Hello Friends and Flower Followers, it’s Carrie here…
This week Penny and I chose to write about Frugal Friday Bouquets!
When I first opened Blush Floral one of the main things I wanted to do was show people how much joy flowers could bring. Not that everyone loves flowers, I get that but I found a lot of people didn’t treat themselves or someone special because of the expense. Frugal Friday bouquets solved that problem. For $10.00 you get a fresh beautiful cut bouquet! The bouquet may not be large and it won’t be filled with the most expensive blooms but the flowers are fresh and of great quality. Many have asked if I use my old flowers for these bouquets, the answer is absolutely not! Often times people say their blooms last weeks! In fact I get a fresh shipment in each week for these bouquets. Typically the bouquets are made from long lasting blooms like carnations, daisies, gerbera daisies and sometimes even roses. These can vary week to week depending on what is in season and available to me. I try to make each bouquet unique and often customers find it difficult to choose which one they would like!
Honestly I don’t make a lot of money with the Frugal Friday bouquets but the joy they bring is definitely worth it! I love seeing people treat themselves, especially these days when it is hard to escape the worries of the world. We deserve it! So be sure to treat yourself or someone special to flowers for the weekend every Friday at Blush Floral!!
P.S ..I often sell out so get them early!
 
Hey guys it’s Penny…
Oh how I love Frugal Fridays! It gives me a weekly excuse to support my bestie’s business. But make no mistake my Friday visits to the shop benefit more than just Blush Floral. Just think of all those happy chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins. Well when I come in for my weekly blooms the smell and the colors just ignite all of those feel good vibes. There is rarely a time when my dining room is absent of Carrie’s Creations. I missed her flowers so much when she was forced to close due to Covid. Even though the world was turned upside down just recently there was a feeling of togetherness. I feel like friends and families really pulled together to make sure each other were ok. I was the recipient of random acts of kindness on multiple occasions. Little tokens of I see you, I love you and in turn each week I chose someone I loved who I knew was having a hard time to pay it forward. I painted rocks and baked goodies, I hid little notes or gifts. It’s been a rough go for all of us and it’s easy to spread a little cheer. Well baking got old and rock painting got boring. But luckily Blush Floral was back up and running just as my creative side needed a rest. Secret cookie and rock deliveries turned in to not so secret flower deliveries, being stealthy with a bouquet of flowers isn’t as easy as hiding a rock in your pocket. Not to mention you don’t really want to see all of somebody’s hard work wilt away while waiting to be discovered on your doorstep.
Last Friday I came into the shop for a visit and a couple Frugal Friday bouquets. Many contenders dancing in my head. So many hurting people and to tell you the truth I was hurting too. It had been a week with my emotions all over the place. So I purchased two bouquets just for me. Sometimes you need to be the recipient of your own kindness. My dining room table holds the brightest of summer hues right now and I only have to admire them to get a jolt of that dopamine.
Right now I feel like more than ever we need that connection of togetherness. Those little shots of happy hormones. The pay it forward and the random acts of kindness. $10.00 Frugal Friday’s is really where it’s at!


 

Hello Friends and Flower Followers! It’s Carrie here...
Although weddings are my specialty there are so many other reasons to celebrate with flowers. Today I created a beautiful Birthday Bouquet in summery colors. The scent of peonies flowed from the bouquet but the ever so cheery gerbera daisies seemed to be the star of the show! Behind the scenes the colors, the shapes, sizes and scents of the blooms all factor in to my designs. I probably spend a little more time than I should when designing but creating is my passion, my gift to you for allowing me to do what I love. I feel like gifting flowers has kind of gone to the wayside a bit and that makes me sad. It doesn’t have to be an expensive bouquet to celebrate the birth of a new baby or a graduation or any other momentous occasion or milestone. A single bloom would do the trick! 
Although our special days look different now they are still meant to be celebrated. This virus didn’t take away Birthdays, Anniversaries or any other special occasions we just need to look outside the box and let flowers do their job. They are meant to make us smile, to allow us to find beauty in their blooms and to bring us joy.

Hey Guys, it’s Penny...
Carrie’s post this morning featuring her beautiful creation of birthday blooms had me reminiscing back to a few years ago, Carrie had shown up to my Birthday Party with not only this magical fairy garden birthday cake but also with a tall vase in the most magnificent colors. Pastel and vibrant purples, pinks, blues and yellows. The vase complimented beautifully the carefully crafted bouquet of gerbera, my favorite and roses. What a rush it is to see someone approaching your home with flowers. What a simple yet thoughtful way to say I love you, Happy Birthday, or I’m just thinking about you. Congratulations or I’m sorry. Happy Anniversary or Welcome to the Neighborhood. Milestones deserve flowers and flowers are always a welcome addition to whatever you may be celebrating. 
Seeing Carrie’s post this morning made me think a lot about celebrations. It made me think of ways we celebrate and the things we implement into celebrations, like food, friends and flowers. 
This time of the year people are normally gearing up for things like weddings or graduations and proms. However this year looks different. It saddens me to watch major events being put on hold or cancelled. 
This year my son is graduating from grade 12 and I am just so proud of him and his high school experience. I think it hurts me more than him that he won’t be walking across the stage while I’m snapping a gazillion pictures to be handed his diploma. It hurts me that I won’t be in a gymnasium full of his friends, who I’ve watched grow from Kindergarten babies to young men making their mark in the world. Just this morning on my walk I caught sight of a 2020 graduate lawn sign and I just broke down and I cried so hard. I grieved the absence of the celebration. Where are the bells and whistles these kids deserve. 
But it made me recognize that even though current events have us missing what we would be normally celebrating right now, doesn’t mean we still can’t celebrate at all. In fact maybe we have to celebrate bigger and harder. Maybe we have to make sure we’re celebrating the smallest of things. We just have to get creative like Carrie does with here flowers. We must take notice that we are still living and shouldn’t life be the biggest celebration and why shouldn’t we do it with flowers! 

Hello Friends and Flower Followers, Carrie here…
As some of you know I started a blog months ago. I successfully completed one entry and that was the end of that. Not because I didn’t want to but because I lost my mojo!
With the world’s recent events surrounding the Covid 19 Virus/ Pandemic I felt compelled to come back to my blog. So here I am slightly battered and bruised from this Pandemic but still standing surrounded by beautiful blooms. In my world flowers have always been essential and I think many others have found this to be true as well.
So…I have enlisted my super talented and beautiful best friend Penny to help me out. She has mad writing skills, a new found love of flowers and has been the most amazing supporter of Blush Floral and together we’re going to invite you in to our Flower World!
Hi all! I'm Penny! I've been friends with Carrie since our kindergarten days! Let me share a little about myself! I'm a lover of words and fairy tales.  Nature is where I feel most myself, known to refer to the trees, creeks and streams as magical. As essential as flowers are to Carrie, words are just as essential to me. I have to admit that flowers never meant to me what they have to my lifelong friend ( and sister in law by the way). I'd always been indifferent to their appeal. But then something happened to me right around the same time Carrie opened her business.  My husband calls it my mid life awakening.  I started falling for things that never mattered to me before.  Like flowers and bugs and my backyard birds, sunrises and sunsets. When Carrie approached me with this genius blog idea, I was more than happy to join forces. Lately I've felt stuck where writing is concerned and this presented a wonderful opportunity to just write. To have something that we are mutually passionate about.  To put our individual spin on everything floral.
These words and flowers comfort us now more than ever and we hope you'll be inspired as we share them with you. We hope you welcome our gifts into your heart and homes. We know things feel dark and uncertain as we wait for life to return to some semblance of familiarity.  Flowers are essential. Words are essential.  So is love, hope and kindness.
Stay strong, stay positive and let love bloom!

 

I Dream of Flowers

Flowers are a constant in my life, they are always on my mind. I swear most nights I dream of flowers! They aren’t always good dreams either, I have floral nightmares too and those are terrifying!
This usually happens during wedding season or just before a big holiday, waking up panicked that the cooler froze, the hydrangea drooped or the red ranunculus I ordered showed up in a lovely shade of purple.
Unfortunately sometimes these things really do happen and I turn in to……….eeeek I’m afraid to say it!
I turn in to the sulky grumpy florist! But hey, at least I admit it!
When something like this happens you probably shouldn’t talk to me or tell me not to worry or anything like that because it just won’t work! I’ll shed a few tears, head to my work station and get to work on figuring it out and in the end I will make it right.
We all make mistakes and we should all learn from those mistakes because no one is perfect! I have made my share of mistakes, I have missed floral consults, ordered 200 stems of something instead of 20, broken the very last rose that I needed so badly… and the list goes on and on! Of course I beat myself up over these things time and time again but I am learning to be kinder to myself and to remember I’m only one person. But flower mistakes just hit me smack dab in the heart!
So, do you think I’m completely crazy yet?? A lot of people do, they give me that look when I say I don’t sleep the night before a big wedding or that I show up at the store at daylight to check on the bouquets I spent every ounce of my creative juices and time on. It’s a good kind of crazy that I am, at least I think so!
When I opened Blush Floral my craziness intensified by about a million percent, this place means the world to me and I don’t want to let anyone down. I want you to smile and feel good when you see a beautiful bloom the way I do because you deserve that! You deserve to enjoy the flowers, the bright vibrant colors and the sweet scents. Don’t we all?!