The Eggs and I

Ever year at Easter I put out the Pysanky eggs that we made several years ago.  I thought it was time to have a little photo-shoot so I tried some different ways of displaying them.  I'm not sure I've hit on the arrangement that seems just right to me, but I'll keep playing around with them.

   

And a couple of close-ups of eggs in the egg-shaped bowls from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Easter Eggs are coming in black with neon turquoise and green now.  Strange, isn't it?

You can see how I displayed them last Easter in my post here.



Linked to Friday Unfolded at Stuff and Nonsense
Springtime Craft Linky Party at Decor to Adore
Sister Saturday Easter Link-up at At the Picket Fence

Wedding Flowers for the Tables

Today I'm guest posting over at Doberman by the Sea.  I spent a day this past weekend practicing arranging the flowers for my son's upcoming wedding in May.  Come on over and have a look at how the table arrangement worked out. 


And just so you know - they involved using all of these and then some.

Linked to Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch
Inspiration Friday at At the Picket Fence
Friday Unfolded at Stuff and Nonsense

Wedding Flowers Practice Day

Saturday was the day - I had no other obligations and my daughter Kate and my friend were both free to help me practice making a bouquet, a boutonniere, and the table floral arrangement for my son's up-coming wedding.  We got them all made and I have to say they worked out really well.  I'm going to show the pictures to Malcolm and Christie to see if there are any changes, but otherwise we are all set to go!


First thing in the morning I went to the local store and bought some flowers including:

• a couple of large mixed bunches with red, orange, and yellow flowers
• a bunch with red carnations (as that was what my son had requested for his boutonniere)
• a small bunch of red-orange tulips

I wanted to re-use the flowers from one arrangement to the next, so I started with the bride's bouquet as it took flowers with the longest stems.  

First, I cut the flowers about 16 inches long and took all the leaves off the lower part of the stems.

Then I arranged the bouquet in my hand building slowly from the centre outward.  I tried to balance the bouquet for colour and had the tulips sticking up slightly more than the other flowers.   When I was satisfied with the arrangement, I wound the stems together with wire.

I then covered the wire with florist tape, pulling the tape as I went so it would stick to itself.

Finally, I wound white ribbon over the florist tape.  We did the ribbon-wrapping twice so I could perfect my wrapping technique.  It definitely looked and felt better when I went over the whole 5-inch area twice with the ribbon.  It helped to have two people working on the bouquet, so one could hold the bouquet and one could work on the ribbon wrapping.

I folded the end of the ribbon under and pinned it in place and then cut the ends of the stems so they were even.

And there you have it - a bright and beautiful bouquet!

After taking some photos, we took the bouquet apart - sniff, sniff - so we could use the same flowers to make a mock-up of the table arrangement that we will be using at the wedding.  I'm only going to give you a sneak peak, though, because I'm saving it for a guest post that I'm doing later this month.  

Then we made a boutonniere.  Malcolm requested that his boutonniere include red carnations so that was where we started.   I collected the flowers in my hand and arranged and re-arranged them until I was satisfied.  I started with a piece of fern, then added two carnations at slightly different heights, and some red berries for textural interest.  I wanted to include another colour in the boutonniere to have it move away from the Christmasy look that red flowers and green foliage can slip into.  I used some small yellow flowers that were perfect and helped tie the boutonniere in with the reds, oranges, and yellows of Christie's bouquet.  

I also wanted to add a little personal touch to both the bouquet and the boutonniere so I went out to the garden and clipped some thyme to use.  It seemed to be just the right touch, since it not only comes from our garden, but Malcolm and Christie love to cook.  

I was running out of time when I was making the boutonniere, so it isn't arranged perfectly and the thyme is hanging out the side at a bit of an odd angle, but you can still get the idea.

I sprayed the boutonniere with water and put it in a plastic bag in the fridge so I could see how well it kept overnight.  


Update:  I was relieved to find the boutonniere in good shape the next day and I took it to show Malcolm when we visited on Sunday. I pinned it on him and although it was a nice arrangement, the overall size was too big.  We decided that for the wedding it would just have one carnation, a tiny bit of fern, and a few yellow flowers.

The nice thing about spending the day arranging flowers are the leftovers.  We have bouquets all over the house and I was able to send my friend home with some as well.


All but the last two photos were taken by Kate.

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Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage

Frugal Wedding Table Centrepiece

I am republishing this post so that the details are on my blog.  It was originally posted as a guest post over at Doberman by the Sea.  


I am doing the table centrepieces for my son's upcoming wedding in May, so I took a day recently to do a dry-run and see if the vision I had in my head would work out in reality.  I wanted to share with you how things turned out. 


I started by assessing the basic framework of location, type of reception, and colour scheme that I would be working with.   My son and his fiancé want an intimate informal afternoon tea for their wedding reception and the bridal attendant is wearing a red dress.  The wedding reception is being held in a church hall that has round tables that seat about ten people so we will need to decorate about 7 or 8 tables.  Knowing these facts, I set out to create wedding table decorations that were:

• pretty, but not too formal
• easy to assemble since we have to transport them to a town that is over an hour's drive away
• inexpensive
• low enough that you can see across the table (a pet peeve of mine with many wedding centrepieces)

Way back in November I found some turquoise vases at IKEA on clearance so I bought all they had, which amounted to 54 large-sized ones and 24 small-sized ones.  I liked the fact that they are designed with a narrow part to help hold the stems upright and they would inject a pretty colour that goes well with red (and orange and yellow, which we are also using in the bouquets - you can read more details here).

Look closely at the vase in the picture below - do you see the stickers on there?  There were four stickers on every vase!!!  It took two of us over an hour to peel the stickers off all the vases.  That's two hours of solid sticker-peeling work!  Why, oh why did they need so many stickers?

I did think this sticker on the bottom of the vases was funny though - are we supposed to remember to brush our teeth after using the vase???

In order to do a practice run, I used what I had - which is our rectangular dining room table.  I extended the table to its longest size so that it would emulate the size of a round table that ten people can eat at.  You really need to use your imagination a bit to translate what I did to the final form.


The church hall has white tablecloths - thankfully - as that is perfect for what I had in mind.  I put seven large vases and three small ones in the centre of the table and filled each one with a single stem of flowers.

Initially I had the vases too far apart and the arrangement didn't look cohesive, but it all came together when we clustered the vases in the centre of the table.  I also, initially, put a random assortment of coloured flowers in the vases, but we soon figured out that it looked best with just red, orange, and yellow flowers - no pink, purple, or white.  

I like the simplicity of it and how easy it will be to assemble.  The cost for the vases was about $100 and the flowers will be a mix of tulips, carnations, mums, and daisies - all from the local grocery store, so they won't set us back too much.

I also like how well the arrangement goes with the red serviettes that we will be using at the reception,

and with the little jars of red candy and silver foil-wrapped chocolates that will be placed around the tables - something like this.

The tables will be quite large, but I like the simplicity of the cluster of bright colours in the centre.

And one more picture, just because!

Any changes you would make to our plan?  What did you do for your wedding table centrepieces?  Seen any creative ones recently?

Giveaway Winner

Yesterday I was a busy girl.  Here's a hint as to what I was up to.  Any guesses?

Details coming soon!

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I loved all of your great suggestions for photos to make into wall art - everything from cherry blossoms to sweet babies.  Unfortunately I could only give one canvas away and that lucky winner is Paula.  I have contacted her by email.  Thanks to the rest of you for entering.