Sending Smiles ~

We did it, we survived an unexpected October snow storm on a busy event weekend. Taken with the hubby's cell phone, these floral centerpieces were set up at Prospect House on Princeton Universities Campus. Look at the snow covered trees and gardens in the back ground. With 4 teams on the road doing daily deliveries, setting up this party (a Corporate function) a full sized wedding (with church and reception set ups), a flower and balloon decorated Mitzvah and a Halloween party thrown in for good measure - it took nerves of steel to pull it off. Thank you to my amazing crew who without the benefit of boots, gloves or chains for the their tires, managed to set up all parties and get back safely to home base, each with their delivery vans intact. With power outages, electrical poles on fire, party locations being changed at the last minute and all around mass confusion, I think we did a pretty darn good job. I don't think I'll ever think of October as "no need to worry...

I'm just sitting here between trying to read my Floral Management and cathing up on e-mails, something catches my eye which gets me to thinking. This weekend we have two parties - one a bar mitzvah and one a bat mitzvah where we will be using one of my favorite "accents". Curly willow. I love using curly willow. A delicate and graceful natural branch that can add a bit of drama to floral design work. About 3 years ago my niece Rosalie met with me to talk about her wedding flowers. "I want lots of roses, pearls and sticks in my wedding arrangements, Aunt Georgianne". Um, Rosalie, has your Aunt not taught you that those are not sticks - branches, my dear, they are branches.  If I told my brides that I wanted to add sticks to their wedding flowers, they would want to hit me!! But truly, how can you call these lovely line elements sticks? Still fresh and bendable when they arrive to our shop, they are such a fantastic floral tool both natural and architectural in ...