Red, Black and White Damask

Classic red roses with a touch of that dark red, almost black, eucalyptus for a wedding at the Hotel Vitale in San Francisco.

The bride wanted to keep it simple and so I used all red roses and spray roses, some red hypericum here and there, and touches of that eucalyptus. I love that the change in color and size of the roses gives it texture and depth, and that the eucalyptus gave it a feathery look.

These are the two roses I used throughout the wedding: Black Bacarra Red roses, and Freedom Red roses. This is the perfect example to me of how a color is subjective. When someone contacts me and says I want red roses, I say ummm....what shade? Lipstick, Ruby, dark red, wine, ect....

Here are the centerpiece lined up and ready to go.

Here is a shot of the centerpiece which are composed of the same bacarra and freedom roses, red hyperium, red peruvian lillies, red carnations, black eucalyptus, variagaited ivy, and some salal.

Cupcakes...my favorite!
The couple opted for a small cake on top of the cupcake tower so that they could cut into an actual cake to get that cake cutting shot. I just love the sugar flowers and the edible dragrees.

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

Soooo I'm patting myself ( just a little) for blogging my little heart out this week. :D

BTW~Does anyone know an app that updates your FB and Twitter from the blog? Thanks!

Quinceanera Flowers

A long time a very smart lady told me to apply my weddings skills to funeral work and I must say that I am very thankful to her. I figured I would do the same for a request for Quinceanera flowers.
The rite of passage in the Latino culture for young girls is the Quinceanera , or Quince, that is similar to the sweet sixteen, excpet the girls are 15 years old. Most of the Quinceanera's have a court that consists of either 14 couples, with her and her "chambelan" making up the 15th couple~ or she has 7 girls and 7 boys with her as the 15th person in the court.
Either way, that's a lot of personal flowers.

So here is a bouquet that is left for the Virgin Mary at the altar. It's typically the showiest piece in terms of personal bouquets so we made this one a bit bigger than we usually have for say a bride or a bridesmaid. My daughter is the model for the day. ; )
Its a bouquet with scented geranium, stock, lisianthus, and spray roses, and greens.

This smaller bouquet was the matching green and white floral bouquet for the
Quinceanera to use.

Since there were so many couples, we decided on a simple three rose compose of flowers for the girls to use. Three red roses, geranium, huckleberry, and a red eucalyptus berry.

This was the mothers corsage which was just a single rose, the berries, small sray roses, and bit of the huckleberry.

I hope the Quince had a lovely day and may God bless her always! ; )

Kumquats, red rununculas, golden poppies, AND daffodils?!?

Spring has indeed sprung!

I
LOVE LOVE LOVE
kumquats right now. I
WISHWISHWISH
I could grow them in my backyard, but sadly, my thumb is black. : /

This is a mock up for an outdoor wedding taking place on someone's estate.
That's the second one I have this year and I am thrilled!
This is a wooden container with a plastic liner inside that I have been holding on to for a while now, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to be used.
What do you think of the blue and red runner?
I like it : ) Ikea~ $1 BABEEEE!


The kumquats are bananas. Yeah it doesn't make sense, but you get me right?

I used red rununculas, white daffodils, kumquats on the branch, and surprise surprise:
wild golden poppies.
The golden poppies won't last in the arrangement but they can stand in for now so that my couple can get an idea of what a bright orange flower would look like in there.


*sigh* I love looking at it in my kitchen...and believe me I NEVER bring flowers home.

For Elizabeth....

who guilted, er, encouraged me to start posting again. : P

I have had the craziest 6 months and I am finally in the clear. WHEW!
I have no excuse not to go back to posting and taking pictures and visiting other blogs so here I am. Thank you Elizabeth for the reminder that someone reads my blog! and misses it ; )

This bouquet was a mock up for a bride who is kicking around the colors yellow, red and touches of white. I told her it would totally work, and to let me show her. I used yellow and red tulips, white and red tulips, red roses, jade roses, and yellow cymbidium orchids with red throats.


I 'm diggin it...I have another mock up I'm making tomorrow to show red, yellow with pops of orange....that should be interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Tulip Ikebana

Hello lovely blog. I have been away for a while on hiatus....but Ikebana always, always makes me feel better!

This was the first class I have attended since February something....
BUT! I am back with some pics. This lesson is called "Paying attention to the place in which the flowers go"....alright, alright...that's the rough translation. But I swear it's something like that!
I'll update the name of the lesson.

Look at these Tulips, my goodness! They are my favorite. : )

This is a wall arrangement that pays attention to the view from below.
Can you believe I bought that red glass container from a thrift store for $3?!?! score.

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? :)

AIFD Symposium{Modern Personal Flowers}

I think by far what inspired me the most was the boutonnieres and corsages that I saw.

The personal flowers were modern and funky. I would totally wear these myself. :P
Again, they were all from the AES evaluation I posted about yesterday.

Pretty nice contemporary designs right?

Purple Bride {The Set Up}

{Purple Bride}

I really enjoyed this wedding.
The colors were great, the bride was totally kick back.
We actually planned this all on email! She's out in New Jersey and so she trusted me with her colors based on email so I have to thank her for her faith in me. :)
The Argonaut Hotel was reeeaaallly nice.
Check out this lobby area.

How cool is that concierge desk?
This fireplace is pretty sweet too.

If you don't know by now the hotel has a nautical theme. It sits right at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and it's located in the cannery. It's a pretty spectacular hotel and the rooms are bananas.

The tall centerpiece looked really nice underneath all the compass chandeliers(there is a name for these but I can't remember)

It was super romantic in there with the dim lighting but let me tell you, it made taking pictures quite a task for me.

I just could not capture the purples, like Sprout said, it comes out red. :(

The crew that came to set up the chair covers were so sweet!
I commented on how much I actually loved the chair covers because they were not the typical polyester chair covers, they were fitted damask and they felt spectacular.
I will have to find that business card to give her a little shout out!

Here are the brides maids bouquets and the flower girl halo before they were delivered.

My friend Stella, helped me out for this wedding, and not only is she am Orchid genius( knows all the names, care and handling) but she is also a calligrapher. I always write out my own cards and silly me forgot she was coming and forgot to ask her to bring hers pens. So naturally I handed her the shi***st pen, probably a cheap papermate or something, and asked her to label the corsage boxes.

Her is the lucky grooms boutonniere, a black magic rose, a purple calla and a black calla.

The mothers and fathers had matching lavender and white corsage and boutonnieres.

The groomsmen had the black magic roses, with ivy.

Then it was time to deliver the bouquet to the bride. How I wish I could have caught her in her dress. It was gorgeous. I hope to God I get a picture of her in her dress because I was so smitten with it.

One of the bridesmaids was ready so I got a bit of her dress in the picture with the bouquet.

So all in all, I had a blast :)
The bride was super nice on email and in person. She totally trusted me and she gave me the biggest compliment ever.
When I delivered her flowers she said
"Brenda, oh my God, they are exactly as I pictured them in my head. They are perfect!!!"
In my head I pictured myself running and hugging her to the ground, but in real life I was cool , like "oh good, I'm so happy!" so you know, I kept it professional, lol.

{ And they lived happily ever after...in New Jersey....}

Ready? Set? COMPETE!!

So yeah.
I have been trying to be lazy for the last two weeks. But this week I have got to get myself going.
What have I been up to?
Competition training!
I'm going to a national flower competition and I am going to compete in the bouquet, centerpiece, napkin ring, and sweetheart table arrangement categories.

So what's a girl to do?
Train!
I am going on behalf of CCSF and I was "sponsored" by The Garden Club of San Francisco and the Environmental Horticulture and Floristry Department at CCSF.
They gave me a scholarship so I can fly out to Missouri to compete. : )

So yesterday we practiced our Bouquets and today was our centerpiece.

Here's a shot of our designs, lined up to be "judged".





This is definitely a start. Some things I like, some things-not so much. Specifically, the flowers. But hey, when you are practicing and you don't know what type of flowers you are going to get on the day of the competition, why not practice with whatever you can get your hands on right?
riiiiiggghhhhttttt......