Pink Tulips

I was not planning on purchasing pink tulips when I walked into the grocery store.

As a matter of fact, I was specifically there for three items:  Chocolate Cheerios, bananas, and Peter Pan Superchunk Please-Not-Creamy-This-Time-Mom peanut butter.

And then I saw them . . . right by the ice cream freezer.

Pink Tulips.

My heart swooned.  I steeled myself.  I'm at the end of the grocery budget.  Must focus.

I found my peanut butter and bananas and rounded the corner to head toward the cereal.  And there they were again.  Blush pink, faintly edged in white.

I had just come in from a drizzly, grey outside.  A drizzly, grey day that followed about 13 other drizzly, grey days.  My hope of ever seeing the sun, color, or bloom again was fading quickly.  I couldn't at this point exactly be held accountable for the grocery budget; could I?

Somehow those luscious tulips got into my basket and I made a firm decision.  The children would be eating Honey Nut O's until the end of the month.  No Chocolate Cheerios.  Cost of 2 boxes of Chocolate Cheerios = Cost of Tulips.  Do the math.  These tulips were mine.

I felt like I had found a hidden secret, my own little stash of pink-hope-for-spring.

That afternoon I looked at blogs and found that pink tulips were popping up everywhere.  It seems that others have also found their own private stash pink-hope-for-spring in their own shops.

These were from Uncommon Grace.

These from Beauty Does Matter.  ::sigh::

Can you even imagine looking out your farmhouse window and seeing this sight?  I do believe I'm hyperventilating.

My favorite, from Farmgirl Paints.  Love the blue canning jar, love the rusted turquoise metal "box," love the vintage shakers.  And, of course, love the pink tulips.

The sun is flickering on my tulips, I'm smiling, hope springs eternal.  The kids will never miss those Cheerios.