Baby shower fleurs finished product!

Well, here it is in all its glory! You'll have to pardon the background in most of these; I took the photos in our laundry room! It's the coolest room in the house and keeps the flowers fresh fresh. Plus there's a really cool light back there that gives off such a nice pure light. Makes for nice photos!

First, here's the seeded eucalyptus close up. It's even prettier in person, but this gives you a better idea!


Here is the arrangement in full. The eucalyptus is sort of the "frame" for the flowers up top. I also have two other types of eucalyptus mixed in here and there. One type with little round flattened leaves and another that looks almost like bamboo leaves.


Next are a few closeups. You can see the purply-blue spiky star-shaped flowers I was talking about in the earlier post. Neato!





Tomorrow is the shower, so I will let you know if people liked the arrangement or not! I think it's pretty, so that's a start!

Next is a simple wreath for some clients who live on the other side of town. They wanted just a simple balsam wreath with blue-berried juniper and some pepperberries, so that'll be next on the agenda either tomorrow evening or Sunday.

Have a great weekend!

Baby shower fleurs

Yesterday got all my supplies (well, not exactly...I will explain!) and decided to get a jump start on doing the flowers for the baby shower I'm attending on Saturday. The hostess of the shower hired me to do a pretty centerpiece for the shower, so I, of course, agreed! I adore doing cut flower arrangements! It uses an entirely different part of my brain than working with live plants. Plus, it's winter and there is nothing but a wide array of grays and browns out there. It's bleak, my friends. Bleak! So working with gorgeous, colorful flowers - most of them tropicals - is such a pleasure. I miss color at this time of year.

I actually bought most of the fresh flowers at Stop and Shop. I know that sounds crazy, but there is a store in a nearby town that has the BEST cut flowers! They are always very fresh and VERY affordable. I also order some flowers from some online stores and got my fresh greens the other day at the garden center. I have a business, so most of the places give a wholesale discount, so it's pretty good pricing for me!

I used quite the array of flowers. Some of them? I do not even know what they're called! There is one type that is sort of these purply-blue, gangly, star shaped things - really neat and airy looking. Then there are the ones in the center that are a type of tropical lily - again, purply-blue. The baby is going to be a boy, so I was requested to do shades of blues and whites.

I also used alstromeria (Peruvian lilies), a bit of baby's breath, creamy-white roses, green poms, rose-colored mums that have a daisy face, and my most favorite thing in the world? Seeded eucalyptus. It's SO pretty and looks nothing like regular eucalyptus, which I do not like! Don't ask me why?! Some things I just hate. Like impatiens. Yuck! I know I'm a flower snob, but there are just some that do NOT appeal to me whatsoever!

Annnnyway, seeded eucalpytus. It's feathery, has flat leaves and these cool "flowers" that are shades of green, gray and pink. Really pretty. Here's a picture.

You can't see that much there, but I'll post a picture and see if I can get a closeup.

Here are the things I started with:

These are most of the flowers and some greens.

These are the roses and the seeded eucalyptus.

These are my clippers and the pretty blue vase I used. Inside the vase is what gave me trouble yesterday. It's floral foam or Oasis which most florists use.

I forgot to get new Oasis at the store, so I used a piece that had been used already. I flipped it over, figuring it would be just fine. Nope. Bad idea.

I finished the arrangement and noticed there were parts drooping here and there. I tried and tried to fix it, which only made the Oasis disintegrate even more! SO frustrating after spending the better part of an hour making this pretty arrangement.

So, I sent my lovely husband to the florist up the street to buy me a block of foam...

I'll post the finished product a bit later. Right now I MUST shower (I just did a kick-a** workout!) and then must get a couple things downtown. Later, alligator!

Weather outside is frightful!

I'm sure I'll be getting a call later on from my Mom. She will be thinking that we are buried under 752 feet of snow because the weather people in her area (Florida) like them to think they are the only place in the country not buried under 752 feet of snow for the months of December through March! We are definitely getting a storm today, but mostly in the way of rain and wind. If this were snow? Definitely would be seeing the 752 feet.

So, no decorating outside for me today. Instead I'll be grocery shopping and wrapping a bunch of gifts. Later on we're planning on putting up our Christmas tree, but we'll see how that goes given this lovely weather!

One of the most interesting things about living on the MA coast (for me) is the passing of the seasons and how nature's cues just never seem to miss. Not only can we mark the four seasons by the appearance of certain flowers, leaves on trees, and the lushness of our gardens, but also by the wildlife that comes and goes with the different seasons. I really learned to appreciate this while working on the whale watches. Such amazing birds show up here for the summer, only to migrate to far away places in the south for the winter.

Since we are approaching winter now, we have new birds showing up...Many diving duck species, an occasional loon and these majestic relatives of the albatross called gannets.



Gannets are the coolest birds. Not only just the way they look, but how they feed. Watch this video, if you're interested...(Please ignore the first few seconds, as the camera was turned on its side!)

The gannets plummet into the water at some ridiculous speed like 150 mph and gobble up the bait fish that they are able to target from 100 feet up in the air. Someone once told me that in their chest they have a bladder that they fill with air before the hit the water so they do not shatter their brittle bird bones. It's supposedly the inspiration for the air bags we have in our cars. Isn't nature grand? I love that stuff!

Here's a gorgeous hawk that showed up in my back yard last year. The fact that we live in a pretty urban area made this a really interesting surprise for me!



Have a wonderful Wednesday. Hope to get back to decorating tomorrow!

Lunch with a friend

Today had a lovely lunch with one of my most best, long-time friends. She and I used to be housemates for years and years until I met my husband. We were primed to be spinsters living together in that rickety old house. She and I just co-existed peacefully and very happily. Only trouble was the 3rd housemate. There was always something strange about the 3rd housemate.

The first girl was into skulls and bats and dead bugs and just dark, weird stuff. Now, if you're a goth person, I'm sorry to offend, but to the rest of us who love flowers and sunshine, that is just not something we can relate to. I felt SO uncomfortable going into her room to feed her frogs (very cute frogs) when she was away. It was creepy in there. And she had a giant painting above her bed that looked very much like a giant va-jay-jay. Not in a Georgia O'Keefe way, but in a very realistic way. Nothing subliminal here, kids!

Then there was the girl who never, ever came out of her room except to surprise you in the kitchen and then she'd be right back in that room. You'd go by there all hours of the day and night and would only hear the sounds of paper ripping. I finally decided she was an alien building a nest in there. Who knows!

The last one, a very sweet girl, had "woman problems" as she described it. I didn't need details, you know? One of the things she did to relieve these "problems" was to cook up these Chinese herbs in our kitchen and then she had to drink the "tea." Oh, how do I describe the smell? Hmmm. Let's say a mixture of dirt, poop, vinegar and rotten pickles? Maybe with a bit of patchouli thrown in there for good measure. It was absolutely horrific and the entire house would smell of this noxious mix for days on end. We were not sad to see her leave. Ugh!

I'll have to remember to tell you of some of my fabulous dates during the time I stayed in that house. Oh, I found some doozies!

So, to get back to the so-called theme of this blog, I got to go to my most favorite garden center today and get some more goodies to do a wreath for above long-time friend, another wreath for our house, and a garland for the front of our house. I kind of like to make sure our flower boxes and decorations are looking good year-round since I figure it's good marketing for my business, right? That's what I tell my husband, anyway!! : )

Here's the wreath I got up before it got dark here (which is pretty early right now). I wanted something simple and cute for the back door of our house.



I love that ribbon. It's silver wired ribbon that has millions of silver polka dots! Very happy. I found it today at the garden center - they sell so many good things there. Cute vases, baskets, artificial garlands that are very pretty, ribbons, stuff for cut flowers, every fertilizer known to mankind, organic dirt, awesome greens; you name it! I just love garden centers. Always have. I even love the smell of them, just like I love the smell of hardware stores. Is that odd? It's all earthy and smells so good and fresh. But not earthy like those Chinese herbs!

Happy Monday!

This week should be a busy one...I have two wreaths to do, and plan to decorate the outside of the house for the holidays. I love to do it all up with tons of white sparkly lights and then will also do a pretty garland for the front of the house. On top of that, I have to shop for 5 kids (not our own!), shop for a baby gift, and then do up a cut flowers arrangement for a woman throwing the baby shower on Saturday! She's the one who hired me to do her Thanksgiving flowers I showed you a couple weeks ago (.

It snowed here Saturday night. Like SNOW SNOW where it sticks and stays. The dogs were ridiculously joyous about it, which makes it a little more tolerable! Our girl, Sadie, just wants to go out and lay in it! She loves it! Our boy, Koty, loves to eat it and have snowballs thrown his way so he can gobble them up!

Here's a photo of the two of them. Frick and Frack! That's Sadie on the left, Koty on the right.



You'll see they obviously look alike. There's good reason! When our beloved dog, Lady, passed away two years ago tomorrow, our other dog, Koty, became totally despondent. He and Lady were best best friends. Inseparable. I'll tell that story another time of how we all came to be a family together. It's a good one!

ANNNNyway, Lady died. It was the saddest day of my life. I loved that dog with every cell. She was the worst dog and the most wonderful dog all at the same time! Here is my beloved girl.



So, after 3 months of seeing Koty so upset, we finally started looking for a companion for him. After visiting the shelter several times, we finally started looking at petfinder.com - a wonderful resource! So, we stumbled upon Sadie! Not only did she look SO much like Koty, her real name? When we saw her online? Her real name was LADY! Can you even believe that? Such a crazy coincidence, right? So that pretty much cinched the deal. We had to change her name - it was too weird to call her Lady, so we settled on Sadie. She's the perfect dog for us and the perfect companion for Koty! She's sweet, mellow, very cute and just loves to be loved.

Ok...Back to fleurs tomorrow!