Well, there is a first time for everything! Back in May, I had a wonderful lesson on floral arranging from our floral lady who makes the weekly floral arrangements for church. She is an amazing and talented gift to our church community. When I asked her if she would help me make the one hydrangea centerpiece for the Cap and Gown Reception, she took me under her wing and let me go with her to purchase the flowers at the warehouse and then she assisted me in making the arrangement.
Now, here it is July and some of our ladies from our Auxiliary group at church were asked to do the reception for the annual installation of the K of C officers. When we were making the menu, I brought up the fact that I would like to do some floral arrangements for the table. At the time I thought this would be a manageable task but when I realized that there were 9 centerpieces, I wasn't put off. I just hoped that the people attending would not see huge flaws in these novice centerpieces. I worked about 4 hours and finally accomplished the task.
I was going to use my Hydrangea centerpiece from the Cap and Gown reception to lower the costs of our budget. This arrangement was placed on the food table.
Before I get started on the floral centerpieces, I want to tell you a little bit about the food that we served. We started out making crudité shots with Ranch dressing. That followed with skewered large shrimp with kielbasa sausage, puff pastry ham and Swiss cheese squares, peppered flat iron steaks sliced on top of crostini with horseradish cream sauce, artichoke, cheese and spinach puff pastry cups and chocolate and white chocolate mousse served with blackberries and raspberries with a thin Oreo on top. All of the food was amazing and so delicious! Have I made anyone hungry yet?
Ok, now on to the flowers. I found these aqua foam cages at the floral warehouse. The first step is soaking them for 30 minutes. Then all you do is insert your flowers working from the bottom up. I used greenery on the bottom, placed a fuchsia rose in the center of the top and placed mini rose carnations to fill in the rest adding a bit of purple status.
Here are the cages with the circumference of 3 1/4 inches.
Don't you just love this antique ruler from Peoria? It belonged to my Grandparents.
Once the arrangements were made, I kept them in the fridge prior to the event. When they were ready to be placed on the tables, I took 7 inch glass pillars, filled them with battery powered fairy lights and laid the flower arrangement on top. Please excuse the wire. It was supposed to be intertwined into the flowers.
When the event was over, I asked the ladies to take the toppers home. I had 3 extra ones, so I shared 2 with my neighbors and kept the other for myself.
I came home and fooled around placing it in different places. Here are some of the arrangements.
I really like the flowers on top of the 3 foot tall mercury candlestick. This opens up a lot of ideas for Christmas decorating.
I can also envision 3 or 5 of these in the silver goblets across the mantle.
Here is another variation of the display. I ran out of the large roses so I used both light and fuchsia pinks in the center.
The unique thing about these petite flower arrangements is that you can use them in numerous ways in your decorating and they aren't that pricey.
In the end, I would have felt more comfortable making these for myself rather than an outside group of people. I have learned a few things about styling the arrangements. I think it will take practice to hone this skill, but I have to admit, it was pretty fun to try something brand new. I will be doing this again.
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