Making Arrangements

A couple of months ago, my friend and co worker Megan approached me about a Groupon for a floral design class.  She had always loved the idea of learning about it and I was game to try out something new.  After a quick, *click click* and about $40, we were planned to spend an evening at a Dogwood Floral Design, glass of wine in hand making floral arrangements.  We were so excited!

Via Dogwood

So, Megan and I headed out for our little date after work to Mexican restaurant Mexico Lindo. 

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After gorging ourselves we decided, we couldn't be that far from Dogwood and our belly's were pretty full, so we'd better walk off some of the sour cream we just ate.  Being that neither of us were familiar with the town, we walked about 7 blocks, and were still hundreds of numbers away.  They just weren't counting down as fast as we'd hoped and time was ticking away.  We turned around and booked it back to the car.  As we hustled our gluttonous bodies back to my little silver bullet Megan stopped mid-tracks and mid-sentence. 

"I just got shit on."

Somehow, despite being fast-ish moving targets, a mean spirited bird timed his bowl movements just right to land directly on Megan.  Luckily, most of it landed on bare arm and was easy enough to clean off with a napkin and a good lathering of hand sanitizer. 

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After a hearty laugh and a couple of text messages later, we scurried back to the car and made it right in time for class at 7.  We were greeted by Theresa and Meagan's smiling faces and their adorable store front that boasted beautiful bud vases a-plenty, hand made soaps, and plenty of stunning pictures of their work.  They poured us a glass of red wine and an intimate class of 7 filed in.  Almost all the girls there were brides or mothers of the bride- except us.  We just like flowers... and our boyfriends won't buy them for us (HINT: MATT IF YOU READ THIS: BUYING FLOWERS = A GOOD THING)  so we have no choice but to make them ourselves. 

We watched as Theresa explained the different kinds of flowers and how each would play a roll to make a full looking arrangement, taught us how to cut them properly and went on to arrange a stunning piece.  After fielding rapid-fire questions from our small group, they handed out our flowers and let us take the reigns. We laughed and sipped our wine and plucked at our flowers and had a great time!

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I wish I could say this was my arrangement, but its not.  But this is similar to what ours looked like. We used a few different colors of Celosia Cristata that you might know as "brain flowers"

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We had a ton of roses of all different shades of pink, red and orange.  I haven't worked with many flowers but the hollow stems of dahlia's were so odd but ended up looking beautiful!  And we topped it all off with one single orchid.

All in all, it was definitely more challenging than I anticipated to make the arrangement look full and balanced.  But in the end I was happy with my product and feel like I have the tools to make an arrangement at home myself now.  I loved my bouquet but you'll have to just trust me that it was gorgeous, because I (you guessed it!) forgot to take a picture with my phone! (You know, since my camera is busted! BOO!)  I am lucky to have such a smart friend as Megan who did take pictures of her arrangement and also took to arranging like a fish to water. So take a gander at what she did...

Pretty impressive right?

Here you can see we used a cylinder vase with a banana leaf! Love this look!

Didn't she do a great job?? She really has a knack for it!

Sadly, on my drive home, my arrangement tipped over, spilling all the water out in my trunk. Luckily, the arrangement was so tightly packed in there, it was just fine.  Hardly even a bruised petal!  The bummer was that my car smelled a wee bit damp for a couple of days but it dissipated quickly.  So, that was our adventures in Mexican food, bird poop and floral arranging!! 

If you are local and want to go take a class, Dogwood offers more than just classes through Groupon!  Go to their website right here for more info on classes!

Hope you guys are having a wonderful start to your week!  <3