I love having fresh flowers in my own, but I actually hate getting floral arrangements from a florist. It never looks like it suppose to look and I always want to break it apart and start all over again. So of those nearest and dearest to me know that if you want to gift me flowers you are better off bringing me a mix of bunches from the local supermarket.

My go-to supermarket for flowers is Fairway. They always have a wide variety of flowers to pick from and they are always fresh. Plus when you make the arrangements yourself you can get more than just one arrangement out of them.

Here is what I started with the other day:

I picked up 4 bunches of flowers for around $30. I tend to vary the size. So I went with a full flower (pink dahlias) and then 2 sets of smaller scale carnations (orange & pink) and an interesting filler (green).

I then picked up a handful of vases that were sprinkled throughout my house. A tall ginger jar vase, a colorful cereal bowl, a square vase that I decorated with velvet tape, and an elephant teapot.

1st up is the easiest. I find tall vases with a skinny opening to be a bit tough to arrange. I keep things simple with vases like this and simply fill it with the full bloom flower. I don’t like a lot of stem to show so I made they just peeked out of the vase. Easy and simple!

2nd arrangement: Cereal bowls are great to use for flowers. You can always find so many interesting ones at places like HomeGoods or Target and instead of having to be a whole set for your house you can pick one up for $4 and just use it as a vase. Since they have a large opening I recommend using floral foam to get your flowers stay in place.

In order to not make an mistakes with a vase with such a large opening I think it’s best to stick with one type of flower and I would pick the largest bloom because you can fill it up with 4 stems.

3rd arrangement: For the square vase I decided to do a mix of the flowers. I think people can scared of mixing flowers, but it’s pretty simple. Just arrange the flowers before they actually hit the vase and you are making a bouquet. Since I was using 3 colors I decided to make the arrangement by bunch together sections of green, orange and pink, green, orange and pink, etc.

Once I’m happy with the mix I use washi tape (you can also use floral tape of a rubber band) to get them in place.

After it’s wrapped up I fan out the flowers to loosen it a bit and keep it full. Then I will trim all of the stems to the same size and that’s it!

4th arrangement: I have actually never used my elephants teapots for tea, because they are always busy holding flowers. They can’t hold a ton of flowers, but I had a couple of spare stems from my arrangements and a couple of surviving flowers from an older arrangement that was on it’s way out.

Again just go with the technique of alternating the colors you place next to each other and then trimming the stems to the same size. So easy!

After 30 or so minutes of work I had a small flower shop on my hands. 🙂

Such much better than some ready made arrangement, right?