How to put together flower bouquets

Every once in awhile, an occasion calls for bouquets of flowers. The ability to whip one up for yourself comes in handy for showers, graduations, weddings and times when you need to give lots of people a nice gift. Everyone loves flowers! Recently, I needed to give a nice gift to more than ten people, and since we are el brokeo, I decided to make bouquets. I ended up making fifteen bouquets ( 12 friends + 1 extra for the person I always forget + 2 for daycare workers).

Grand total: $55.00

Materials needed: Flowers, ribbon, empty trash can, wire, two pairs of scissors, cups, ice, paper towels and cooler.

Before you get started on your flowers, you want to prepare your cooler. That's how you'll be transferring your bouquets to the big wide world!


The second thing you want to do, is sort your flowers by color and cut the stems under running water. You want to cut your stems pretty short. The bouquets should only barely stick out of the cups, otherwise you won't be able to put the lid on the cooler!


When you sort your flowers, you'll need lots of glasses and vases. If you think you have enough containers, then double it and you'll probably have just enough. I also sorted the filler greenery into a separate vase. (By the way, vase rhymes with case. Not cause.)



Mix the flower food from the little packets with water in a pitcher and pour them into the cups. But only fill them halfway.



Next you need a workspace! You want to unroll all of the ribbon on your reel and divide it evenly before you begin. You'll need about three feet of ribbon for a 5-6 flower bouquet. Use your ugliest ribbon (and ugliest flowers) to make a mock bouquet first.


You also need a designated trash can, just for stems and plastic. That's where you'll pop the thorns off, too. Most importantly, use a fresh pair of sharp scissors (I used kitchen shears) to cut your ribbon. If you use the stem scissors on the ribbon, you'll get green stains and little tears, all along your ribbon. Personally, I prefer wire edged ribbon, but you can use anything as long as it's at least an inch thick.

Pick out the flowers you want to use in your bouquet and one or two small pieces from your filler vase. Put them together into a comfortable feeling bouquet and cut the stems to approximately the same length.

The next thing you want to do is to twist a little bit of wire right beneath the flower heads to hold them in place. Then tie your ribbon in a half knot at the base of your bouquet. There should be lots of stem showing. You want to cris-cross the ribbon and wrap it behind the bouquet. Like so.


When you reach the wire, tie the ribbon into a simple knot or bow, so that no wire is showing. Then stick it in the cooler and start on the next one. It will probably take about 45 min - 1 hour longer than you expect so budget lots of extra time! Otherwise you'll be scrambling to get ready. Like I was.

This is what you should see when you're finished. Make sure you bring lots of paper towels with you, because the flowers will be sopping wet when you take them out of the cooler.

Hubster's Schedule ... doesn't work for me ... yet

Officer Hubster has a very weird schedule. He works nights for two weeks and then he works days for two weeks and then it's back to nights again. By the time I get adjusted to his schedule, it changes. As a result, our laundry hamper is overflowing and I haven't kept a consistent sleep routine for over a month!

I think that this schedule will EVENTUALLY work for me, but I'm still adjusting to it. The weekends are the hardest part of it all. We haven't been to church together in five weeks because he was either working or Bridoodle was sick!

The best part about the night shift weeks, however, is the luxury of having the whole bed to myself! I'm a diagonal sleeper when given the choice, and it's nice to be able to spread out comfortably. And the best part about the day shift weeks, without a doubt, has to be the afternoon time where we get to play while everyone else is working! So, I'm not complaining, but I am still adjusting.

So what doesn't work for you? See what other people are dealing with over here at the "It Doesn't Work For Me" edition of WFMW.

Night Time Routine ... Works For Me

Not too long ago, I was a brand new Mama desperate for a whole night's sleep. I remember the bleary eyes and the utter exhaustion. I learned quickly that in order to get enough sleep I needed to go to bed as early as possible. So we started going to bed at 8pm and getting up throughout the night. When 6 am rolled around we found ourselves lucky to have had 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Sleep came in chunks. And that was okay. When Bri had her four month check up, the doctor told us to start thinking about solid foods. Our daycare workers gave us one excellent tip for introducing solid foods - always use a spoon. Apparently one of the toddlers never transitioned to solids because his parents put his cereal in his bottles at a very young age. He refused to take the spoon when he got older.

When Bri was five and a half months old we finally started feeding her rice cereal every night. And we quickly fell into a fabulous night time routine. We feed her a solid meal at 6:30pm (now she's eating cereal, fruits and vegetables). Then she takes a bath. And we put her to bed by 8pm. Sometimes earlier! If she fusses for more than fifteen minutes in bed then I give her a bottle too. That always knocks her out. She sleeps until 7 am! It's amazing!

We have time to ourselves in the evening AND we have time to get ready for work in the morning. I love the night time routine! It definitely works for me!

For more WFMW tips visit:

Penny for your thoughts

In a few weeks I expect to host a ladies small group Bible study in our home. In my previous experiences with Bible studies I was always a participant. Never a leader. Since this is my first time, I'm sort of unsure about what we should do. Here are a few ideas I've had. Let me know what you think about them or if you have any suggestions about Bible study throw those in too!

1. Journal time- I thought it would be neat to open with time for silent reflection and journaling. For five minutes we would write down anything on our minds. It might be grocery items, prayer requests, thoughts about the day or the angry things I wanted to say at the driver who cut me off on the way.

2. Q & A - This won't be a lecture format. It will be discussion oriented. I'm not sure what book we will use. That's still up in the air.

3. Infants welcome - Allowing babies to come is sort of a risky move. They came be pretty distracting. However, I've found that if I can't bring my baby to an event I'm probably not going to go. She's just too young to find a sitter. And finding a sitter once a week would add up really fast.

What ideas do you have? I can use a lot of help!

Hot Glue ... Works for Me

I teach in a very VERY old school building. The plaster walls chip when you try to nail things up and the high humidity of our region causes double sided sticky tape to eventually peel off. Only half of the items I put up during summer pre-planning are still there. There are big holes where posters used to be. I've been pretty frustrated in the past as my posters have taken nose dive after nose dive. Nothing is more distracting to a class than a poster slowly bending off the wall.

A few weeks ago the department head for our county came to observe my teaching. After class that day we were discussing the catastrophe that is my classroom decor. She gave me a fabulous tip! She told me to use hot glue to put things up on the wall. I tried it today and so far I'm very impressed. Just make sure you remember to unplug the hot glue gun!!

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips go to rocks in my dryer.

Works for Me! Good to the Last Drop...

I wrote this post back in November but I haven't been able to post it on a Wednesday yet! So I saved it for Christmas break.

I've been thinking about this trick for awhile now. There are several every day household items that seem to run out at the worst possible moment. The number one item for me is my foundation. I'll go to put on my make-up and only half of my face will come out of the bottle. Only slightly less important is the bottle of Hershey's syrup which also seems to run out half way to chocolatey goodness. So what do you do? It's simple - add a drop or two of water to your foundation and put the lid back on. Then shake shake shake. For Hershey's syrup you squeeze some air out into your milk and suck a little milk back into the bottle. Then shake shake shake. See the similarities? And voila. You get to finish your face and enjoy some chocolate milk.
Then you run to Wal-Mart and forget to buy these items because you're distracted by all of the seasonal goodies on display.

Christmas Planning

Short rant: Why is it that when you need a WFMW post all you can think about are the things that DON'T work for you? lol

Anyway, I am a planner by nature. My mom recently told me that I am always one step ahead of everyone. You can see it in the fuzzy home videos of my tap dance recitals. All of the other girls are moving together and my little feet are leading the way. One step ahead. As an adult, though, I consider it a compliment to be one step ahead. It saves me a lot of hassle during busy stressful times ... like Christmas! Here are a few of the things that keep me one step ahead so that I can enjoy the season.

Christmas cards~ For the past few years I've used an online company that makes photocards around the holidays. I upload our picture and pick a card during the first week of November. That way the cards arrive on my doorstep before Dec 1st and I have plenty of time to address them and send them out.

Christmas decor~ The absolute FUNNEST part of Christmas in my opinion is redecorating! However, like all truly fun things it does take a good chunk of time. (okay- you got me. lots of truly fun things don't take a lot of time, like roller coasters and unwrapping presents ... but you want to spend a good chunk of time doing them, don't you?) Anyway, to get around the time factor I always use the weekend after Thanksgiving to do my Christmas decorating. As I type this, all of my Christmas boxes are calling to me from the next room. I coaxed my Hubby into getting them out of the attic early this year because my maternity leave is over and I have to go back to work on Monday ... sniff, sniff... (and I wanted to be one step ahead of where I was last year... like Monica on Friends). So after I danced wildly around the house singing "OUR CHEEKS ARE NICE AND ROSY AND COMFY COZY ARE WEEEEEEEEEEE..." my dear husband ran for his life stammering, "I may be late getting home from work tonight, honey ..."

Ahh, he will be so excited when he walks into our magical Christmas fairyland house tonight.

Probably not. I know.


Anyway, that's what works for me. Stay tuned for more Christmas themed ideas.

Make the switch!

The holidays are upon us and you're trying to figure out how to cut a few calories without having to forego the yummy food of the season. Here's how I switched to Diet Coke. First I realized that by drinking two twelve ounce Cokes a day I was consuming 280 extra calories. That's an extra meal folks! But I hated the taste of diet drinks and I didn't want to drink water. So how did I do it? Simple, put a diet drink in your hands when you're most distracted. For me it was the movie theater. It's dark. I drink my soda without thinking about it or even tasting it. So I would order the big gulp Diet Coke and sip away during a movie. This also works at home but you need to disguise your drink. You don't want to think about the fact that it's a diet drink until you're done. After a few movies I didn't mind the sweet ickiness of aspartame any more. And I was able to stick to that New Year's Resolution.

For more ideas of what can work for you go to WFMW at Rocks in My Dryer.