Our weekend

Ava had her last tournament of the AAU season over the weekend.  She had a great time playing with her team and she learned a lot from her coaches.  

 My friend Rachael and I made a flower arrangement for Art in Bloom. Art in Bloom is a floral arranging exhibition where floral arrangers create an arrangement highlighting a piece of artwork.   We have made arrangements for Art in Bloom the  last 4 years.  You can see our past arrangements here.  This year our art piece was an elephant made out of recycled material.  This one was our most challenging piece yet.

 

Saturday my friend Rachael hosted a summer brunch.  She had tons of delicious food and drinks.  I love getting together with these girls!  

Sunday we went to our first graduation party of the season for Gabby who graduates from high school on Saturday.  It was a great afternoon!  Here is a picture of the kids from the party. 

And here are some of my friends that were at the party. 

 I love them ❤️. 

We also celebrated Father's Day Sunday.  Happy Father's Day to Graig! He's a great Dad to Brock  and Ava.  We are so lucky he's ours ❤️❤️

And Happy Father's Day to my Dad ❤️❤️

 

Philadelphia flower show

Last week my friend Jenn and I went to the Philadelphia flower show.  The Philadelphia flower show is the oldest and longest running flower show in the country.  Each year they have a theme and this year the theme was Holland:Floweing the World.  

 

The entrance to the show was absolutely spectacular.  We spent lots of time in the grand entrance garden. It was truly amazing.  I loved all the beautiful tulips in this garden. 

 

 

 

They even had flowers on the ceiling!

We went to two classes during the show.  The first class was about succulent jewelry.  I love succulents and thought this was so interesting and inspiring.  

 

 

 

After our first class we decided to relax in the garden spa.  It was a lovely way to spend an hour at the show. We got a mini massage, made a scented sachet, sampled wine, and tried aromatherapy.

 

 

After the spa we walked around the Show some more and took in all of the beautiful flowers and arrangements.  

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon we went to a class on flower arranging.  Three designers made arrangements using the same flowers and containers and the audience got to vote for their favorite.

 

Here is the winning arrangement.

 

After our second class we did some wine/spirit  tasting.  They had a huge area set up for this and it was so fun!  

 

 

I love making mixed drinks and a few of the vendors had recipe cards that we could take to make their drinks at home.  So fun!!

 

We spent our last hour at the show looking at the succulent displays and shopping  in the marketplace. 

I love succulents and they had a whole area dedicated to them!

 

 

 

 

After our tour through the succulents our last stop of the day was a trip to the marketplace.  There were 180 vendors there selling anything and everything related to plants and gardening.

 

 

 

It was a fabulous trip.  We had a great time and we can't wait to go back next year. 

Xoxo

Memorial flowers

My friend Amy asked me and some other friends to put together the centerpieces for her Mothetr in law Carole's memorial service luncheon.  

Carole loved Cape Cod's blue hydrangeas so we decided to do our centerpieces using blue hydrangea as the focal point.  The only problem is NY doesn't have a lot of blue hydrangea.  Here they are  white or purple.  So I looked on Pinterest and saw we could spray paint them,  so that is what we did!

We took turns using the blue spray paint.  We sprayed in short bursts and shook the flowers after we sprayed them to distribute the paint.  We learned a little paint goes a long way!

 

 

We did the spraying and painting at Rachael's house and she is always the hostess with the mostess and had snacks for is to eat while we worked. 

 

We mixed the hydrangea with  green ferns and     hosta  leaves. 

 

We put our arrangements in big mason jars and added burlap ribbon. 

 

I think they turned out beautiful.  Each of Any's friends added something to the arrangements. One friend bought the mason jars, two friends provided the flowers, two brought greens.  I thought that was a sweet touch.

I hope Amy and her family love the arrangements and I hope they bring a small bit of comfort in this sad time.

Xoxo 

Art in Bloom

Last Friday and Saturday my friends Rachael, Ashley and I competed in Art in Bloom.  It's a flower arranging competition that pairs artwork with flower arrangements.  We choose a challenging piece that wasn't my style at all. 

Here is the artwork that we chose to do.  

 

We talked a lot about what we wanted to do with this piece.  We decided to use feminine flowers and colors to balance out the masculinity of this piece.   We also decided not to buy any flowers this year.  We were able to get all of our flowers from our own gardens and from the garden of one other friend. I love the colors we chose.  So pretty!!

 

 

Here it is all set up in the gallery.

 

It's always fun to see what other people do do I snapped some pictures of other arrangements.

 

 

 

There were 12 total arrangements and we came in 4th place.  The last 2 years we came in 2nd so 4th place was disappointing but we had fun and we will definitely do it again next year!

Xoxo

Weekend Fun

Friday Rachael and I went to get pedi's to get ready for our girls weekend!  We had a great time and then I had to head back to work.




Friday after work I went with Rachael and Ashley to pick out our piece for Art and Bloom.  Each year our Garden Club sponsors this event to match fresh flowers with paintings in our town's art gallery.  For the past two years we have come in second place.  We always have fun putting the arrangements together!

Here we are in front of the artwork we chose this year.  I think this will be our toughest one yet because none of us have a real vision of what we want our flowers to look like.  Hopefully we can come up with something good!




Here is our arrangement from 2 years ago

And here is our arrangement from last year.  We did a beachy theme.

I am reading two books right now and I am loving both of them! I love, love, love lazy nights at home reading!

I also packed for our trip to Saratoga.  About one year ago I went with my four besties to spend the weekend together and we had a great time!  I hope this weekend is just as fun!

Xoxo