Christmas at Alice's

My friend Alice has the most amazing house and it becomes even more incredible at Christmas. She has at least 3 or 4 Christmas trees and many other wonderful decorations. This year I made some low arrangments for her dinner tables and remade the dried hydrangea arrangement in the living room. I am hoping to get more photos of the rest of her decor this week.

Blair House tour

Hal and I were thrilled yesterday to have a tour of Blair House. Yael Belkind, the lovely assistant manager, was nice enough to take some time and lead us through all of the rooms that had been decorated by the various magazines. The creative work was great and my mind was spinning as I tried to look carefully at all of the details that were so clever and beautifully done. We took a replacement arrangement for the one we made last week and it will be used tonight for a reception. And today, Martha Stewart's show features the rooms that she decorated at Blair House. Try to watch and maybe she will show this room with our arrangement!

Brooke's baby shower

Last Saturday I did the flowers for a baby shower for our friend Brooke. She and her sister Whitney are both due within weeks of each of each other, Whitney with baby #3. I have known this family for a long time. Hal and I did the flowers for Whitney's wedding and for the christening of her eldest child and I attended Brooke's wedding in Marthas Vineyard last year. It is always fun to work with them. For this event I filled a wire baby carriage and glass squares with pale blue delphinium, Esperance and Sweet Akito roses, pink tulips and Yoko Ono green button mums.

Christmas at Nora's

Hal and I decorated Restaurant Nora's garden room for Christmas. We used her own amaryllis flowers and added our wire plant forms filled with pinecones, moss balls and other material. We created a swag for the window box with dried cedar, boxwood, christmas balls and pinecones. It is always a great experience to create an arrangement for this beautiful restaurant. Now we are thinking about springtime and hydrangeas.

Blair House arrangment

Today we had the very great pleasure of making an arrangement for a reception at the Blair House. Blair House is actually a group of 4 houses purchased by the government for use first by the Trumans when the White House was being renovated in the late 1940s and then as a guest house for visiting dignitaries. This holiday season, 7 magazines were invited to decorate Blair House. Our good friend Ann was helping with the decorations and mentioned our names when one of the designers was looking for a large flower arrangement for the Jackson Map Room sponsored by Mother Earth News. He wanted a fairly tight arrangement with a southern vibe using only green and white. We used Green Tea and Akito roses, white lilies, white anemones, green hypericum berries, green hanging amaranthus and small green hydrangeas with magnolia and gardenia leaves, cedar branches and boxwood. I wove a grid of whale rib leaves to hide the foam we used in the glass vase. The designer for the room was David Derbyshire from New York. There is article in today's Washington Post about the decorations at Blair House and you can see a photo of our piece in Blair House at the website: www.magazines.com - search for the Mother Earth News decorations at Blair House. And more news on this project: on Monday Hal and I will have a tour of Blair House to see the decor and will bring down a replacement arrangement. Apparently they loved the original piece and have hauled it from room to room for the many events they had this past week....

Landon Greens Sale

Today I gave a holiday floral design talk at the Landon Greens Sale. This sale has been going on for years and the parents at the school give their all to put on a lovely day. They are wonderful floral designers themselves and it was very nice to be invited to speak. I made 6 arrangements. 3 of them were my usual style and 3 were a bit more playful and trendy. The arrangements in the first photo were made with a dome of dark red carnations with hypericum berries stuck with a pearl headed pins. They were the big hit of the day. The ladies who attended all seemed to be very knowledgable about flowers and well versed in the basics of design. They asked good questions and we had a lot of fun. After the talk, the arrangements were put on sale and apparently they sold quickly.