Professional Shots: Rachel and Joe

I just got these photos from Rachel and Joe's late summer wedding. They're perfect right now when there's tons of snow outside! Rachel is a fantastic graphic designer (Orange Peal Design) and she loves orange! She had a very clear vision of what she wanted and it was tons of fun to design for her.

Chris Walker took all of these wonderful pictures.

Isn't her dress splendid!? It's a Vera Wang for David's Bridal.

Her cake was made by her mom and it is one of my all time favorites!

Christophersen/Crapuchettes Wedding

Here's the rest of Daniel's photos.  Annike wanted vibrant pinks and oranges to offset the teal of the bridesmaids dresses.  (Here's the inspiration board.)  I used zinnias, birds of paradise, stock, lisianthus, free spirit roses, and hypcericum.  Birds of Paradise are a wonderful flower!  So much character and  color.

I made a wand for the flower girl. I'm a fan or real flowers but for little girls, these are fantastic.  They can use them at the rehearsal, wave them around, drag them on the ground and they'll still look great!  Just make sure to use full headed flowers without a center (daffodils, lilies) that give them away as fake. Carnations, mums, and peonies work great.

Christophersen/Crapuchettes Wedding

Daniel Foucachon sent over some pictures of Annike and Jonathan's wedding! I haven't had a chance to go through all of them yet, but this one caught my eye. So sweet. These flowers were so fun to do - so vibrant! More to come!

Feature Flower: Bird of Paradise

This was another arrangement for design school showcasing the fibonacci sequence played out in floral design.  It also used birds of paradise, so I thought I'd focus on them!  They're a tropical flower and, like most tropicals, long lasting. They are more expensive but you get size, durability, and long life. They lend a very structured and modern effect to arrangements.  (I used them in a wedding this summer that I still need to post pictures from.)  What do you think?  Do you like them?

Real Parties: Kids Carving Party

Sorry for the blogging silence!  I really don't have any specific excuse other than the normal busy with kids and playing catch up!
My family grew up carving pumpkins together every year and we still regularly get together to carve.    This past weekend we had a casual carving party at our place.  Super easy and fun! The night before I ran out to the dollar tree, grabbed a few things for some decor, and that was that. The best thing about this party was that from the set-up to the clean up it was kid friendly. Asa (he's two in a half by the way) was able to help me decorate everything.  He helped me make the cookies, cut them out, and patiently sat spreading the icing with a toothpick.  I was impressed at how careful he was! He even held off eating them until his friends and cousin came over. (My mom's sugar cookie recipe is really the best. I did a faux royal icing which tastes better than actual royal icing, but nothing beats a buttercream so I added on some canned last minute.)

I got a bunch of googly eyes at the dollar store and Asa and I taped them on the cups and plates.  He saw Monster's Inc recently so this made him extremely excited.

Yup.  Here's my crazy helper.

I despise mice.  I have a phobia of them.  My sister-in-law picked these up for one of our parties a couple years back and I held on to them.  But it really took a lot for me to handle these things.

Plastic tablecloth from the dollar tree works great for cleaning up all the pumpkin goop. 

Mummy dogs have been popping up all over pinterest so we got some crescent dough, cut it into strips, and wrapped them up.  Asa helped wrap them up too!  Great kid activities.

When it came to the actual carving part, well the kids headed downstairs and we carved.  My brother does extremely detailed pumpkins.  He created cinderella's pumpkin coach a week ago for his daughter!   (The garland in the background there is just a package of foam pumpkins from the dollar tree stapled to black ribbon.)

They spent the evening doing a bunch of this.

The finished product.

Real Weddings: Christy and Brian Professional Shots

Well, we're home!  And we did have a fantastic time in Portland, although we all caught a flu bug so I ended up staying in bed with the kids much of the time. But we got a chance to catch up with friends and family so it was a worthwhile trip!

Rosie sent over these pictures of Christy and Brian.  Pretty fun!

Her flowers featured: dahlias, zinnias, ranunculus, stock, roses, billy balls, delphinium, queen anne's lace, and maiden fern.  I ordered a bunch and we went to the cutting garden for some.

snow on the mountain in mason jars

Rosie's got more pictures of the wedding on her blog here.

Sneak Peek: Christy and Brian Professional Shots

 

Here's a look at some of the shots done by Urban Rose Photography of Christy and Brian! More coming soon! (we're having a great week in Portland by the way!)

Fall Color

Tomorrow marks the end of the busy, busy wedding season!  (These are some of the flowers for this wedding.) This past summer (well fall too!) has been fantastic and a HUGE thank you to all the brides who let me design for them!  I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you, all your creativity, fun ideas, and new challenges.

My husband's taken a new job. No, we're not moving, but we're headed down to Portland, OR for a week of training.  It'll be work for him but it will be a lot of catching up with family and friends for me and the kids and I'm extremely excited for a little down time!  Not to mention a trip to IKEA, Powells, outlets, and hopefully some thrift stores. I may finally find the elusive side table I've been looking for to finish off Ida's nursery.  So, blog posts may or may not happen next week.
Thanks a ton and see you soon!

(btw: I've got a new blog and logo design in the works!)

Sneak Peek: Christy's Bouquet

Christy was laid back, easy to work with and fun to design for!  She dyed her bridesmaids' dresses assorted shades of cornflower blue and wanted yellow, pink and orange flowers to match with some coming from the local cutting garden.

To go with her more casual bridesmaids dresses I wrapped the bouquets and boutonnieres in playful fabrics featuring blue for Christy and orange for the bridesmaids.  (This fabric is Blue Chrysanthemum from Rebekah Merkle's England Swings Collection.)

The profesional shots were done by Urban Rose Photography so they're bound to be good!  I'll show you them when I can!

Classic Bridal Bouquets

I've been working on completing my advanced certification with the Portland Floral Design Institute.  Here are some of the required bridal bouquets that I had to complete.  With these I had to follow specific design patterns and tie techniques.
They are all pretty classic looks. The one above is a hand wired bouquet featuring gardenias and stephanotis.  A petite bouquet and it smells spectacular!

Here's a dutch spiralled bouquet with free spirit roses.  This picture doesn't show it completely but the stems come around and form a spiral.  Neither of these are my favorite ribbon style, but it's great to work outside of your comfort zone.

And this is a faux-hand tied.  It's actually in a foam holder for extremely hot days, but with stems attached to conceal it.  These are eskimo roses.

I'm really curious to know what you think!!  Would you opt for any of these? Interested in what they cost?  What do you like or dislike about these classic versions?

Sneak Peek: Rachel's Bouquet

Rachel's wedding was also this past weekend.  She was a lot of fun to design for!  She's a graphic designer and she loves orange.  She really wanted ranunculus, they're small this time of year but we were able to get them in!  I can't wait to show you her whole wedding party (of 12!)  in all orange!