Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Orange and Blue

Aww man... I was planning my big blog comeback and my memory card in my camera won't upload my photos! ; (

All I have are these for now.

Be back to share my Havana Nights Party!

Bread Bread Give Thanks!

This is my centerpeice for Thanksgiving! I went to the flower market and my heart said tulips, anthuriums, eucalyptus pods, and kale. I rolled with it. =P
The roses are Milvas; so coral-ly! hehe

Well, Thanksgiving is not turning out to be as planned but I am thankful that I have the
opportunity to be home with them today. : )
My honey has been sick for two weeks now and still cannot eat solid foods so I feel terribly guilty dragging him to my mother's house for dinner. My mom has offered to make him turkey soup which I will come home and blend so it works out. : )


Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Green Dianthus Ball Bouquet

Getting ready for Thanksgiving!!!!

I'm excited and happy that I have a few things to do this week that give me creative freedom.

First up is a sample of what I consider green and white with a bit of gold.
I love this green dianthus ball{AKA green carnations!}
I refer to is as a Horton Hears A who flower ; )
This bouquet has light green hydrangea, green dianthus, gold cockscomb, and white avalanche roses.

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Similar to the idea in my previous post I made this bouquet so that it would drop into a vase that has equisetum( horsetail) in it.

I think it allows it to double as a bar arrangement, check in table, escort card table, or bathroom arrangement.

This vignette is to show how we incorporate levels using simple white vases. The ones I used I bought at Ikea a while back to hold short stems on my counter.

Here is the unconventional masculine boutonniere.
banding the horsetail like in the vases earlier and just using a bit of the dianthus with the cockscomb for color.

Here's a quick table number idea for a bride who wants something a little different.

I'm proposing we do this on a HUGE level.
Carry the idea of banding horsetail together with gold flowers, in this case orchids, so just give it some color in small placements.

These are left over escort cards from my own wedding I had lying around.
They were simple Crane&Co. envelopes in a 2x2 with black embossed lettering in the back that says "TABLE" and the front that says the name of the guest,
who didn't ,ahem, show at my wedding : /
Then finally the insert is a Martha Stewart stamp that has the table number in it.

Pink, Silver, and Black Wedding Flowers

My dear sweet cousin is getting married next year and I am putting together a series of pink and black possible flower combinations for her. So over the course of the next few months you start to notice a "pink" trend here, that's why, lol.
This one is bouquet made up of pink and burgundy dahlias, some wine colored spray roses, and some super raspberry hydrangeas.

The idea is then to be able to drop the many bouquets into tall vases so that will double as arrangements. So I found these pretty tall vases that will look great.

I just love that they are silver and black and with candle light they practically shine in the dark!

Perfect vases for a black, silver, and pink wedding :)

Sweet Williams

This little number is for a private home that I take flowers to every time a dinner party is in order. This particular centerpiece was pretty darn economical I would say.

It's composed of yarrow, sweet williams, hypericum berries, cockscomb, spray roses, and then the ti leaf in a 6 inch cylinder vase.

Succulent Bride {Part Two: The Centerpiece}

Succulent Bride Part 1

My lovely bride wanted her bridal bouquet to have green succulents, greens and pops of yellow.
So we built up form the green succulents and used cream roses and spray roses, yellow oncidiums orchids, lotus pods and china berries.


For the reception we went back to Marin and Arts Garden in Ross, CA. The couple knew they wanted to incorporate the succulents again and liked the idea of fruit in centerpeice. So when we got together to discuss the colors which were burgundy and gold, immediately I knew we would have to go for those dark succulents, some magnolia leaves, the rust colored pompoms that the bride liked and then I suggested pomegranates and she loved the idea, so we were set.

When we got to the rose color I assumed she would have picked a dark burgundy or a cream and so when I asked her to picture what we had sketched in her mind and then to tell me what color she envisioned in the roses,
she said Peach. It was quite unexpected. But it worked! :)
So here is what we came up with.

For the check in table we had a simple arrangement set up of the nice big burgundy succulent, the caramel roses, magnolia, mums and china berries.

We also had one sitting on the bar that fit perfectly in a little tiny platform.

This has been my favorite wedding combo yet!
I loved working with the succulents and I was happy with the result. It was super important to the bride that she be able to replant her flowers in her garden and I hope that she does. :)

The groom's mother met me in the parking lot and she looked at the centerpiece and then said Oh my God, give me a hug!

haha! I loved it and she totally made my day! :)

Thanks Y&T! You two are the best and I wish you much love and success!

{and they lived happily ever after....}

Candied Apple Wedding Bouquet

First of all shout out to Elizabeth for making my day yesterday by emailing me and lettingme she liked my blog. Thanks so much that made me smile all day!

Thanks to Janet for helping me with naming one of my bouquets "Butterscotch" because I am working with someone to build by site and I wanted to name my bouquets and I have been playing around with the candy names, so Janet's psychic suggestion without even knowing my plan was perfect!

Here is a bouquet I madeto show a cousin of mine who is getting married next year a lot of different options for her wedding flowers. She lives out in Nevada so I will be posting everything pink and silver and black even on my blog so she can visit and let me know what she thinks.

I have a dahlia bouquet I made a couple weeks ago that I have to post but I thought I would share this one first since I will be doing an Ikebana post shortly that includes the use of the green balloon flowers.

I bought flowers from a local farmers market this time to try out a new vendor so I don't have the names of the pink roses. I also used china berries, rosehips, and green balloon flowers. At least that is what my Ikebana and I instructor calls them, but I will have to find the botanical name...does anyone know?


So does Candied Apple fit? :)

Succulent Bride {Part One: the Bouquet}

My succulent Bride and Groom contacted me about 7 weeks before their wedding with a fabulous request; Can you make a bouquet with succulents? YEP!

So we met one Sunday after noon and sketched out a bouquet and after the easiest hour of my life, we came up with a gorgeous bouquet and centerpiece we were all excited about. :)

The bridal bouquet was composed of three types of succulents, lotus pods, cream spray roses, Blizzard roses, china berries, yellow oncidium orchids finished off with an ivory satin ribbon.

I have a lot of pictures to share but I will be MIA this weekend with an event that requires almost 100 different pieces!!!

Have a great weekend!

Yellow and Copper Wedding Bouquet

Here is a trial run of the copper and yellow wedding bouquet I made this weekend.
It features rust cymbidiums orchids, yellow oncidium orchids, yellow and brown mokara orchids, yellow calla lilies, and black ti leaves.

A Happy Halloween Bride

{Halloween Bride}
It was a crazy floral weekend folks...
A bridal bouquet pick up, Halloween party flowers, a mock up for a trial bouquet for a brown copper yellow wedding, and a succulent wedding today. I'm beat.

This bouquet was a quick pick up for a bridal bouquet and matching boutonniere.
It was a simple bouquet composed of peach roses, chocolate cosmos, and burgundy succulents.

The matching boutonniere was a simple rose to match on peach, a smaller burgundy succulent with a leave backing and a grosgrain brown and gold ribbon I have been harboring for a while now.

This little burgundy succulent was one of the smaller ones that I couldn't use on the centerpiece for my succulent wedding but perfect for small boutonniere.

See? Halloween bouquets don't have to be scary right?


***************************************************************************

Part two of this post is a few pictures from my sisters Halloween Party.

Iguana roses, rose hips, china berries, a tiny bit of pitto, amaranthus, and a branch that is spray painted black with some orange glitter.

This one is I wanted to make with clear separate groupings with contrasting colors.
Rust cymbidiums, yellow oncidiums, black millet, orange mokara orchids, green china berries, and red rose hips.
I printed a picture of my sister and her boyfriend on some velum paper, taped it to some cylinder vases I had, stuck a candle inside and called it day! :)

She made some cupcakes and caramel apples and borrowed my cupcake stand and created a beautiful(and yummy) display.
I was shocked when I walked into the kitchen because my sister, self admittedly ,can't boil water and this looks damn good. So good in fact I paid her a backhanded compliment and told her I thought for a split second that maybe I had made it! lol

Cutest pumpkin centipede or what?

Anyhow, hope you had a great Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween!!!!


May your chocolate be plentiful

Raspberry and Navy Blue {Part Three: Reception number 2 }

Part One
Part Two

Hello there! Here is the last post on my Raspberry and Navy Blue Wedding.

So what happened to my car? Who knows, but it didn't start and thank goodness a good Samaritan from the church where we were setting up heard that awful clicking that happens when a car doesn't start and came over to give me jump. He told me it was my alternator and I thought-no, it sounded the same as when I got stuck waiting for my Lavender Bride, and thankfully when he gave the car a jump start, my car started! Turns out I didn't have to sell orchids to make it to the next reception, hehe, but can you imagine your florist getting STRANDED on your wedding day with your flowers?????

knock on wood I have a wedding this Saturday.: ( Jinx! just kidding universe....

We finally made it to the Hillsborough Racquet Club in Hillsborough California where we would be setting up a second reception for the friends and family of the bride and groom. We had a combination of high and low centerpiece. I used local seasonal flowers for the low centerpieces which included the gorgeous hot pink dahlias, some magenta phalaenopsis, super green roses hot lady roses, some fuchia stock, some lime and fuschia cockscomb, a bit of the hot pink vanda orchids and few pieces of myrtle. They sat low on the tables in a ti leaf wrapped glass cylinder vase to match the taller centerpiece.


Now I don't know where you live, but in the San Francisco flower market there was a shortage of cut Phalaenopsis Orchid stems. Normally they are everywhere and they are readily available, but the week of this particular wedding there was a shortage and NO ONE was able to fill orders for the magenta phals. My own guy who's always has them called me Monday(5 days before the wedding) and apologized that for the first time in years he was not able to fill it. They said the greenhouses were out and that I might have to buy plants at 12-16 per stem. Umm...$15 x's 20 stems =$300 x's 7 centerpeices wholesale???
No way.
Sure enough I walked around in circles and asked everyone and finally brokered(read:begged) a deal with a guy in the market that had 9 bunches left and promised to get me 15 more in the next few days. I trusted him and showed up in two days to these lovely ladies.

Not uniform in color but hey, they were all mine! He explained that he had the most difficult time filling this order and when they finally came in he had a hard time saying no to people who were willing to pay him TRIPLE what I had paid him.
All because the greenhouses were depleted.
So we made it but let me tell you it was scary...

The taller centerpiece were tall 30 inch cylinder vases that were filled with dendrobium orchids submerged in water and bunches of phalaenopsis stems in pinks, magenta's, and a variegated pink and fuchsia.

These were spread around the room and in that white room they really popped!
I wish I had better photos but I have not been able to get my camera to properly work for me and my photoshop is also compressing my pictures down. Sorry!

This was a 16 foot garland that was draped along the edge of the HUMONGOUS fireplace.

Outside of the venue there were these cool horse heads that greet you as you walk up the stairs to the reception area so we decorated this area with two simple hand held bouquets that we secured to the horse mouth using the navy blue satin ribbon.

The stairs were lined up with simple cylinder vases with gorgeous dahlia heads in deep burgundy, magenta, fuchsia, and hot pink.


Ok I saved the best for last.
The dessert table that made me stop in my tracks and say to the gals setting up
Goddamn that's a great spread!
The cake? So cute I wanted to scream. Something told me this might go over well so instead I snapped pictures to share. Check out the orchids on this cake! I gave them a few blossoms of the dendrobiums, the vandas, and the phalaenopsis and they did there thang!

The cake stand and decor werein the wedding colors of Raspberry and Navy Blue of course and would ya look at the tiers on that cupcake holder? The polka dot ribbon, the cheesecake pops, the f*&^ing caramel apple bites????stop it! I was so jealous.

But no time to relax just yet we had to make it back to the other reception to move stuff around.

Except the car wouldn't start again. :(
I was so stressed I jumped into one of the other SUV's we brought with one of my assistants and I left two other members of my crew to deal with whatever was going on with my Pacifica...(nodding head)all bad.
But luckily I was able to reach the DOC by phone, she moved some stuff for us and we got there in time to snag one picture of the wedding party and double check the centerpieces in the main reception room.

As we were leaving the reception, the rest of my crew was pulling up and were literally jumping out of the car to attack the centerpieces, but we told them that everything was already done and it was time to go. :) They sure are awesome. Allison, Mary and Debbie~you rock! :D

So my couple went on their honeymoon and I wish them the best of luck! The wedding(s) were beautiful! I wish you much love and success in your marriage, thank you for letting me be a part of it.

{They lived happily ever after...}