I finally had the opportunity to go to the Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend Event, it is held annually and has moved to Cornerstone in Sonoma. The theme was outdoor living and had everything from gardening, to food and drink tastings, travel, home decorating and chef demonstrations.
Surprisingly my favorite presentation was in the garden barn with Alethea Harampolis from Studio Choo. Her demonstration of flower arranging was over the top using cuttings from ones garden and showing how to use all the various clippings along with many you would normally throw away. The arrangement was over the top to say the least. She and her business partner, Jill Rizzo have written a book The Flower Recipe Book. I love how they have created arrangements with the directions written like a cookbook. The peony arrangement was my first. Not that difficult and in my opinion peonies will look great no matter what you do with them but I thought I would try it out. I bought 6 peonies at Costco for $9.99. The recipe calls for 9 stems and two mason jars. I have one jar and only 6 stems.
One jar peony flower recipe:
- Trim three stems and add to the jar so that the blooms are 2″ above
- Trim and add four stems to the same jar so that the bottoms of the blooms are just above the first three.
The goal with the flower arrangement is to create a tight mass of blooms.
This is a sample page from The Flower Recipe Book.
If you like flowers and want to learn more about making arrangements I highly recommend this book. It is a best seller on Amazon.
The dishes in the background are Heath. I purchased at the factory in Sausalito they are a great size bowl. I wish I had more than 4.
What a difference a day makes. They are really starting to fill out.
Nice