The Cream is happening in NY

To all of you getting married, have friends getting married, or just want to hang out and drink champagne, come on by The Cream NY on August 14th. This fiesta is going to be very rad. Very, very rad. We are psyched to be a part of it and bring some beautiful flowers to the best party that will ever happen on a Tuesday. Get tickets now!!

trains and keys

I'm writing this blog post instead of finalizing orders for some upcoming weddings. This is rather stupid. Sometimes I need to get some of the "other" work out of the way before I can dive in. Warm up work? Maybe. I don't know.  

In the last 24 hours I managed to leave a folder of incredibly important documents on top of a parking meter at a train station. Then this morning I completely lost my car keys. No, I did not misplace them. Lost. Haven't found 'em. Documents? Found.

Barely caught the above mentioned train only to realize the error of my ways. 50 bucks and 45 minutes later, I was back where I started. Documents in hand. Sheepishly walked to my car to drive instead of train it back to the city. (Is Mercury in retrograde?) The lesson I learned? I need to slowwwww it on down. Take a real day totally off. Stop editing photos and go to the movies. 

What's playing?

the berks

Let's clear something up. The Berkshires are in Massachusetts. You may not know this because people don't seem to know this. But they are not in NY or CT, they are in MA - east of the hudson river and the catskills. It's amazing how much natural beauty is within a 3 hour drive from big city life. The Berkshires are incredibly gorgeous. Like freak you out pretty. The air is so fresh and crisp and clean. 5 minutes outside in that clean, fresh air and I felt vastly healthier. Wished I had brought my yoga mat and was dreaming up quinoa recipes. No joke.

So, what was I doing there? No, I wasn't trying to talk my way into living at Kripalu though the idea crossed my mind. I had the pleasure of assisting the lovely and talented Ariella on a wedding. The experience was pretty darn fabulous. The people, the environment, the flowers, the pizza breaks. It all felt a bit surreal. I've learned a ton from Ariella in the last 6 months. I was fortunate enough to be a part of her Maui workshop back in February and since then things have been clicking a bit more. There's a real ease about her work. Her flowers define effortless beauty and watching her work is quite calming. We all (at least the florists) know this work requires a TON of effort but slowing down the pace in your mind and focussing on the what's happening in front of you is really transforming. "Loosen it up," is something Ariella says often. So simple and so spot on. Loosen it up. The flowers, the arrangement, the hold, the focus, the mind. It's just flowers. Looking forward to assisting Ariella on a few more events this summer. I'm one lucky duck, that's for sure.

hey nicole, check out these bouts

My friend Nicole has a thing for bouts. She's in Australia right now and I miss her a lot. She's been there for a year and a half and will be there for another some odd months. She's training to be in the Australian military. No, she's not. She's cooking a lot of test food for her pretty rad biz Green Bellies. (That right there is what we call a plug). Anyway, Nicole got married a few years ago and I was living in Oregon at the time. Her wedding was in Philly. The logistics (because weddings are truly only about logistics) were too tricky for me to do all her flowers, be in her wedding and not lose my mind. So in an effort to do something for the big day, I made some bouts and corsages. I still feel guilty about this. I should have made all her flowers. If it were today, and she happened to be getting married in Australia, the logistics wouldn't scare me. The moral of this story that seems to be going nowhere is that Nicole's favorite floral part of her wedding were the bouts. And since then, she keeps tabs on the bouts I be making. I try to make them pretty enough for her high standards. 

PS - I didn't really like those bridesmaid bouquets, cole. I lied and said I did. But I didn't.

monday catch up

I keep meaning to talk about the chicken coup in the neighborhood. I'll have to save that for next time because it is so strange and interesting, I dare not write about that tale with tired eyes. On a completely unrelated note to chickens, I've been wanting to show you these ridiculous coral charm peonies from a few weeks ago. I had a bunch of them leftover after a peony mishap that goes into the whoops file. I gave handfuls and handfuls to my studio neighbors and grabbed some remnants to make one big puffy cloud of pink magic. These flowers are insane.

Some of the last hellebore and ranunculus of the season. I'll miss you. Until next year...

clients

I hope to have at least one more client as incredible as the woman I had the pleasure of working with this past weekend. Spoken with Southern charm, "I don't like to limit people's creativity" was her opening line and, with that, I was given creative freedom with the guideline to convey some "wow." Wow is what I gave her and wow is what I felt. No pestering calls. Only calls to see how I was doing. No rushed meetings. Instead, leisurely afternoon meetings accompanied by a couple glasses of champagne. I work hard to make sure my clients are happy, but this time my client brought me quite a lot of joy. Until next time, Miss Linda...

p.s. big up to my friends at saipua for sending me the referral.


p.p.s can we talk about that mock orange and that tiny clematis with that dusty mauve/chocolate foliage? I mean. Come on. Some flowers just mess me up with their beauty. 

"back to reality"

I truly detest the saying "back to reality." It makes my skin crawl, boil, and flake off all at once. When people say it, I have an intense urge is to smack them, but instead, I usually shrug and say, "yeah, something like that."

Back up. Why? It represents the opposite of how i'm trying to live my life. That may sound a tad extreme, but it's mostly true. When I leave the day to day in this city to visit friends afar or paddle out in CR or take a day to drive around, I don't like to think of it as pure escapism. It's fuel and information and it's invigorating and inspiring.

I'm well aware that I'm one of the lucky ones that gets to have a career doing something I truly enjoy. So, I suppose there's less of a need to run away from it all. But like all work, it gets stressful and tiring and you need to shut that part of your brain down at times.

I guess I want it all to be my reality. I get really connected when I'm away (perhaps overly so :) ). Connected to the environments and the people and those unfamiliar routines that quickly become second nature. I don't like to think that all that gets locked away the second i'm "back." I'm never really "gone" so how do I get "back?" It's all one long thread with a million awesome avenues. Thank goodness for planes, man.

P.S. here are some photos of flowers.