A Belated Valentine's Day

I woke up on the day before Valentine's Day very excited to see what flowers my local Trader Joe's would have for one of the biggest flower-giving days of the year.  And I was not disappointed!  I made two arrangements and a whole bunch of boutonnieres for my co-workers to feel special on the day of love.

I made my Mom a small bright mason jar filled with white alstroemeria (with some gorgeous blush pink and yellow touches), reddish yellow roses, purple misty, with some hot pink snapdragons. 

When I first put all of the colors together, I thought that it would look way too busy.  I don't know, call me crazy, but I really liked the result.

It just screamed spring and was not a traditional Valentine's Day palette, which is definitely perfect for my Mom who really hates pink.  I hope she didn't mind the hot-pink that I snuck in there!

 

Next I reused my favorite papier-mache pot and some really beautiful green and purple flower bouquets to practice my circular style.  I'd say I'm getting better, but I'm still having trouble keeping the middle full.  I get so focused on the shape that I end up using most of my materials for the outside.  Size really scares me and I know that the only way to become comfortable with big arrangements is to go outside of my box and just keeping doing them.  It's a work in progress!  I chose these bouquets at Trader Joe's because they had lots of materials that were all about height.  There were purple snapdragons, pink lilies, belles of ireland for height and pinkish purple waxflower, purple statice, queen anne's lace, and purple strawflower to fill in and add nice accents.  While I love strawflower, if I could go back I would've taken them out and just put them in their own small vase because they were too darn droopy and just didn't cooperate. 

I really loved the green/purple/touch of pink mix.  It looked so much more bright than the photos here.

And I'm usually not a fan of lillies--especially stargazers, their fragrance just overpowers me--but the pink lillies were actually quite pretty.  The waxflowers helped to mask them!

And last, I kept busy most of the day making little boutonnieres for the ladies that I work with.  I only had a small amount of ribbon on hand, but an abundance of yarn, so I used the yarn to create a crafty kind of look.  I really liked how it turned out and so did the ladies.  While my hands and eyes were pretty tired by the end, this was very good practice.