Annabelle hydrangea, blue hydrangea, allium, and twisted willow for Christmas.

I’m supposed to be cleaning, writing Christmas cards, baking, laundry, the list goes on!  So instead, I’m escaping it all by using my creative side.  Going to that floral arranging demonstration has inspired me!  I love creating through flowers.

True blue.

Here’s the deal though:  I have to work in an imperfect world, unlike Mr. Perfect Floral arranger.  The branches sorta went where I wanted them (nope, not at all). The dried flowers kinda matched (learned that you shouldn’t put white and red together, so I’m guessing that it’s still too much of a contrast for white and blue?).  But really, the Annabelle flowers are off white, so it should be ok, right? And the container, well, it’s just not right (width, height, the fact that it’s an ice holder). But all of that aside, I was quite happy with it! 🙂

Christmas is in the air!

The blue Christmas balls (is there a nicer way to describe them?) are the old fashioned glass ones.  I love the glass ones.  I don’t like the plastic ones, although they are perfect for my kids to decorate with!  But the glass ones are special to me.  I have them in the container, and hanging on the branches along with small sparkly silver ones.  At the bottom of the container, I have glass marbles which help to hold the stems in place.

A touch of silver.

The allium has been in my back room since the summer. It didn’t really look that great, honestly.  The kids had been asking me why I didn’t just throw it out.  I was hoping I’d figure out something to do with it!  A little silver spray paint (on one of the blue hydrangea flower heads, too) and they were completely transformed!

I really appreciate that a few dear friends had their hands in my creating this arrangement.  The hydrangeas are Susan’s.  They dried really well after she gave them to me!  Also, I must mention the branches again.  My lovely neighbors, Margaret & James (Mr. Manure man!) have the most wonderful garden. The branches are from their tree, which I believe is a twisted willow tree.  There was a bit of a debate going on whether it is a contorted witch hazel, or twisted willow.  I’ll do a bit more research to figure it out, because I really want to plant one in my yard!

A nice big space in the kitchen just for my creation!

I’ve cleared out of the kitchen anything that wasn’t needed during the holidays. Unfortunately, the blue bowls in the above picture don’t have another home, so here they sit.  Do they kinda sorta match the arrangement???

An inside view.

Oh dear that picture looks out of focus.  There is no sun here today.  Those outside pictures were taken at 1 P.M. even thought it looks like it’s evening! It seems the flash created a shadow, making it seem quite fuzzy.

Christmas cake all wrapped up and ready for the oven!

Now it is time to tackle those other jobs on my list!  At least the Christmas cake is in the oven.  I was quite proud of my “wrap job” this year!  It is much neater than I’ve ever done before.  I think that wrapping it is definitely the hardest part of making a Christmas cake!  There has got to be an easier way…

I hope you get to do something fun and creative in between all of your “must do” things!  It definitely puts a smile on my face!

Dana