lighter look in the living room ~ and a semi-update on clementine

It is still very much winter here in northeast Illinois. Nary a sign of spring: no bulbs poking out of the ground, freezing temps, biting winds, but at least not much snow. We've actually had a lot of rain lately, which is weird to hear in February. 

I'm done with winter. At least I can bring a lighter, brighter look into my home by changing up some decor. Pretend that daffodils are blooming and the winter robins are back.

It's a challenge for me to decorate my mantel; I think in part because it's extra long. When I saw a post from Brenda at Cozy Little House and how she decorated the mantel in her new apartment, I was inspired by how she used white pitchers. 

Other side of the mantel.

You can see how this fireplace takes up a big chunk of my small living room.

I changed up the decor in the "fauxyer", too. Spring art, a bright scarf, and a springy looking pillow. I need to repot the snake plant into a smaller container so the stalks don't fall over. See the framed art on the wall to the left? That is there temporarily. There used to be a vintage teardrop shelf that didn't make that area have too many hard lines....

When I was moving things around, I experimented with putting the teardrop shelf in another area. I didn't want to put a nail hole in the wall, so I cut off a small piece of a Command strip and used that on the back of the shelf. It wasn't strong enough and the shelf crashed to the floor.

 I mentioned in my last post that Clementine was now having dental problems. The results of her blood tests came back and besides her kidney values not being good (we knew that...she's had kidney disease for over four years), now there's some markers that show possible heart problems. She is having a simple heart test done tomorrow that will tell us more. We have already decided that even if this test shows that her heart would be strong enough for dental surgery, we're still not going to put her through that at her age (13) and with chronic kidney disease. We realize that she can't live much longer with the broken fang though, as it will become infected without surgery. So we know more heartache is coming in the near future. All we can do right now is take one day at a time.

Thank you all so much again, for all your compassionate comments and emails. There are many of you out there that are also animal lovers and fur baby parents, so it helps to know that others understand what we're going through.

Just so you know, since comments on my blog are moderated, they come through my email. I reply back to comments if I'm asked a question or that warrant a return reply. However, if your comment comes to me with your email address being a no-reply comment blogger, which some of yours do, I can't respond. There are ways you can fix this in your Blogger, Word Press or Google settings if you're interested in looking it up and changing your email settings.

Have a lovely week!

💓