A SIMPLE WAY TO REVIVE A FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

i am a lover of flowers. anyone who knows me, knows this about me. at any time my house has at least two arrangements...maybe more. on Friday night tom and i had a mini dinner party so i was planning on going out to buy some flowers to arrange for the table. since we are doing our best to save a little money right now i thought i would instead try to re-arrange the roses i had already picked last week from my dad's garden.

my dad has an amazing rose garden, one that rivals the Huntington Library, the botanic gardens, possibly even the Pasadena rose parade. ya, he's that good. it is not rare to find me putting through his garden, smelling his flowers, and stealing some (ok, a lot) for my house. last week his red roses were out of control! i cut a bunch of them and loosely put them in a vase. sometimes an unorganized bundle of a single color rose can make the biggest impact. i tend to stay away from mixing too many colors in any one arrangement of roses, limiting myself to one or maybe two different colors.

here is a picture of the flowers which were cut over a week ago..i know, they aren't looking so hot. just you wait...

i began by preparing three small vases with a mixture of water and a few droplets of bleach. i love the look of using small, identical arrangements in odd numbers. it creates a very chic, polished look. i added some river rock to the bottom to add some interesting detail and to avoid seeing any scum that so often accumulates at the bottom of clear glass vases.

i removed the salvageable roses and trimmed off a good portion of the stem, leaving only about 3 inches. i removed the outer petals which were wilted and brown, revealing a brand new beautiful flower underneath and placed them in the vases using the rocks as a frog to keep them in place.

Once i had all three arrangements completed, i thought they needed a little something extra...

so...i moseyed (yes, that's how you spell it, i looked it up) outside to my most favorite plant EVER...our asparagus fern! its been getting a bit out of hand lately so i thought it could use a little hair cut.

(isn't this plant FABULOUS!!!)

not only did the new hair cut look fabulous, but the lime green fern added the perfect amount of punch to the vases. i love the contrast of the deep red roses with the punch of vibrant green!

and here they are perfectly positioned on our coffee table...

Simple. Dramatic. Chic.