Talia & Justin at Fort Warden

Photo by Amanda Rose

Now Talia is a glamorous gal. She is also one of my good friends. When she and Justin married in late September at Fort Warden Park in Port Townsend, we wanted to create a bouquet for her that combined the rustic feel of this gorgeous park with the glamorous, sparkly personality that is Talia. Deep purple calla lilies combined with gomphrena, bunny tail grass, scabiosa pods, spray roses, and both gold and copper silk ribbon did the trick! Many thanks to Amanda and Henry Rose, Kari Champoux, and Derrick Ito for all these beautiful photos!

Photo by Kari Champoux

Photo by Amanda Rose

Photo by Kari Champoux

Photo by Derrick Ito (I know I already posted this photo in my "Favorite Moments from 2012" post, but I just love it... had to post it again...

Photo by Henry Rose

Happy married life Talia and Justin!!!! It was so fun to design these flowers for you.

In Review...

Time for a little yearly round-up of some of my favorite images, arrangements and moments from 2012! I know it's a little bit late for this (as most people might do this right at the turn of the new year), but I figure better late than never. Now seems like a good time.

SO! In no particular order, here are some highlights from 2012:

One of my favorite arrangements/photos/flower combinations- just can't beat the Cafe au Lait dahlias, fall foliage, cosmos, and crabapples. This arrangement was also made in my favorite way: Go out to the Cutting Garden on a whim, and go wild! No color palette or flower requirements, just the inspiration of the moment...

Photo by Derrick Ito

THIS MOMENT, at the wedding of my friends Talia and Justin- one of the best things about being a floral designer is getting to be on the inside of so many friend's weddings- I love doing flowers for people I love :)

And on the topic of friends' weddings.....

Photo by Karin Apollonia Muller

This bouquet from another good friend's wedding- Katie and Jeff, one of the most amazing, creative couples I know, married in Big Sur, one of the most beautiful places in the world! This wedding was truly a labor of love- and a lot of help! I got SICK- as sick as I have been in years- feverish, hallucinating... the REAL deal... but I refused to let anyone else touch this bouquet (just had to be the one that made it!) but two of Katie's bridesmaids (who happened to have previous experience working for an event florist!) gave me a BIG hand with everything else.

Here we are (with me in the middle), working away... on a side note, don't you just LOVE our outfits?!? Ha! Though it's hard to tell from this photo, it was so cold there that the owner of the ranch where Katie and Jeff were getting married loaded us up with all her spare sweaters, vests, and jackets. NOT the best photo ever taken of me, that's for sure! Can you tell how sick I am? I can, by that distant, woozy and pale look... yikes! I am really glad that somehow, magically, no one else got sick at this wedding :)

A new logo! I love this logo, designed by yet another good friend, and amazing designer and jeweler, Kim Williamson of Dottyspeck. (I'm noticing a trend here..... FRIENDS were a big part of this year!)

The Cutting Garden.... I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVED The Cutting Garden.

Picking up buckets upon buckets of locally-grown flowers from the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. I absolutely LOVE that place, and all the farmers who sell their amazing flowers there.

Looking up and seeing this duck walk across a bright white aisle!!!! Believe me, I was NOT so happy about it at the time!!!!! (a more accurate description would be terrified and furious, thinking that this duck was going to poop on that aisle!!!!) But it all turned out just fine, and now it makes me smile thinking back to it :)

This cake, made by none other than Michael at The Troubadour Baker.

This arrangement, sitting on my worktable pre-transport.

This color palette- peach, orange, silver...

Sweet pea vines...

The first bucket of Cerinthe harvested from The Cutting Garden.

TOMATOES!!!!!!

This bouquet. And poppies, mock orange, garden roses, clematis, and peonies, every time I got to work with them.

And last, but NOT least, getting engaged to this amazing man!!!!! Eli, the love of my life :)

Whew! There are so many more amazing things that happened this past year- it was full! And just a few weeks into 2013, I am already feeling so many wonderful things in the works for this year. Life is exciting! Happy Late New Year to everyone!!!! Hope your 2013 is magical :)

The Cutting Garden

I don't blog very much about The Cutting Garden... not sure why... I guess all those romantic photos of weddings and floral arrangements just take precident most of the time. But now that it is January, we are through the darkest days of the year, and I am starting to see the *very* beginnings of spring (narcissus starting to poke up through the soil!!! a flowering plum tree IN FULL BLOOM yesterday!!!!), I am getting really excited about this year, and The Cutting Garden is really on my mind!

An Iceland Poppy saying "hello" to some Cerinthe (July 2012)

Zinnias (August 2011)

A bucket of poppy pods harvested for a dear friend's wedding last summer.

Today I am ordering seeds: the winter ritual of dreaming about all the possibilities for next year, making lists of seeds, editing the list, adding more seeds back onto the list, trying to figure out how on earth I am going to grow all those plants in this backyard, deciding I better go ahead and expand the garden, maybe a bed full of heirloom roses would be nice, YES!!! YES, YES, YES! AND MORE ROOM FOR DAHLIAS!!! You can see how excited my mind gets dreaming about all of these things......

This is such an exciting time, when I am reminded of all the possibilities, and also reflecting on what happened last year, and how I can work smarter this year.

It is also very inspiring to me to see how much happens in such a short period of time. The following photos show the evolution of last year's garden from January (just a sketch on paper) to July (an off-the-hook, wild flower jungle!)

The initial plan....

Implementation! Which involved a lot of serious WORK!!! Sore muscles for days......

By May, things are starting to take shape... and looking EXTREMELY organized.... WOW!

And by the end of July it is just a riot!

Looking outside at the windy, bare trees and the empty garden (the only things still standing are a patch of dusty miller, and one, very haggard cardoon that I just refuse to take down for some reason...) it is hard to imagine that the garden in this photo really existed just a few months ago! But also so exciting to realize that it will be back in the blink of an eye (I planted hundreds of frittilaries, muscari, and parrot and peony-flowering tulips last fall, which will be the first to come up this spring!)

Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.... OH MY GOSH, I AM SO EXCITED. Now time to get this seed order in so I can make this year's garden a reality!