Sending Smiles ~

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

One of the challenges of any business is having people know what your business is about. For me, it becomes especially hard because we do the normal flower shop stuff, which in itself has so many facets, but then add balloon decor , candy and funeral flowers into the mix and it becomes many run on sentences instead of one clear concise description!! One minute you are getting balloons out the door for a festive affair and then next you are creating a funeral spray that includes a symbol meaningful to the family. Anyway, that's pretty much what I love about my business, even if it does make it hard to describe. My husband is fond of telling people the flower business is about everything from the craddle to the grave and it really is true. New Baby, Birthdays , Proms, Graduation, Congratulations, Weddings, Get Well, Sympathy and Funerals . Our product touches people, makes them happy, and even comforts them. From joy to sorrow and back to joy again. The cycle of life...

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

Every now and then, in the middle of a busy, stressful, yet rewarding work week you have to step back and look around you. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day stuff that you forget to look people in the eye, to really see those around you. I notice that sometimes when I'm working with a customer, I can get so caught up in getting their flowers or ringing up their sale, that I forget to look at them. You know, make long, meaningful eye contact. I notice that as outgoing as I am, I can sometimes be shy. It seems so intimate to make eye contact that I look here and there but not always directly at them. It's a habit I'm looking to break because the act goes both ways. They can't see the real me until I not only show them the smile in my voice but also the smile in my eyes. So, what brought me to this blog today? I was sitting here at my desk, trying to get hyped up to start working on some wedding proposals, which are sometimes the equivalent of homework fo