Happy Saturday! I am sorry I haven't been in touch this week. I have been working on a project for my garden club which finally came to fruition on Friday. It took weeks of planning on my part as co-chair of the Ways & Means Committee. Our club is small, and we gave up on large fundraisers years ago because of all the work it takes and the busyness of our lives. We have resorted to funding the club with yearly dues and monthly raffles.
To shake it up a bit in order to make money for the club and, quite honestly, to spread a little sunshine all at the same time, we decided to make some small floral arrangements to be sold at a minimal price to our members. They were to be a welcoming of sorts for spring after a long and hard winter. The members could buy them for themselves or give them away as gifts to friends and family.
The response was great, which was wonderful, but meant that planning was in order to keep costs low and to have a final product that was as beautiful as possible. Happily, I think we achieved that goal. With the help of my co-chair, Karen, we were able to make and deliver 25 lovely bouquets to members in our club who, in turn, were able to give them to people in our community.
Seeing as flowers are my business, I know how restorative giving flowers can be for the recipient...as well as for the giver but, sometimes you have to be reminded of that fact. It was fun to see this principle play itself out in this way. The members I delivered to were thrilled.
As I mentioned, I had planned for weeks researching flower prices and buying inexpensive vases as I traveled around on my shopping trips. In the end, I made one trip to a flower vendor I work with in my floral design business and many other trips to Trader Joe's and Shaw's in order to have just the right number of flowers at just the right price. I found that the grocery store prices were hard to beat for this project.
I purchased bright pink roses, light pink carnations, alstroemeria in various colors, tulips in spring colors, yellow and burgundy mums and a blue/purple aster (I think it is an aster.) for a little bit of contrast. The greens were donated by one of our members. I also purchased a few greens to mix in from the flower market.
We had just enough flowers to make all the arrangements. When all were delivered, I had a few yellow mums, the blue asters, greens and two lonely tulips left to make myself an arrangement. That arrangement was nowhere near as nice as the ones we had made for the club, but I am enjoying it anyway. Flowers are always beautiful, aren't they? (Even though that side tulip ↓ seems to be making a run for it. Hahaha!)
In the course of my preparation, I had stamped some labels that I planned to tie with ribbon around the vases to bring an extra element to the arrangements. In the end, I didn't even mention I had the labels to Karen. We had worked pretty hard that day and I didn't think the amount of work it would take warranted the additional element.
I did, however, add a label to my arrangement just to see how it would look :).
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