Style a Grocery Store Flower Bouquet

It's easy to make a generic bouquet of grocery store flowers look special by cutting the stems short and arranging in a short vase - they end up looking lush and full vs. plopping them straight from the bundle into a taller vase. I didn't take a before picture but the flowers were the regular bouquet length and when I put them in a standard vase they fell over to the side because the vase is too wide - cut them short though and crowd into a smaller shorter vase and they become much more "done" looking. Easy! I'd guess this vase is about 7" high and I cut the flowers about 14" tall, arrange the greenery that will fall over the sides in the vase first then add the flowers and straighter greenery. Just play with it until it's even on all sides and you like how it looks!

This was made with only one bundle of flowers and look how full it looks - turned out pretty. It's the perfect size centerpiece on our dining room table.

Tip: the water and flowers will stay fresher longer if you remove all the greenery from the stems that are under water. And if you put them someplace cold at night they will last way longer.

Easter Flower Ideas

Here's a couple last minute flower arrangements to take with you as a hostess gift today, or to decorate your Easter table.

The first one is a grocery store bundle of yellow flowers. My initial thought was to put them in a baggie of water, insert them in a mason jar, and then fill in around the baggie with jelly beans. (The correct way to do that would be to put the flowers in a jar and then set it into a larger jar, filling the space between the jars that stays dry with jelly beans or whatever. I don't have 2 jars that fit like that so I was winging it with the baggie idea...) So yeah, that didn't work - I was careful but water still got on the jelly beans and that made a mess. So plan B: cut them all to fit, put them in a mason jar, tie a pretty ribbon around the neck of jar. To make it a little more special I hot glued a plastic Easter egg onto a skewer and tucked that into the flowers. Then because I never know when to quit, I hot glued another egg onto the end of one ribbon :)

The second one is a little more time consuming but really cute. The inspiration came from here. I bought 2 bunches of tulips and 3 bunches of carrots with the stems on. Put a rubber band around the vase or container you are using - I used a big mason jar. Tuck clean carrots under the rubber band to hold them place (around the outside of the container), trimming the bottoms to fit. I entertained the idea to leave the carrot tops on but that looked super out of control and messy so I trimmed them to about an inch off the carrot top. Tie a pretty ribbon over top of the rubber band.

Note I did not peel my carrots (didn't seem necessary and they'll last longer I think - just brush them off so they are clean) and left more of the tulip leaves attached so it has a little more "messier" natural look then the inspiration picture. I also found that turning a couple of the carrots upside down helped them lay better against the jar.

wet jelly beans = a mess