Boxwood Christmas tree

I was talking to someone about buying one of the pink tinsel miniature Christmas trees from Borders Books yesterday. They're small, pink, covered in glittery tinsel.. they're exactly what my room needs to feel festive. So when I saw that we were making a legit Christmas tree, I started to envision the possibilities and make a list of needed materials:
- multicolored tinsel
- glass balls of various sizes and colors
- mini picture frames
- bows, bows, and more bows
- did I say tinsel? well, I will need more

The examples where beautiful and looked effortless

If only they had more tinsel!

Too bad mine didn't live up to expectations.. It doesn't help that it fell face first onto the floor of the #1 bus on the way home. If I can't salvage this tree when I get back from NY then Borders here I come.

Christmas centerpice

I am terribly behind and I was determined to not blog out of order, but it's December and I'm so full of Christmas spirit I just cannot wait another second to post pictures of my Santa-filled centerpiece.
















Here is the other side... see the Santas peeking out? I have a theory that they're spies making naughty and nice lists. It might sound crazy, but I'm not taking any chances.
















For my flurry of catch-up, you can look forward to:
- A sympathy arrangement (a mom-covered cross that was hanging on the wall in our kitchen for about a week.. we're very pious in our house).
- A traditional cornucopia for Thanksgiving.
- The flowers for Andrea's awesome Thanksgiving dinner party... my first party!
- Various arrangements from my 'leftovers' and a topiary of Asiatic lilies that I love.

I'll leave you with a Ho Ho.. Ho
... I love Christmas.

Vase arrangement in H2O

I've been waiting forever to put away the floral foam and work with water arrangements. I love the natural, classic look of vase arrangements in water. Plus, as Dr. Steve pointed out, there is so much action going on underneath the water to see! I love the look of the crossed stems supporting each other, that is until the third day when it looks more like a swamp than a floral arrangment.




















There are a couple of things that I noticed when putting this arrangement together:
- I've lost a lot of control going from foam to water. I had to make a "nest" of greens to support the flowers... and that didn't even really work.
- I need to work on making an arrangment that can be viewed from all angles.
- The flowers don't travel well, I had a completely different arrangement when I got home than when I left class!

So I redid them. I made the arrangement more vertical this time, and I focused more on making it 360 degree friendly. I still like the original one best.

Parallel arrangement

I loved making this arrangement. The parallel lines make my OCD happy.



















Who's ready for their close-up? My parallel arrangement, that's who!



















And the example:

A diagonal arrangement.. in a teacup!

The title of this entry is self-explanitory. I loved making this arrangement, I also love that I'm not as scared to mess up. The flowers aren't as terrifying as they were a month ago; they've been moved down the list to intimidating.














This one below is the example, it's a little bit more on a diagonal plane than mine, I fixed mine when I got home.. But I'm not there right now to take a picture of it.














On a side note, Stephanotis is awesome.. Just like my corsage :)

Crown of flowers

I created my first design for someone this weekend. A friend was dressing as a Greek Godess for Halloween and her outfit would not have been complete without a crown of flowers. I had never before made anything like this, so I was completely clueless. I made a crude base with wire and covered my machanics with old baker fern from a previous arrangement. I wired a number of crysanthemums as I would have if they were corsages and attached them to the crown. It looked perfect! I ran across a number of problems, mainly not knowing how big to make it. I made it extra long so that I could just fold the back of the crown up after she put it on. It worked.

I made the crown on Saturday night, Tuedsay night I learned how to actually make one.. Great timing. Turns out that I was on the right track. Instead of greening the crown I covered the wire with floratape. Also, I didn't connect the back instead of making it extra long; it looked like a horseshoe. Then we tied it together in the back with ribbon (after I knew exactly how big to make it).

Triangle Arrangement.. the final product

I love festivities, I love holidays, I love an excuse to dress up as an 80's Prom Queen and to make floral arrangmements in pumpkin heads. I don't know where I inherited this from, it must be from mother. My mother's definition of Christmas can be found in the dictionary as over-the-top; rows upon rows of German Nutcrackers, candy (and toothbrush) filled stockings, and home-made cinnamon rolls... mmm cinnamon rolls.




















and while not nessessarily floral-related:




















I love Halloween