Now that the busy easter weekend is over I am happy to have a little time to breathe, relax and catch up with you all here at Peonies & Posies.
Easter is a perfect excuse to get all the family together and has become almost as big an event as Christmas in our house (but without the time consuming present buying). Along with all the preparations for family meals and entertaining, I am very happy to have been asked to prepare some flowers to decorate a window in our local church. Last year I went with a traditional yellow and white theme, but this year I wanted something a little different so decided to major on shades of pink.
My inspiration for this arrangement came from an all white display created by Anastasia Benko for the Decor8 blog. Do pop over and have a look – her flowers are truly divine!
Basing my design on her theme I popped out to the greenhouse to dust off this lovely urn that I bought a couple of Christmas’s ago and then cut plenty of foliage from my garden to create the base.
The flowers all come from Waitrose – I managed to arrive so early on Good Friday morning that the shop had not opened – the weather was lovely and I was able to sit outside in the sun catching up with my blog reading whilst I waited for the doors to open – what did we do before our mobile phones?
As the arrangement needed to be easy to transport I filled the base of the urn with well soaked oasis (floral foam) covered with a layer of chicken wire for extra support.
Being me I could not stop at just one arrangement and so added a few pots of spring bulbs wrapped in newspaper to add an extra layer of interest to the church window. I felt very organised when I completed my arrangement on Friday afternoon and took advantage of the lovely light to take my photographs.
It was just as well as Saturday morning was the start of the wild and windy weather so I was blown into church to join the many other flowery ladies making the final tweaks to their arrangements around the church to make it extra special for Easter Sunday.
At home I had decorated our annual easter tree (made with branches from the garden) using decorations both bought and made throughout our children’s childhood. I took this arrangement down today but had a little disaster when the bottom fell out of my lovely vase sending water everywhere! After a loud crack imagine me dear readers holding a bottomless vase with water running down my legs and not really understanding what was happening for a few moments!
This lovely little bunny is new this year – bought at the Country Living Spring Fair last week.
Finally for today I am trying something new – I made this slideshow for a talk that I gave about blogging to my local computer club last week. I am not sure how well it will play but I have decided to try and share it with you here – do let me know how it works and if you enjoy it. I have just started an online course with Xanthe Berkeley learning how to make short films for Instagram and hope to bring some slightly longer films here to share my garden with you more regularly. This week it is just a photo slideshow but hopefully soon I will have real films to share.
Wishing you all a very happy week!
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Stunningly beautiful. Thank you!
Love the slide show – looking forward to the films!
YOur arrangement is lovely and I am sure it was a blessing to the people in your church. Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful as usual, and I love the effect the newspaper gives. Your computer club is lucky to have you presenting!
Beautiful arrangements. You are right apart from the gifts Easter is becoming like Christmas with all the preparations.
Lovely displays and lovely photos. Your Easter trees always look so pretty – and I have a great image of you in my mind, holding that bottomless vase!
The urn of roses is sheer perfection. That’s not an easy design to achieve. Just saw a floral design presentation at my garden club and learned that Oasis has been reformulated to be biodegradable. Did you use special software to create the slideshow? Your transitions were effective.
**I should say Oasis has been reformulated for North American markets.
What an amazing arrangement…beautiful along with the full display!
Your slideshow works fine and your arrangement is gorgeous as always. I love the little newspaper wrapped pots too. They look so sweet.
Just beautiful, Julie: both the slideshow and all the images. Easter is such a lovely holiday and occasion, isn’t it? Spring has really come to my corner of the world and it is wonderful!
Daughter just made reservations to go to London for a few days end of May…but I just can’t do it for now. Wish we could catch up again!
Oh Libby I do wish you were coming in May! We have just had dinner at the Pack Horse – we sat right next to the table where we had dinner together and I kept thinking about our lovely evening – it is the first time we have been back since then. Spring is finally getting going here – the blossom is just about ready to explode and I am potting up dahlias ready for late colour. We will be in Florida in late September or October if you have any plans to be there? xx