Unlikely pairing, I know.

Sooooo here's the thing. I really don't like carnations. I think it has to do with the fact that when I was going through floral classes, I had to use them in everything. I really hated them, but there are two exceptions for me.

1. When they are in unusual colors or if they are bi-color.
Like these- what color would you say=> white and purple?
White and deep wine? I don't even know what color these carnations are but me likes.


2. In mass, as in my hot pink pomander wedding earlier this year.

Some will shun me for this bouquet, but I really loved these purple bi color carnations and the imported peonies in December were dying for me to buy them. I bought the peonies, $5 a stem(wholesale) and since I had some leftover statice, some roses, lisianthus, and spray roses- I threw together a bouquet for a friend of mine.

I kinda dug it.;)

Sadly these peonies never opened passed this{BOOOO!} but that's what I get for buying imported Peonies out of season. Too good to be true I suppose, like eggnog for the Fourth of July; it's just not right.

Note to self~ The Shades of Seasonal Pinks

Type? I'm everyone's type.

This is what I imagine Peonies say to other flowers as they stun them with their beauty.

Back up Bi#$@!*, I rule May and part of June.
{and some of November and December when I'm imported from the netherlands}

And then Godetias roll their eyes and say What? I can last three weeks without my water being changed and I come in crazy colors that REEK of spring.And guess what? If you bunch me up with all my girls, we look like Peonies so there.

Then the tulips get all uppity and say Yeah well, I am in season too, and I am super cheap right now and I'm crazy! I come in all shapes and sizes, parrot, field, double, frayed edges-you name it, I got what you need, baby.

Sweet Williams - says FOOLS! People love me and they don't even know I'm a carnation so HA! They claim they love us only in mass, but they are looking- oh yeah, they are looking.

This is about the time that I truly believe I will lose all my followers because they think I'm nuts.
My husband just shakes his head and refuses to read one word.
My teenage daughter approves so I know I'm close to the edge.

This rare glimpse into my {crazy} flower world yield me no credibility and I should just take my peonies and call it a day. I can't help it.

But look at these colors and flowers?! Aren't they GORGEOUS! ugh. they make me sick.

They are also in season and I needed to post this so that I remember next year what I have in store for May and June. Godetias, that last only FOREVER. Sweet Williams that come in bi colors and anywhere from garnet red to deep velvet purple to light blush. Field tulips that I can get practically anywhere in all colors. The peonies, in coral and hot pink have been really good to me, but this is their last week.

PS. all the crazy blues are here for hydrangeas, yarrow is off the chain right now, the blue tweedia is growing like weeds, and there are absolutely no rununcuals anywhere in the market right now. ; (

Pretty Pink Peonies

I love this time of year for the Peonies. magical 6 weeks out here....

I present you a Pretty in Pink Peony Piece. HA! I just got a kick out of all the "P's"...anywhoo.
I know there's nothing funny about me not blogging in, I don't know how long, but I have had a crazy year...and it's about to change in the next few days, but I don't to say just yet how....and no, there will be no addition to my lovely family.
I don't think I couldchange Ku-GA to accommodate another kid. : )
Have I told the story of my name? I probably have....

Anyhow, get a load of these puppies:

Garden Roses, Peonies, spray roses, kale, and field tulips.

I have a ton of pics form events to share but it has to wait till next week when I finally finish what I'm doing. : )

Thanks for reading!

Black and White Bridal Bouquet

I am really happy right now that peonies are here for the season. They will make a return later on this year for a December wedding and I am happy to make a mock up bouquet for my bride.

It's no wonder that many brides covet the peony, I mean whats not to like? Gorgeous color, huge heads, fluffy oohy gooey blooms that make you drool.

Kinda diggin this black and white polka dot ribbon wrap.

Makes me want a do over for my wedding bouquet!
But of course these bad girls are not available to me in February, but a girl can dream....

Oh Boy!

Consider yourself warned.

You are now entering baby shower land and the longest post EVER!!! :)

What happens when a floral designer gets baby blues and one of her best friends gets pregnant and she decides to throw her a babyshower?
Said floral designer lives vicariously through her preggo friend and gets a tad bit carried away.....

Once upon a time there was a girl who met a boy.
They fell in love and went for loooong drives dreaming about where they would go and travel on adventures.
One day the stork came by for a visit{wink, wink}
Then the boy and the girl marveled at how lucky they were to have a baby boy on the way.
Then girl messed up by having her OCD friend plan a babyshower.
She had lots and lots of flowers and everyone at her shower wanted to rush home and get pregnant just so they too could have a shower!!!!! lol

I kept telling the girls(Jess, Char, Heidi, Saira and I threw the gig of the year. ....at least in our minds) that we were going to throw the biggest bestest babyshower in the world and everyone would be so jealous at our babyshower that they would want to get pregnant just so we could throw them parties and that we should start a baby shower company!
hehe, I can dream right? :P

So I have a ton of pictures.

I give you Monica's Baby shower!

{Baby Boys}

When the guests arrived we had a diaper name tag ready for them to pin on./ That way people who didn't know each other would at least know the persons first name. What they didn't know was that one of them was a "dirty" diaper and that on the inside was a sticker that would later determine the winner of our diaper game.

The we had them fill out a wish for the baby and then hang them on the Manzanita tree we had displayed.

I love brooches so I pinned one onto the ribbon around the vase of the Manzanita Tree. I got the cute Monkey at Michaels Store that we would later glue onto the letters we painted.

But in the meantime, we used them on the wish tree and on the diaper cakes.


This is a bassinet I found at Goodwill. What a steal at $2, the only thing I did was take design master spray paint in brown and then in copper to jazz it up a bit. It was filled it with a liner, then foam, then a pave of mums and carnations.


Next were the favors that I blogged about a few months ago.
The cutest favors that I got at Target of all places in the dollar section.
The pink bud vase said "DREAM", the blue one said "HOPE", the green one"LIVE LAUGH LOVE". I put flowers in the bud vases: Green kermit mums, pale yellow mini carnations, yellow roses, white and blue star of Bethlehem, white buttons mums, and a pink flower that I cannot for the life of me remember the name? When the guests took away the favors they could put a flower in them think of little Pauly when they used it.


Next we decorated the dessert bar with paper lanterns in yellow ans green hanging from a beam and we hung up baby clothes form a clothes line. Well I forgot the clothes line so I used ribbon.

Instead of a cake, we served brownie bites, lemon bites, sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, flan, keylime pie, mini cupcakes and laceys. OH! and coffee of course :)

Jessica made these super cute chocolate lollipops. Aren't they ADORABLE?

She also made these cute diaper cakes to put on display on our dessert table.
Too cute.

I made all the gals that planned the party corsages and then made a special one out of scabiosa pods, lily grass, and yellow orchids for the
mommy-to-be.

I made different flower centerpiece for the baby shower so that we could have variety and that we could give them away as gifts.
I made this little guy so it could sit in this white chair I found at a thrift shop.
I used geranium, scabiosa pods, white roses, lime,blue and lavender hydrangea, and some light blue delphinium, lily grass. bluperum, and a green filler that I don't know the name of.
Help? anyone??? They look like jacks to me and they are super tall....hmmmm.

These centerpiece were used on the round tables, and they were floral wreaths composed of blue. lime, and lavender hydrangea, white, yellow, and greens button mums,salal, some delphinium, and white roses. I placed a fish bowl with some water and floating rubber duck.

People loved these!

This little rocking horse was the belle of the ball. Again, shop at your local thrift stores, they have some great recycled stuff for pennies. I found this guy at a Salvation Army for $2.99 and I dropped a liner and filled it with flowers. Same as above except I added Kale to this one.

This one sat at the beverage station. We served, water, fresh melon juice, Sangria, and Champagne and sherbet punch.

The peonies in this one were outrageous! They were blooming and opening up the biggest fluffiest white during the party, they were unreal!!! I also used yellow callas in the arrangement as well as white hydrangeas.

There were two of these that I made onsite with the extra flowers to give away.
I figured someone would take them home...
The decorations for a boy baby shower were kind of easy for us since she didn't have a real theme like winnie the pooh or sesame street or anything like that. She just wanted to decorate the nursery with browns blues and some green so the rest for us was easy!

This blue and white centerpiece was blue hydrangeas with cream peonies and scabiosa pods along with the green seasonal filler that I absolutely loved.

One of the guests that one our guessing game contest went home with the jar of jelly bellies and an arrangement of her choice. She posed for a picture and I think she looks like a bride with her bouquet don't you? I think this would be good for a bride with a blue, green and cream theme.

Here is the Mommy to be, she's got her pregnancy glow on and she is posing with that bonnet of ribbon and bows that someone made for her from her gifts. She looked so cute someone said" Wait!!! Give her flowers so she can complete the look!"
Not quite sure what "look" meant, but she sure did look cute didn't she?

SO all in all, the babywhoer wa a great success. Everyone loved the babyshower decorations, the food, and the drinks. They thought the babyshoewer was unique with its modern twist on details. Monica was glowing and us girls were happily sipping on sangria all day. It was nice to get together and be able to design for my friend! She's going to be a great mommy and I can't wait to meet the little one. :)

Dacia Lamb

*swoon*

I couldn't decide which ones I liked the best so I am showing you almost all of them. I kept saying ok, just one more, ok, but I love this one, oh God, I MUST have that one. So in the end all I really need to do is upload and hit publish because I believe the pictures speak for themselves.

My Peony Bride and the love of her life courtesy of the fabulous
Dacia Lamb dacialambphotography.blogspot.com

Told ya she's a busy gal :P

Pink Peony Wedding Part Two {The Ceremony}

I am basking in a free week of doing absolutely nothing.
Where do I have to be? Nowhere.
What do I have to do ? Not a darn thing.
Am I lazy? Yes.
Do I love it? Yup.
Can I stop with all these questions already??? ok.

I have been so out of it I forgot to finish my post on my Peony Bride from this last weekend!
Blasphemy, I know!

So here we go with the Ceremony, the set up of the Tea Ceremony and the Reception area.

{Pink Peony Bride}
The bride was just so pretty in her little blue cardigan and although I don't have a very clear picture, she has the cutest freckles and I thought her makeup looked really natural.
Once we were ready to start we lined everyone up and got right to it.
The wind was picking up and I felt so bad for the bridesmaids and bride, they were freezing!
Here is a picture of the aisle. The instructions were to use the lanterns if I thought we needed them and I thought they looked great on the inside of the aisle.

I wish I had a better picture of the chair decorations for the first row. :(
They were bunches of garden greens, roses, and lisianthus that weer tied off with big pink bows.

Once she was down the aisle, I headed to the last row and asked the people sitting in the back to please use the bubble machines once they started walking back down the aisle. They were bubble guns that you point and shoot a million bubbles out, you know?
I went to go fill up the glass containers with pretzels and when we were down to the last bag we heard cheering! The ceremony was about 7 minutes long!!! The fastest wedding vows ever.
I do, you do? K, we do. Kiss. lol!

So we put the last container of pretzels out, snapped a quick picture and watched the couple make their way down the aisle.

Bubble machines are great! Way better than having a few people huffing and puffing into those little wands. :)

After another flying veil shot, it was time to gather up all the guests for a group shot.
There is the very sweet and stealth like Dacia Lamb. I CANNOT wait to see her pictures.
here's a link to her site, it's pretty amazing.
www.dacialamb.com

Then it was time to put that cute cardigan back on and get to the reception venue.

We broke down the reception area and left to the restaurant, Yet Wah on Clement street in San Francisco a short ten minutes away to begin the set up f0r the tea ceremony and the reception for the guests.

I forgot to clear my memory chip from my last event and hadn't uploaded my pictures to my computer so I had to conserve memory and only take a few pictures. I was so bummed.
So here are some of the shots I took at the restaurant.

We reused the flower bunches that were on the chairs at the ceremony to decorate the ledge of the stage where the couple and their parents were seated.

We placed a large floral spray in front of the head table.

We set up the cute Ferrero Rocher escort cards.
I wanted to do this so badly for my wedding, but I ran out of time and chose to emboss stickers instead of making the toothpick cards. Looking back I think I chose the hard way out actually, hehe.
Super cute!

We placed a gift box filled with candies, alternating pink and gold, at every place setting along with a card that asked guests to share pictures, and a flower in each wine glass.

I felt incredibly guilty that she hadn't ordered a toss bouquet and figured she would sacrifice one of the brides maid bouquets, so I made her one on the spot with left over florals. I always carry all my tools and ribbon so I can take care of last minute things if I have to.
Incidentally, I ended up making another boutonniere for her dad because he was hugging so many people that his cymbidium petal was broken and I thought it looked weird without a petal.

Finally, the cake was delivered and the bride asked if I could please decorate the top top of the cake with peonies. I think I'm more comfortable doing this :)

While I was running around, checking stuff off the list, the bride went to go change into her red dress and started to put on all the gorgeous jewelry that was gifted from her parents.

I loved it when it was the grooms turn to have his jewelry put on.

The whole family was fawning over him and dad, was like" No, no, no! Like this..."

Then it was time for the tea ceremony. At this point it was time for us to go.

They lived happily ever after....


The girls and I packed up and left. Debbie and Allison help me out on wedding days and I thank them for all their hard work!

C&E you two are such incredibly nice people. I wish you nothing but happiness, health and success in your marriage. I really enjoyed working with you guys and I thought all the details of your wedding were just fabulous and I am beside myself with the kindness and generosity you and your family extended to me and my team that day.
Congrats!