Sending Smiles ~

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In our shop we go all out with green flowers and this year is no exception. Designer Alexis had fun making some hand tied bouquets for those customers who wanted to dash in and dash out.  In addition to pre made hand tied bouquets we have a large selection of green flowers to choose from such as bells of Ireland (yes that's a flower) Green mums and carnations and adorable floral designs ready to go like this beer mug design created by Rosie!  Want to send a St. Patrick's Day balloon bouquet or pick up a balloon or 2? We have those too! As you can see, we have you covered for St. Patrick's Day . Link here to view our St. Patrick's Day selection this year! 

You may remember a few months back Kevin wrote a blog post about how balloons make people happy and so this photo came quickly to mind. Last week a customer came in and said she wanted balloons for later in the day to be delivered to her home for her son's 10th Birthday. http://www.sendingsmiles.com/princeton-plainsboro-trenton-florist/birthday-flowers-and-gifts-11334c.asp?topnav=LeftNav She wanted something bright and colorful, plus she wanted her son to be Wow'd. I'm thinking that Jack was pretty speechless when these rainbow colored balloon tree were delivered.  We love when customers share photos and being she stopped in the next morning to let us know how happy Jack was, plus shared a photo, really plays to the fact that Balloons truly make people happy! Want to send a balloon bouquet to someone you know? Visit our website at www.sendingsmiles.com and link onto the Balloon Bouquet category! 

Can you believe it, in just a couple short weeks it will be St. Patrick's Day? We always love that holiday around here and this year with it falling on a Saturday, we will be going all out. We've ordered in plenty of green balloons, green carnations and will even have little shamrock plants to sell. Shop Coordinator Sheryl is going to be making calls to local Pubs and Restaurants to see if they want to spruce up their places this year and really make the holiday one to remember! I personally can't wait!  Ok, so anyone that knows me knows I am addicted to peeps. How cute was our display of yellow chick peeps and daffodils. The perfect combination for spring!  We sell tons fo our decorated cookies and even though I loved the ones shaped like fall leaves and poinsettia flowers, I could not be happier to see the spring flower ones arrive once again. A fresh shipment just arrived of Get Well and Happy Birthday decorated cookies came in too. Lots of birthdays this tim...

Those times, they are a changin'. Is that a song? I can hear the melody in my head but I don't remember the exact words. But wow, if that is not the truth these days, I don't know what is. Years ago, if you owned a retail floral shop, you prepped your flowers, made them into pretty arrangements in your display coolers and lined up buckets and buckets of loose flowers for customers to choose from. The phone rang and you talked to customers about their needs and hung up by telling them you'd make  pretty arrangement and have it delivered in a jiffy. Then supermarkets started adding floral departments, making it less likely that you'd pick up flowers for your home at your local florist. Need flowers delivered? Yup, the florist is the best for that as most supermarkets don't deliver and so you started to gravitate towards floral services and retailers that had websites. It was important to be able to shop online and see what you were sending....

Because we get to taste test it, of course!! Just kidding but truly, our candy line is fun and tastes good too. Need a gift but not sure what to send? Our decorated cookie baskets are festive. How about sending a goodie basket with a nice assortment of yummy items such as chocolates, fresh fruit, nuts and even cheeses and crackers? Add a balloon and trust us, they will remember their special delivery for a very, very long time. To have us customize a delivery for you just phone our shop at 609.520.2005 or 215.493.1400 or you can shop us online at www.sendingsmiles.com

It's definitely balloon season!! How cool is this big balloon arch that Kevin created this morning for First Choice Bank. The perfect way to kick off a grand opening! Not many retail florists in our area can get this arch set up and ready to go by 7:45 am! We love flowers but we love balloons too! How did this client find out about our services? Apparently the American Heart Association referred us. We love referrals and our business depends on them. Just this past weekend we created 2 spiral arches (just like this one) and 3 column arches for the Heart Walk over at Mercer County Park. That set up took a team of 4 working from 5 AM to about 8 AM to finish before the walkers showed up! People often ask if we do balloons - um, hello -Monday Morning Flower and Balloon Co. Balloons are in our company name and in our blood! On Saturday AM we once again created two large spiral arches in Palmer Square for Princeton Boro's JazzFeast. I love the lime green and black combo on this on...

What's a party without balloons? I especially love these smiley face mylars because they are not only happy but they are colorful. Balloon centerpieces are a great way to make festive any boring banquet room or outdoor tent. These balloons were for a big birthday party and both the adults and kids loved them! Not only are the very showy and fun but they are affordable. Switch the colors from fun to elegant and the look changes completely for events such as a 50th anniversary or a more formal gala. To see more examples of our balloon decor check out specialty website at http://www.mondaymorningballoons.com/ .

I had to share this photo of my adorable niece Mary Ann who received this big bouquet of balloons this week for her 1st birthday. How cute is she!? Balloon bouquets are one of the product lines we offer. It's not until you become a delivery person responsible for ringing the door bell that you can appreciate how much fun they are to receive. Add a stuffed animal or a box of chocolates and we guarantee you'll be a hero!! To see more of our balloon selection visit our website at www.sendingsmiles.com

Last week I had the misfortune of bending over in just the wrong way and whamo!! Snapped my back right out of whack. Not a fun way to spend Memorial Day Weekend. It would not have been so bad if it weren't for painful spasms that kept me up and walking around the house most of the night. It's amazing how quickly you can get to feeling pretty sorry for yourself. I sure did. During one of my many strolls around the house my mind wandered to balloon bouquets. I know that sounds strange but in one of my moments of "self-pity" I thought about a big bouquet of helium filled balloons. Colorful hearts, stars and circles. How fun! Sayings such as Thinking of You, Get Well Soon, To Cheer You, You're Special not to mention, silly Smiley Faces with colorful hair came to mind. I mean, I'm a florist and work with balloons everyday. I tried to detached myself from my business and imagine what it feels like to receive one of these fun, high flying bouquets of balloons. I qu...

Well, the holiday is over and it was an eventful week. First, I scared the heck out of my staff by fainting at the shop on Monday. After a scary ride in an ambulance and a less than perfect nights stay in the hospital (I would have been more rested sleeping on the floor of the flower shop) I was released back into the watchful eyes of my husband and staff on Wednesday. I'm also proud to announce that we did over 720 deliveries in about 3 days!! Not as many as last year (just over 800 last year) but considering that the holiday fell on a Saturday this year, we were tickled pink! All our hard work on marketing the business and attention to customer service really has paid off. We also designed, delivered and set up two gorgeous weddings on Valentine's Day. Mary Beth and Leah were the most adorable brides and absolutely loved everything (much to my delight). Leah's wedding was fun, earthy and funky using all blue hydrangea, green hypericum berries and brown gerbers !...

Have you ever noticed how sometimes it's hard to think of a business in more than one way? For example: maybe you always think of McDonald's as the place to get great burgers or even fries but we forget they make wonderful salads and really good coffee. Now, this is not an advertisement for McDonald's, even though I'm a huge fan, even own stock! No, it's just that even for my business, it's hard to get my customers to think of us as more than a florist. Even though the word Balloon is in our name, sometimes people don't realize that we do all kinds of balloon event decor such as balloon columns, arches, centerpieces. As a matter of fact, I did balloon decorating quite a few years before I started doing flowers for weddings. We blow up over 40,000 balloons every single year! Now that's a lot of balloons. Anyway, the point of the blog is that we are more than a florist, we are event decorators and I want to scream it from the highest mountain (well, maybe ...