FLOWERS!!!

So here's the deal. Jeff went to an produce auction with a friend this past Friday. I figured he would come home with a couple bushels of green beans and some other veggies to blanch and toss in the freezer. What greeted me as I returned shocked the sense out of me! His reply as he picked my jaw off the floor was, "But sweetie I had to buy the whole lot."

So I said, "JEFF"....yeah I shouted and yeah I should have just sweetly said, "Oh honey....I love you".....but I asked him "How much for each bundle and how many bundles" He so proudly said, "But honey there were only 3 bucks a bundle!" "Jeff, how many bundles?" "Oh, Julie...I don't know....16 maybe 18." THUD!!!!

So for all of you who have seen the pictures of my mom's place...you know who I had to call! I told her what her son-in-law had done and could she help me figure out what to do with all of these flowers. I had to get a move on these since I don't have a walk in cooler! Yes, my friends it was enough to open up a florist shop!

Mom to the rescue!

Did I ever tell you that she was the president of the Cuyahoga Falls (OH) garden club for years? She knew what to do and just dove right in! It was no daunting task for her!

Well, yeah sure... I did a bunch of the arranging also....but I knew that I just had to immortalize this event! Aren't you glad?

Slowly we made some progress.....sort through several bundles and match up color schemes and shapes and sizes and......on and on and on!!! Oh some of the flowers were perfect for drying too....so we had to take that into consideration also. It's not just plopping stems in a vase. This is an art! You need to remove all the leaves that might touch the water. So each and every stem was handled at least twice.

Beautiful dusty pinks with a little splash of white. This is in our bedroom.

Some fuschia and yellow...one of my favorites!
I never would have thought to combine these colors.
That's my mom!
This arrangement is in my kitchen.

We just had to put a bunch of the sunflowers in this vase.
This is also in my kitchen.

This one is going to my grandma's for her 89th birthday tomorrow.

This is just a tiny delicate vase of broken stems....I couldn't just toss them out!
I have them on a bookcase in my living room.

This arrangement is HUGE!!!
I took it to church this morning and just leave it there.
It's a gorgeous vase full of red and white zinnias and snapdragons.

This one was kinda wild...the fuschia is coxcomb and celosia. The coxcomb has a stem nearly the size of a baseball bat! Well not quite...but there's my sport comment for the week! Haha!!

A work of beauty, huh?

This one reminds me of blue and white fireworks!

Orange and fuschia? Who would have thought?
I took this to a friend...talk about brightening up someone's day!

I took this arrangement to a dear friend also....sharing the flowers with people I love just made the whole experience more memorable.

These are all straw flowers! They'll hold their color and feel for a long, long time!

I think this is the arrangement my mom made for Jeff's mom....I can't find it around here and since I can't remember it....that means that it probably left the house early in the event. WOW! That's really pretty, isn't it?

So you've seen all fifteen arrangements now check out these next couple pictures.

Yup....this was nearly a five hour event. Mom lasted about 3 hours.....I saw flowers in my sleep and everywhere I looked. Prior to bed all I thought of was flowers and what I could put them in! WOW! What an experience! I might like to do this in my old age! HAH! What's that?

Oh...don't y'all worry about Jeff...he's fine!
And he knows what he did just tickled me beyond belief!

Hugs, Happiness and Harmony!
Julie