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A special request for a “Brazilian VIP”…

A gift for a dinner party host..

pin cussion flowers in the vases...

A request for something cheerful…

mmm...persimmons

For a San Francisco Office…

Centerpieces for a community dining room…

A is for Apple and Autumn

Boo

Autumn is upon us and that means the holidays are quickly approaching.  At the studio, this means decorating many homes and businesses for the festivities.  We completed our first installation this week.  The home is one of our regular clients.  It is a spectacular mansion, designed by the reknowned Julia Morgan, the female architect most famous for designing the Hearst Castle and hundreds of other buildings.  William Randolph Hearst, however, was her most prestigious and regular patrons.  This particular home is perched on one of San Francisco’s spectacular hills.

For the installation the client asked us to decorate the entranceway of the home with some fun Halloween elements which could be removed at the end of October to leave behind a feast of autumn.  The lead designer and company hung webbing, spiders and a gorgeous rose-hip wreath on the door while I created the cornucopia arrangements.  The result is fun and, now that Halloween is over, we’ll take away the silly stuff and leave behind a lovely installation of fall’s bounty.

Halloween Fairies…

I received a call at the studio on Friday at 5 pm from a woman asking if we could make 2 floral crowns for her daughters by 1 pm Saturday.  They were going to be fairies for Halloween.  Now, floral crowns can be quite labor intensive as you have to wire each individual flower in order to weave it into a crown.  The studio closes at 6 pm.  And every Saturday I must complete 24+ very large arrangements for our weekly accounts + handle any walk-in customers/phone orders + manage retail sales of home accessories.  I nearly collapsed at the thought of 2 floral crowns.  But the woman sounded desperate and was open to any floral idea for dressing up her kids’ hair.  After discussing options with another designer, I decided to take on the challenge.

On my way home from work I picked up some inexpensive mums from another shop (since we weren’t going to the flower market in the morning).  I also purchased some inexpensive plastic head bands.  In the morning I wrapped each headband in ribbon:

And then set about decorating the headbands with flowers:

And voila!

Two, quick-and easy, floral headbands fitting for a fairy!