Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Orange and Blue

Aww man... I was planning my big blog comeback and my memory card in my camera won't upload my photos! ; (

All I have are these for now.

Be back to share my Havana Nights Party!

Cotton Candy Wedding

Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. Today's inspiration board was inspired by a drink that I saw someone order today during lunch at TGI Fridays. Stay tuned next week when I reveal the inspiration for this post - and a really awesome signature drink!

Photo Credit
First row: Teapot Centerpiece by A Bloom In Time, Peony Cake by Roxy Cakes, Table Number by Papeterie Store
Second Row: Stamp by Zazzle, Gown by Lazaro, Cotton Candy by Martha Stewart Weddings
Third Row: Bouquet, Flower Girl Outfit by Pink Bowtique, Bride & Groom from Globetrotting Bride photo by Jessamyn Harris Photography

Sometimes when it rains it pours...

...so I have been away for a while and will resume my beloved blog in a week or so.
Thanks for checking in on me, be back soon!

xoxo
Brenda

So Thankful!

It's well known with my family and friends that Thanksgiving is my least favorite day of the year. In fact, this year, I even opted for hot dogs instead of turkey. But, the meaning of this day is certainly not lost on me. 2009 was the busiest year for As You Wish yet. I am incredibly thankful for my couples and all of my friends who got married this year:

Meg & Jerry
Chelsey & Jeff
Joi & Kevin
Alana & Brian
Shannon & Matt
Jannet & Rob
Michelle & Dan
Ali & Wes
Tamara & Jorge
Meghan & Michael
Melissa & Paul
Jill & Rob
Phil & Tara
Carla & Cian
Kelly & Brian

On a more personal note, I am thankful for so much:


And last, I am thankful for the best family a girl could ask for. Really, I dare you to try and find a family that is better than mine. So to my family, thank you for your endless support of me, my business, and all of my crazy lunatic ideas. I love you more than words could express.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bread Bread Give Thanks!

This is my centerpeice for Thanksgiving! I went to the flower market and my heart said tulips, anthuriums, eucalyptus pods, and kale. I rolled with it. =P
The roses are Milvas; so coral-ly! hehe

Well, Thanksgiving is not turning out to be as planned but I am thankful that I have the
opportunity to be home with them today. : )
My honey has been sick for two weeks now and still cannot eat solid foods so I feel terribly guilty dragging him to my mother's house for dinner. My mom has offered to make him turkey soup which I will come home and blend so it works out. : )


Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Green Dianthus Ball Bouquet

Getting ready for Thanksgiving!!!!

I'm excited and happy that I have a few things to do this week that give me creative freedom.

First up is a sample of what I consider green and white with a bit of gold.
I love this green dianthus ball{AKA green carnations!}
I refer to is as a Horton Hears A who flower ; )
This bouquet has light green hydrangea, green dianthus, gold cockscomb, and white avalanche roses.

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Similar to the idea in my previous post I made this bouquet so that it would drop into a vase that has equisetum( horsetail) in it.

I think it allows it to double as a bar arrangement, check in table, escort card table, or bathroom arrangement.

This vignette is to show how we incorporate levels using simple white vases. The ones I used I bought at Ikea a while back to hold short stems on my counter.

Here is the unconventional masculine boutonniere.
banding the horsetail like in the vases earlier and just using a bit of the dianthus with the cockscomb for color.

Here's a quick table number idea for a bride who wants something a little different.

I'm proposing we do this on a HUGE level.
Carry the idea of banding horsetail together with gold flowers, in this case orchids, so just give it some color in small placements.

These are left over escort cards from my own wedding I had lying around.
They were simple Crane&Co. envelopes in a 2x2 with black embossed lettering in the back that says "TABLE" and the front that says the name of the guest,
who didn't ,ahem, show at my wedding : /
Then finally the insert is a Martha Stewart stamp that has the table number in it.

Pink, Silver, and Black Wedding Flowers

My dear sweet cousin is getting married next year and I am putting together a series of pink and black possible flower combinations for her. So over the course of the next few months you start to notice a "pink" trend here, that's why, lol.
This one is bouquet made up of pink and burgundy dahlias, some wine colored spray roses, and some super raspberry hydrangeas.

The idea is then to be able to drop the many bouquets into tall vases so that will double as arrangements. So I found these pretty tall vases that will look great.

I just love that they are silver and black and with candle light they practically shine in the dark!

Perfect vases for a black, silver, and pink wedding :)

Baby Boy Baptism

Logi Pogi had a baptism and wow-there was a LOT of people there to celebrate! :)

The biggest baby shower I have ever seen and done the flowers for was earlier this year for this baby boy so when C&A called me to make floral arrangements for the baptism I said of course!

My goodness, it was like a mini wedding! Hehe, that little boy is so loved...

We started with the front appetizer table. Would you look at that humongous cupcake??
It's like the size of the base of my vase!
Isn't it cute? I have always wanted to bake a cupcake that big....

The outside cocktail tables were lined with simple small arrangements.
I love the polar star roses! They look like garden roses don't they?

The head table was lined with simple small arrangements at the edge of the table.

The centerpiece were composed of four vases in varying glass vases.
They were all finished with blue ribbon around the neck of the vase.
The flowers were all white and blue. I realized that I took didn't have pictures of the tall centerpiece with the blue bella donna's in them so you will have to take my word for it. :/

Everyone loved the clean look of the white snap dragon in a tall vase.

My favorite part were the cupcake favors that were placed at each table. SUPER CUTE.
They were chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate and vanilla icing and a fondant cross.
The cupcakes were placed into clear boxes with Paper Source stickers that had the baby's name and date.


Last but not least was the cake from Mazzetti's in Pacifica. Hands down the BEST raisin bran muffin in the world, Sunset magazine has been trying for years to the recipe but the owner says no way. My husband and I sat down to sample their wedding cakes when we were shopping for ours but ultimately we went with Nikki's cakes over at A Tale of Two Truffles.
So they asked me to decorate the cake with a specific design and then when I got there the cake was not as described, so we had no choice but to improvise.
Before: A simple white cake with navy blue ribbon.

After: cluster of white and blue hydrangea.

That was it! A nice luncheon for the baby of the hour on his special day.
My God Bless you always Logi!

Sweet Williams

This little number is for a private home that I take flowers to every time a dinner party is in order. This particular centerpiece was pretty darn economical I would say.

It's composed of yarrow, sweet williams, hypericum berries, cockscomb, spray roses, and then the ti leaf in a 6 inch cylinder vase.

Succulent Bride {Part Two: The Centerpiece}

Succulent Bride Part 1

My lovely bride wanted her bridal bouquet to have green succulents, greens and pops of yellow.
So we built up form the green succulents and used cream roses and spray roses, yellow oncidiums orchids, lotus pods and china berries.


For the reception we went back to Marin and Arts Garden in Ross, CA. The couple knew they wanted to incorporate the succulents again and liked the idea of fruit in centerpeice. So when we got together to discuss the colors which were burgundy and gold, immediately I knew we would have to go for those dark succulents, some magnolia leaves, the rust colored pompoms that the bride liked and then I suggested pomegranates and she loved the idea, so we were set.

When we got to the rose color I assumed she would have picked a dark burgundy or a cream and so when I asked her to picture what we had sketched in her mind and then to tell me what color she envisioned in the roses,
she said Peach. It was quite unexpected. But it worked! :)
So here is what we came up with.

For the check in table we had a simple arrangement set up of the nice big burgundy succulent, the caramel roses, magnolia, mums and china berries.

We also had one sitting on the bar that fit perfectly in a little tiny platform.

This has been my favorite wedding combo yet!
I loved working with the succulents and I was happy with the result. It was super important to the bride that she be able to replant her flowers in her garden and I hope that she does. :)

The groom's mother met me in the parking lot and she looked at the centerpiece and then said Oh my God, give me a hug!

haha! I loved it and she totally made my day! :)

Thanks Y&T! You two are the best and I wish you much love and success!

{and they lived happily ever after....}

Candied Apple Wedding Bouquet

First of all shout out to Elizabeth for making my day yesterday by emailing me and lettingme she liked my blog. Thanks so much that made me smile all day!

Thanks to Janet for helping me with naming one of my bouquets "Butterscotch" because I am working with someone to build by site and I wanted to name my bouquets and I have been playing around with the candy names, so Janet's psychic suggestion without even knowing my plan was perfect!

Here is a bouquet I madeto show a cousin of mine who is getting married next year a lot of different options for her wedding flowers. She lives out in Nevada so I will be posting everything pink and silver and black even on my blog so she can visit and let me know what she thinks.

I have a dahlia bouquet I made a couple weeks ago that I have to post but I thought I would share this one first since I will be doing an Ikebana post shortly that includes the use of the green balloon flowers.

I bought flowers from a local farmers market this time to try out a new vendor so I don't have the names of the pink roses. I also used china berries, rosehips, and green balloon flowers. At least that is what my Ikebana and I instructor calls them, but I will have to find the botanical name...does anyone know?


So does Candied Apple fit? :)

Attention Blog STEALER

Stop re-posting my stuff and passing it off as your own for the ad revenue.

There is a site that I came across that has reposted my pictures and my entire posts!!!! I'm so upset...

http://topweddingflower.blogspot.com/

Go check this site out and see if you find your stuff on there because I found some stuff on there that belongs to Flower Design Jane and to a couple of other floral designers.

Succulent Bride {Part One: the Bouquet}

My succulent Bride and Groom contacted me about 7 weeks before their wedding with a fabulous request; Can you make a bouquet with succulents? YEP!

So we met one Sunday after noon and sketched out a bouquet and after the easiest hour of my life, we came up with a gorgeous bouquet and centerpiece we were all excited about. :)

The bridal bouquet was composed of three types of succulents, lotus pods, cream spray roses, Blizzard roses, china berries, yellow oncidium orchids finished off with an ivory satin ribbon.

I have a lot of pictures to share but I will be MIA this weekend with an event that requires almost 100 different pieces!!!

Have a great weekend!

Yellow and Copper Wedding Bouquet

Here is a trial run of the copper and yellow wedding bouquet I made this weekend.
It features rust cymbidiums orchids, yellow oncidium orchids, yellow and brown mokara orchids, yellow calla lilies, and black ti leaves.

A Happy Halloween Bride

{Halloween Bride}
It was a crazy floral weekend folks...
A bridal bouquet pick up, Halloween party flowers, a mock up for a trial bouquet for a brown copper yellow wedding, and a succulent wedding today. I'm beat.

This bouquet was a quick pick up for a bridal bouquet and matching boutonniere.
It was a simple bouquet composed of peach roses, chocolate cosmos, and burgundy succulents.

The matching boutonniere was a simple rose to match on peach, a smaller burgundy succulent with a leave backing and a grosgrain brown and gold ribbon I have been harboring for a while now.

This little burgundy succulent was one of the smaller ones that I couldn't use on the centerpiece for my succulent wedding but perfect for small boutonniere.

See? Halloween bouquets don't have to be scary right?


***************************************************************************

Part two of this post is a few pictures from my sisters Halloween Party.

Iguana roses, rose hips, china berries, a tiny bit of pitto, amaranthus, and a branch that is spray painted black with some orange glitter.

This one is I wanted to make with clear separate groupings with contrasting colors.
Rust cymbidiums, yellow oncidiums, black millet, orange mokara orchids, green china berries, and red rose hips.
I printed a picture of my sister and her boyfriend on some velum paper, taped it to some cylinder vases I had, stuck a candle inside and called it day! :)

She made some cupcakes and caramel apples and borrowed my cupcake stand and created a beautiful(and yummy) display.
I was shocked when I walked into the kitchen because my sister, self admittedly ,can't boil water and this looks damn good. So good in fact I paid her a backhanded compliment and told her I thought for a split second that maybe I had made it! lol

Cutest pumpkin centipede or what?

Anyhow, hope you had a great Halloween!