over again.  It was such a fun creativity booster and casual family project.  It was always fun to walk by and see what had been added.  The chalkboard reminds me a little bit of that, except now the kids are older and we're working with chalk.

We have two chalkboard rules:
- nothing is sacred
- the slate is wiped clean on Sunday

There's place to note things we're thankful for, but other than "the rules", everything is wiped clean on Sunday, and no one is allowed to take offense if someone else comes along and draws a hat on their dinosaur.  Or, you know, crosses out their word "sacred" and writes "soup".

I'm excited to finally have something fun in the hallway.  A clean slate every Sunday ... that may just do for spring cleaning this year.