Tara Tuesdays - Part 50 - Secret Birthday Surprise
Posted on 05 May 2015
Congratulations Tara on reaching your 50th 'Tara Tuesdays' post! I particularly love this one with your mum! - Emma
A Secret Birthday Surprise
My dear Mum had a big birthday back in February and being the loving daughter that I am, I wanted to do something special with her. Unfortunately, my original plans didn't quite work out, but determined as ever, I planned a secret surprise for her last weekend....woo ha ha!
My Mum loves flowers (well who doesn't?!) and I thought it might be a nice idea to organise something floral for her with my fab friend Kerrie who also happens to be my local florist! You may remember my beautiful wreath that I made with the lovely Lois back in December? Well, amongst millions of other things, Kerrie also runs workshops and I asked her if we could do something for my Mum. She of course happily obliged, so it was all arranged for this Bank Holiday Saturday. We were hoping to hold the workshop in my garden, but of course the British weather being what it is didn't let us, no matter.
My Dad was in on the secret 'just popping over for a cuppa' flying visit plan, but didn't know anything about the workshop. I had a strict Japanese style schedule planned for the day which amazingly went like clockwork!
11.15 Arrive for meet and greet
11.20 Dad and Si disappear to local farm shop and try to buy their lake (!) whilst Mum and I frequent local charity shop for bargain purchases
12.00 Brunch at the Courtyard
13.00 Secret Floral workshop
14.00 Mum and I frequent local antique shop where more purchases were made (spend up city me thinks!)
15.00 Mum and Dad depart feeling very gruntled (I hoped) after such a wonderful day!
Now down to the actual workshop...
Kerrie explained that we would be making a table display which, currently are hugely popular at the weddings she florists at. Mum and I each had a galvanised bucket and a large piece of oasis that Kerrie had already soaked for us. She showed us each step and I tried to photograph as she went along.
After cutting the excess oasis off (Mum and I nearly cut ourselves like Samurai warriors when we did this bit!), Kerrie first added her eucalyptus foliage to get her shape, starting at the bottom of the oasis.
And here it is with the foliage stage complete including the top piece.
We then starting adding our flowers. Kerrie used English Alstromeria (my absolute fav's) and made a triangle shape and then worked on filling in the gaps. The main aim was not to see any of the oasis . She said that we need to avoid lines of flowers and that you would normally work with an odd number of flowers to achieve this look.
Kerrie then added some purple loveliness as a filler (the name of it escapes me!) and here is her display at the next stage.
English roses were then added.
And then more roses to fill the display out. The final flowers were carnations. How beautiful does this look! No pressure on Mum and me then!
And then it was our turn! Kerrrie left her display on the table for us to use and helped us throughout each step. Concentration face!
My tongue wasn't quite out in this pic!
Managing a chuckle whilst supping a cuppa!
My display just starting to take shape! Tight lipped concentration on this one!
And Mum's too!
And here we both are for our Tad-ah moment! Looking good me thinks!
It was a lovely way to spend our afternoon and I think doing something like this would make the perfect gift for anyone wanting to do something special with their Mum or friends or anyone really. Anything goes! What did make me ROAR was when my Mum asked if we were ALLOWED to take our displays home! Reminded me so much of the children that I work with at school! Bless her!
Enormous thanks to Kerrie for her time and for making my special treat for my Mum simply perfick!
For more details on workshops and any other floral loveliness, check out Kerrie's official Facebook page here.