Day Ten: Flower Arranging for the Cowardly

When one thinks of ballsy occupations, many different groups come to mind.  Police officers?  Sure. Firefighters?  Definitely.  Florists?  Never.  But if you've ever tried to buy flowers and build an arrangement, you get a little nervous when the shears come out.

I know.  I have tried many times to buy flowers and create arrangements myself.  My flowers end up looking like I bought wrestled them from a homeless flower-vendor at the off-ramp of the freeway.  The resulting arrangement looks like I rescued it from a wedding-reception that had just been hit by a tornado.

And yet I persist.

Practice makes perfect...and I told you I was a perfectionist.

So today I bought some flowers to make two arrangements:  one for my (newly organized) entryway, and the other for my kitchen table.

Here are the gorgeous yellow flowers (tulips, ranunculus and some other stuff the name of which I can't recall) as well as some cherry branches.

The yellow flowers were for the entryway.  I had several false starts, one of which involved a mis-directed attempt with some tape...

...and after much fussing and some language my mother would not appreciate, this is the result...

Not bad, although if I tried to take off that cute raffia, the whole thing would fall apart.

The cherry branches were another story altogether.  I bought them on the fly because I just couldn't resist them and thought I would just throw them in a large vase and be finished.

Then I came home and looked to Martha for some inspiration.  This is what I found:

After I saw this picture, I had the bright idea to copy this arrangement and cut my beautiful branches (gulp!)  into a similar arrangement...



***Disclaimer***  I am not a florist. I do not work with flowers or other fauna, nor do I claim to have any talent in this area.

These are my beautiful cherry branches:

Comparing the two photos I can see where I went (terribly) wrong...I am currently sitting in front of this centerpiece and am trying to develop an appreciation for its uniqueness.  Consider this attempt #1.  Tomorrow, I will add some flowers from my garden and see if we can't improve it.  If not, I'll just have to fall back on that acting class I took in college...and pretend to like it.