Tiniest flowers of all...

I looked outside my window this morning (OK, it was more like noon) to find a few inches of snow covering the ground.

All of a sudden, I had visions of trying to push Finn in his stroller over six feet tall snowbanks. Having to put one of those horrible clear plastic covers over his ride to protect him from the Montreal winter winds, the kind that freeze your eyelashes together if you blink for two long... Or just the simple prospect of not leaving the house at all for 4 months.

These pictures eased my panic. Just for a few minutes, though.

The smaller things...

Sometimes it's overwhelming, sorting through hundreds of pictures of flowers... They start to all look the same. To me at least. And most of the time, there isn't an interesting story to go with them.

Still, some of them are worth sharing. So I lumped together a few pictures that are great examples of smaller arrangements...

You don't need to spend tons of your hard-earned money to get charming centerpieces.

When I worked at the flowershop, all the clients with more modest budgets got sent my way... My colleagues preferred concentrating on big spenders! And while it's obvious that bigger budgets mean more flowers to work with, it doesn't necessarily mean you have more liberty and opportunities as a designer.

When you are working with very few elements, the concept has to be strong and the execution has to be perfect. It's challenging and exciting. You have to be inventive with containers. Willing to experiment with different branches, foliage or fruits, all of which can stretch you budget more efficiently than actual flowers.

So small wedding have always been some of my favorite projects. I still remember a couple I worked with almost 10 years ago... Their budget was 15$ per table, which we finally upgraded to 16$ per table. In a shop where most centerpieces went for 75$ to 125$, this was considered pretty much impossible. The result was simple and elegant, and the couple was maybe to most satisfied and happy I've ever helped out.

These arrangements are all made with 3 flowers or less, coupled with inexpensive, locally harvested greens and branches.

First bouquet as a mum...

After Finn was born, my friend I used to work with at the flower shop sent me some flowers... She new I like to do things my way, so instead of making me a bouquet, she filled up a box with a bunch of the stuff I love. She called it the Ikea bouquet, because I'd have to assemble it myself... It took me a few days to find the energy to do anything with them, but when I finally did, it felt really good to take a moment for myself doing something I love. Before I started I went for a stroll in the alley to pick up a few "weeds"... The hairy looking vines are a species of Clematis, one I think is native to Eastern Canada. A couple other things too, polygonum and some stuff I can't identify...

It's interesting because it's not colours I would've picked out spontaneously, but the resulting mix was just fabulous. I naturally gravitate towards deep, saturated hues. These were far more subtle and varied. Just goes to show, I really have to expand from my usual choices of reds, pinks and purples...

I can imagine a wedding with a long harvest table filled with these. So perfect for a fall celebration. The place mats would be a dirty shade of purple, like the hydrangeas. Place cards would be light peach and olive, and maybe a few mustard coloured candles?

I'm already looking forward to the 2011 wedding season...

Long time no blog...

Well, I haven't posted anything for a while, but I think I have a pretty good excuse, no?

If not a good one, at least a gorgeous one.

Name's Finnegan...

Pink & purple hues...

In this arrangement...

The peonies and the rose are cultivated, but everything else is from the neighbourhood alleys. Queen Anne's lace, black eyed Susans (without their petals), campanula, veronica, hosta leaves... The bachelor buttons are from my own yard! This is the first year I've actually had room back there to do some experimenting...

And some stuff I can't name. I usually have my trusted "wildflowers of the city" identification guide, but with the renos and everything I can't seem to find it. Oh well.

Patricia + Guillaume 2010

The "theme" we started with for this wedding was TOMATO ORANGE, to match the pair of shoes the bride would be wearing (colourful shoes are for sure one of my favorite wedding details... it gets even better when everything derives from them!).

Well, it turns out that there really isn't that many flowers of that exact hue. Less than I had anticipated... Or maybe I was just being too finniky with the colour?

I set the tone with "Orange France" roses ("Star 2000" roses are also this colour), and went with paler oranges from there, with celosia and freesia for the bouquet, adding eremurus for some height in the arrangements. I wanted some fruits or veggies in there to give it a "harvest" look, and since tomatoes would not have been too subtle, I opted for peaches and apricots instead. Finished everything off with a good measure of white, a touch of silvery grey (perfect with orange hues), and lots of greenery...

My pictures of the centerpieces (in white creamers) on location came out too dark, so hopefully the photographer will have gotten a few good shots!

Miniatures...

Some (most) of my favorite flowers bloom in spring. And most of my faves are special to me for sentimental reasons, reminding me of my childhood explorations and experimentations. Even at five or six, I had a mental registry of what grew where... A patch of violets, lilacs or lily of the valley was carefully catalogued somewhere in my brain for the following year. To this day, I can still remember what flowers/weeds/trees grew around each house we lived in.

Unfortunately, unless you work for Martha Stewart Magazine, you really never get to use these flowers in real life. They're expensive, finniky, and most won't tolerate an hour out of water. A bride once showed me a picture of her dream bouquet... It was a lily of the valley posy from Martha Stewart Weddings. I had to tell her that considering the price of lily of the valley in Montreal, her bouquet was worth about 1500.00$. She was pretty disappointed...

Anyways, this year I decided to have fun. Who cares that these literally wilted within 30 minutes, even in water? The pictures don't look worse for it. And for the time they did last, they were the prettiest things on earth... Needless to say, these all come from within two blocks of my house, from the alleys and neighbour's gardens.

In these... Cheap hard boiled egg cups from Loblaws, violets, rhododendron, lily of the valley, prunus branches, tulips, myositis.

Tout rouge...

I realized most of the pictures from the portfolio never made it onto the blog...

So I'll be showing them off in the next few months, along with pictures from upcoming weddings. I have so many interesting and creative clients this season, I feel very lucky and also very inspired... Looking forward to inventing new things and surprising myself and others...

Cream, lime and silver...

Fresh stuff as an "avant-goût" of spring...

This bride's bouquet is from last spring, but the spirea in my neighbourhood seems like it's just a couple of days from busting open like the little sprigs in this picture. I have a few branches being forced to comply to my timeline on my dining room table as we speak... But it's so warm outside they'll probably only be a few days earlier than the ones mother nature is forcing.

In this bouquet...

Cream double tulips, white renuncules, green cymbidium orchids, fuzzy succulents that I can't identify, tillandsia leaves (those twirly, silvery things), galax leaves, and local branches from spirea, pussy willow and viburnum.

Montreal Home Canning...

When it's cold and crappy outside, it can be pretty tempting to shop online instead of actually going outside of the house for supplies (and some air). You can usually find 100 times more choices than your local vendor carries, for cheaper, and they drop it off at your house...

Thankfully, some folks still make it outside once in a while, and places like Montreal Home Canning (not sure if that's their actual name or just what the sign says) can continue to exist. Walking into that shop is like traveling back in time... Back to when people canned, it seems, just about anything you could possibly think of. Most of the jars/cans/containers on their walls are for decoration, "our own little museum" as the owner says, but they were all sold there at one time or another. Now they sell slightly more contemporary fare, like cosmetics jars and medecine bottles. Most of their business is still good old mason jars, though...

Relaxing on Valentine's...

Are you really a real florist if you don't work on Valentine's Day?

Well, after years of sleepless nights and stressed-out days in February, I get to do nothing! Actually, I'll be studying all day at the library, which now that I think of it seems like the exact opposite of Valentine's in the shop... Still, a small part of me will miss the rush and the atmosphere, so I did a little tour to see what others were doing... Studio Choo, always a favorite, is proposing these...

Autumn gleaning...

Ah!

The things you can find in the city...

Magnolia branches, blue juniper (with berries!), euphorbia, rosehips, and a few books, too.

Can't wait for damn winter to be over...

~abundance~

"Abundance is not something we acquire.

It is something we tune into."

(Dr W. Dyer)

The bower...

And we humans think we're so special...

Watch this now!

The Australian bowerbird decorates his house (this is definitely something other than a nest) with flower blooms, beetle wings, acorns...

And David Attenborough has to have the sexiest voice I've ever heard...

Thanks to Resurrection Fern for always posting the most interesting little things...

Pink and orange in the snow...

Finally, pictures that don't date from six months ago. The snow and pot-bellied stove can attest to that...

Paperwhite jam...

Some paperwhites I started a few months back... I eventually separated them all and put them in individual containers, but I snapped these just before I ripped them apart. Can anything look more alive than this? Just looking at these pictures helps me get through the winter...

I wish I could've let them bloom like this...

Yuken Teruya...

Stumbled upon these on d*s...

I like to think of myself as a pretty creative person, but the opportunities to create something unique and meaningful that some people find just floors me sometimes. I throw out a couple of these a week... And never thought twice about them. The artist, Yuken Teruya, has other equally amazing pieces on his website, well worth the detour.

Yellow at Fuchsia...

It feels like we have about four feet of snow here already, and while I admit to loving winters like this (mostly I love them from the couch, admiring through the window while drinking something hot), I am starting to miss greenery. No more strolling through the alleys snipping at wild things... It also means business mellows down for a couple of months, and the bulk of the work becomes consultations for weddings coming up next summer. So I decided to dig through my archives to post some refreshing pics from the past few months. As soon as I saw these, I felt reenergized and peppy. Lasted only a few seconds, but still!

From sometime in November, at Fuchsia. It's really hard for something not to look good there...

These small centerpieces were entirely made from gleaned materials, except the lemons of course. How I'd like to live in a place where I could pick my own lemons... Magnolia branches, blue juniper, tansy, marigold, and those silvery, velvety leaves who's name I can never remember... The containers are a sugar & creamer set from the 50s.