Archive for the ‘Floral’ Category

Have I mentioned that my mom is super smart?  I’m finally old enough to really appreciate how awesome and talented she is.  I mean I always knew she was, but it is hard to really appreciate it until you try to do it yourself.  For instance – arrangements.  Look at how fabulous this is!  I’m making her tell me all of her secrets so maybe one day when I have kids that are all grown up they will see how super smart I am!  (or they will read these posts and understand where they get their terrible grammer/spelling from…) Whatev’s!   

So, I have decided to break down some of the basic rules she tries to follow when she starts to arrange.

1. Pick your base.

Lay down a colored runner or piece of cloth.  This will be the key piece that will help tie your whole arrangement into place.  It needs to go down first!!

2. You need varying height. 

Use anything you have around the house to achieve this.  We used tupperware!  I have a million different sizes and heights of it.  You can use the cup side or the flat side.  The cup side is great for round and glass objects because they sit a bit better and wont fall off if your table gets bumped.

3. Layer and build.

Start out with your base objects or your focal pieces and build out and up.  Take your greenery or flowers and lay them out to create the perfect length that you want for your table or mantel.  Then begin to place the rest of your decorative greenery on top and slightly shorter than the layer before.

4. Final touches.

Place items like gourds and balls last.  They are usually very light and can be used to fill in holes in your greenery.  This can add a great pop of color as well.

5. It’s in the details.

Step back and take a look constantly.  It is important that your arrangement feels balanced.  Feel free to add on little bits of sparkle and some final sticks or fun accent stems.

This is my mother’s mantel at her house.  We tease that Fall has thrown up on her mantle!  It looks awesome.

She has these lanterns out as her normal decor but I love how she adds some pumpkins and pinecones to make them feel more like fall.

This is another mantel my mother put together.  I love the sunflowers.

I’m one of those really lucky kids who has a mini Martha Stewart as a mom. Now for some of you having Martha Stewart for a mom would terrible, for me it was awesome!  The older I get the more I realize how lucky I was and just how gosh darn talented she really is.  My Mom and Dad came over this past Saturday to help me decorate my house for Halloween and a little bit of fall.  She brought over two huge tubs full of Fall decor that she doesn’t need anymore to help me out.  I have a ton of Halloween decorations and Christmas stuff but no general Fall decor.

Saturday morning I jumped right up and lit my spiced candle so my house would start filling with the awesome scent of Fall.  I put a little Frank Sinatra on and we started the decorating party.  My Dad is a really good sport with all of the decorating and obsessiveness we all have.  He laughs and helps out where he can.  If you look closely at my silver deer head he is the one that placed the black hair on it’s head!  See, very creative!  :)

My mom has some really great tips that are helpful for when you are getting your arrangements or surfaces prepped.  When you are working on a mantel or sofa table you need to start it differently than if you are working on a table arrangement.

1. Start with your big and tall items first. Get those positioned on the outside and work your way down to the smaller items.

2. You need a central focal point and outside objects to help keep your focus moving across the mantel.  If one side is to heavy then your eye will pull toward that side.

3. Use garland or faux floral and balls last.  Tuck them into your empty spots to make it feel fuller.

4. Put your lights on last.  If you do the light strand to early you will end up hiding the glow underneath all your decor.

I love this vignette.  I always like to create little areas within my arrangements that work on their own.

I put little bat cut outs on my giant globe lights above my dining table.  They look really cool and I just love the little bat shadows they create.

My oldest sister Tiffany lives in North Carolina and has the most beautiful house.  It is very colonial in style and looks picturesque with all of her Fall and Halloween decor.

Look how pretty!

Tiffany has all of these really great old fashioned looking Halloween decorations.  Spooky but not scary enough to freak out my two little nephews.

Every girl needs a sparkly skull!  Don’t you think.

Tiff cut out the black cat and taped it to her mirror.  So easy and very cute.

Happy decorating!

I have been trying to come up with some simple ways of having some floral arrangements in the house for the party.  Luckily simple modern floral design is very in style right now so I feel like I can have fresh flowers in the house and still make the arrangements not too feminine.  I do not own a lot of vases so I tend to use any container I can find as a vase.  This tends to force me to be a little bit more creative in the styling of the arrangement.  I want the colors to be simple so I’m only going to use whites, greens and browns.  I need one floral for the food table, one for the coffee table and something special for our wine room (it’s not really a fancy wine room, more like the room were we happen to keep our 2 whole bottles of wine.)

My dining table is very long so I’m going to need something that can span the length of it because all of the food and desserts will be spread out across it.  I plan to use my stemless wine glasses to accomplish this.  I want one simple white rose with a little greenery in each glass and I want the glasses to be spaced evenly all the way down the table.  I bought some green moss to intermingle through the wine glasses.  You could easily add some candles to this arrangement or place ornaments in between to jazz it up for a holiday.

For the coffee table I used a large round bowl that I typically use for salads and filled it with white pom flowers.  These flowers are relatively inexpensive and take up a lot of space.  My mother has the most beautiful backyard with several dozen hydrangea bushes that have a million blooms on them so I asked her to cut me some for the party.  Her hydrangea’s happen to be greenish white so they looked perfect with the rest of my decor.  I totally forgot to take a picture of this so you all are going to have to use your imagination!

Now the wine room was the best!  Our awesome friends Eddie and Barry filled the ceiling of the room with green, brown and white balloons. It was such an amazing detail and everyone wanted to take turns hanging out in the balloon room.  It was simple in design but looked absolutely stunning.  Eddie owns Balloon City USA which is not your grandma’s balloon company.  You want a larger than life size toy soldier made of  balloons at your next Christmas party you call them.  Need an under the sea octopus extravaganza?  Eddie can build it! Talk about some unexpected creations!!

Look at how cool that is!

Nat and I have been itching to throw a party lately and felt the upcoming Sex and the City movie was the perfect reason to celebrate!  When you first decide to throw a party (especially with someone else) the first thing you want to do is sit down and talk about the theme so everyone is on the same page.  The last thing you want are tacky plastic tablecloths showing up at your glamorous event.  Luckily, Natalie and I have been down this road more than once so we tend be on the same page on just about everything.   

We have watched Sex and the City since the beginning, and all of our friends have enjoyed and been influenced by the dramatic characters of the series and first movie.  We thought it would be fun to celebrate the latest movie installment with a Sex and the City style party.  In honor of the movie’s Abu Dhabi setting, we went with an Arabian theme and served lavish Middle Eastern cuisine.  The food was simple yet mature, and enlightened our guests to a truly powerful cuisine that has probably not been experienced enough among our peers. 

We staged the party at Natalie’s Uptown high rise apartment, where we filled the ceiling with white paper lanterns and placed turquoise and gold candle-holders on anything that would sit still long enough.

Crystal strands hung from the centerpieces with the blatant juxtaposition of modest sand and brilliant diamonds gracing the tabletop. 

We also covered the living room floor in pillows to help our guests relax while we played episodes of our favorite four ladies causing trouble in the HBO series and first movie.

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When planning a party, I like to really coordinate every detail.  I want the theme to be loud and clear, without being overdone, and I want it to flow throughout every aspect of the party.  The theme for this party is obviously chocolate and since it’s also a nod to Valentine’s Day I’ve worked in some pink colors as well. 

I have a contemporary design style, so my plates are usually simple and architectural.  This does not mean that yours have to be the same.  If you have a funky style or a country style, I’m sure you have something around the house that could work for this dinner.  Just work with what you have.  The more budget-friendly a party turns out, the more often you can throw them! 

I will start out with my centerpieces.  For dinner parties I like to make sure all guests at the table can see each other, so I tend to use smaller centerpieces.  I decided to use pink roses because I love them all clumped together.  I am also pretending not to notice that roses have doubled in price this month due to the impending holiday.  Feel free to use whatever flowers you like though.  Tulips are beautiful right now and should be fairly inexpensive.  If you don’t want to use flowers, just fill vases with Valentine candy or chocolates.  It will still fit the theme and add a punch of color to the table.  Here are the details for my arrangements in case you want to follow along.  If not, skip down to the exciting section on napkin folding!  Oh yeah, we’re going there!

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