wreath workshop re-cap!

 

 gorgeous graphic above by Lindsay Crafter

 

I had the pleasure of teaching a winter wreath making class that was hosted by Bits and Pieces Rentals at Murray & Finn in downtown Summit, New Jersey. It was a lovey evening!

 

Most of these photos were taken by the lovely and talented Adeline Ramos of You Look Lovely Photography!

  

Table settings:

The wreath ingredients to choose from:

The fragrance from the evening was tantalizing! Fresh cedar, bay leaves, white pine and eucalyptus mixed with the scent of hot cocoa.

Demonstrating and making pretty messes:

 

Me and the final wreath!

The ladies at Murray and Fin and Bits and Pieces Rentals did an amazing job. They sure know how to throw a party. The food and drinks were so tasty and the camp-out theme was pinterest worthy.

 

 

A few attendees, hard at work:

 

A finished wreath! The evening was truly a delight. We enjoyed chatting and laughing well into the evening. I was so impressed by how everyone's wreaths came out. I will be teaching some more workshops in the near future so stay tuned!



 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by You Look Lovely Photography. Photos 1, 2, 5, 18- 20 by me.


If you are interested in hosting a workshop in the New York City, New Jersey and surrounding areas and would like me to teach, please contact me!

-flores del sol and Anthropologie workshop

floral corsages with anthropologie

 

I had the honor of hosting a DIY Mother's Day workshop at Anthropologie in Montclair, New Jersey last Thursday evening! In honor of Mother's Day, we made some lovely dried floral corsages. The team at the Montclair location went above and beyond to set the scene for a great group of ladies who attended. We sat cozy on their second floor surrounded by large old pained windows, exposed brick and anthro merchandise eyecandy.

 

First I demonstrated how to use and twist florist tape onto a stem. Then the ladies were given free reign to choose focal flowers, accent flowers, and greens for added texture to their corsages. They also had different ribbons and twine to choose from to wrap their stems and tie bows with.

The finished corsages were placed  in a box and adorned with homemade tags the ladies made.

Gorgeous photos, no?!

 

To say that I enjoyed myself is an understatement. It was such a fun and intimate evening! Thank you to all of the Ladies who came out and also to those at the Anthropologie store and headquarters who worked hard to bring this event to life.

All of the dreamy photos were taken by talented Casey McDaniel Photography, thank you Casey!

For more photos from the event, check out my facebook page here.

a flores del sol and anthropologie event!

I have some big and exciting news to share today, I will be hosting a Mother's Day DIY event with Anthropologie! It will be held at their Montclair, New Jersey location on May 9th. It is free, but spaces are limited so sign up quick! We will be making dried floral corsages just in time for mother's day. Please come, I'd love to meet you!

flower id: cyclamen

Cyclamen persicum, or Florist’s Cyclamen, is a common winter flowering plant found in many stores and florists. It is a tuberous plant native to the Eastern Mediterranean area. They come in a variety of shades from white, to red and many hues of pink. My favorite thing is their heart shaped leaves (above) which is perfect for a valentine's day gift. Cyclamen are a breath of fresh spring air in the dead of winter. Their flowers are very fragrant and showy. So fragrant that my girls wont stop sniffing them.

Blooming: Plants will bloom from mid-winter to spring. Cyclamen like bright indirect light while flowering. They go through a summer dormancy when they do not flower and prefer to be kept out of bright light. You can the break dormancy and stimulate it's winter flowering period again starting in the fall.

DIY Valentine's day gift!!!
cyclamen potted in vintage milk glass

... create your own valentine's gift by dressing up a common cyclamen from the store. Add a little sheet moss (available in most craft stores) and pot it up in a thrifted vintage milk glass planter like my hobnail one. If you don't have the time for thrifting, you can find many vintage milk glass planters on etsy here.

flores del sol is also celebrating the 600th sale! Take off 10% today by using the code 600sale at check out!!!! not valid on custom orders.

teacher's christmas gifts

I am new to this whole teacher gift giving thing with having my daughter Raquel in school for the first time this year. We planted some Amaryllis bulbs for teachers gifts a few weeks ago and have been watching them grow like we did last year. I found the bulb kits on sale at the grocery store and purchased cuter pots for them at a local greenhouse. Raquel loves planting anything with me and was so delighted to make her gifts for her teachers. The bulbs have sprouted now sitting in the sun in the window and are ready for gifting tomorrow.

I will be light on posts now for the next 2 weeks as we take a little vacation out west and enjoy the holidays with family.

enjoy this wonderful christmas week!!
-christina

DIY: recycled glass bottle watering globes

My husband loves coke (a-cola that is). Especially when it comes ice cold in a glass bottle. He claims that the formula in the glass bottles is different with real sugar (not fructose corn syrup) or something like that. I love the glass coke bottles but always throw them in the recycling not wanting to hoard bottles with no use. Until I saw the idea for using glass bottles as watering globes for your plants! They drink as much as they want. Perfect if you are going out of town for a few days and they can be used for your indoor or outdoor plants.

I tested it out on my sansevieria plant Harvey (named by my 4 year old). So far it's working great and Harvey is taking only slow sips!

How to:
It works best if the soil around your plant is already moist so water first. Fill up your glass bottle with water, then quickly stick the neck deep into the soil. Make sure that there is no immediate leakage or bubbles rising to the top. If there is, take out the bottle and try again until it works. I only needed to do it once. Neat huh!

DIY container planting

Here is a simple DIY tutorial on a container planting:

To start out with I go with the thriller, filler and spiller method.
First pick out a thriller, a focal point plant for the center of your container. Next you will need filler flowers for the middle openings and last some spiller plants that will grow over and down the sides of your container.

The ingredients I used:

My client wanted the same look as last year but slightly different so I substituted ferns with a spider plant. The thriller focal in these containers is the obvious topiary tree followed by the 2nd focal spider plant (1) that hugs the topiary trunk. If you have smaller containers don't take up all the space with a large thriller but instead use something simple like just a spider plant.

The filler flowers are the fuchsia colored 4 inch double begonias (2) and plum colored 4 inch petunias (3).

The spillers I chose are variegated 10 inch english ivy (4), purple variegated 10 inch wandering jew (5) , 4 inch creeping jenny (6), and vibrant green 4 inch sweet potato vine (7).

The first step is to plant up your spillers along the edges. Make sure they are tucked in deep so they don't fall out. The ivy and wandering jew were both from 10 inch hanging baskets that I carefully separated into two new plants.

Next I added the spider plant which was also a 10" hanging basket that I carefully split into 2 plants and hugged the topiary trunk.

Last, I added the filler petunias and begonias for some slight color in the leftover holes:

Fill in and secure your plants with extra dirt and be sure to fertilize for luscious show.

This year I have been using organic fertilizer from john and bob's grow green smart soil solutions. It is a fantastic and easy organic system to convert old nutrient lacking soil into new lush rich soil in gardens, lawns, containers and even indoor plants. I love the luscious growth I've seen from using this system in my container gardens and I am excited to see the difference in my vegetable gardening this summer. I highly recommend it and it can be found here.

Here is what they looked like after a summer of growth last year. The results should be very similar this year! Good luck and leave a comment if you have any questions.

-christina


last year's DIY container planting here.