Sunday, October 11, 2015

How to Use Flowers to Decorate Your Home

I love to decorate my home with fresh flowers.  Because I spend more of my day inside my home than outside, I will often bring flowers from my garden into my home where I'll be able to see them more often.  That's an easy thing to do during the growing season, but how do you enjoy flowers during the colder months?

Well one thing you can do is to take advantage of seasonal potted plants.  Since it's the Fall Season, potted mums are available for purchase everywhere:  discount chain stores, grocery stores, garden centers, florists, etc.  I picked up my potted yellow mums while shopping for groceries!  

I placed these pretty mums on an end table in my sun room.  I love the subtle touch of fall the mums bring to this seating arrangement.


Now every time I sit in my favorite chair, I can see the cheerful, sunny faces of these pretty flowers.


I will display these mums till the blooms have faded.  Then I will cut them back and move the pot to a sunny window where they can spend the winter.  In the spring, I will plant them outside and enjoy their blooms once more in the fall.


Every season offers it's own potted flowers to enjoy:  Poinsettias during the holiday season, Amaryllis in the winter, and Easter Lilies in the spring to name just a few.  I buy a potted Easter Lily every spring and plant it outside as soon as the weather warms up.  Right now, the Easter Lily I planted this spring is  blooming in my garden.  They don't always survive the cold winters if you live as far north as I do, but you will at least get a second bloom out of them in the fall.

The second way to decorate your home with fresh flowers is simple:  Buy Some!  Fresh flower bouquets are available from florists, gas stations, discount chain stores, grocery stores, and on websites like BloomNation.  Because I have a large flower garden, I don't need to buy bouquets often, but I will in the winter when I just need to see some beautiful blooms to cheer me up. Because my flower garden is currently fading away,  I picked up this simple little bouquet at a discount grocery store for only $3.99.  It is filled with roses, mums, carnations, and a thistle.


I didn't do anything special with the bouquet other than place it in a clear vase.  I tried it in two different locations before deciding it's permanent home.  The first location is a romantic guest room.  I thought the beautiful coral roses would look so elegant in this room.


Since there were red carnations in the bouquet, I played around with some sexy red heels of mine and made a little vignette on top of an antique sewing machine displayed in the room.


I ultimately decided that even though the flowers looked very pretty in the guest room, I wouldn't see them often enough to enjoy them, because I am not in the guest room very much.  However, when I do have guests, it would be a nice welcoming touch to display a bouquet of flowers in the room.

A room I do use several times a day is my main bathroom, so I moved the bouquet to a round table in this room.  The red flowers coordinated well with the red linens already in the room, and the purple mums and thistle brought a touch of fall to the bathroom as well.  And I get to see my pretty flowers every morning and every night!



Another way to use flowers to decorate your home is to take advantage of seasonal flowering bushes in your yard or neighborhood.  We may not all have green thumbs and grow flowers, but most of us have flowering bushes;  if not in our yard, than in someone else's yard….just ask permission before cutting a few blooms off your neighbors bush! :)

These gorgeous pink/white/green flowers are from a fall blooming bush called Limelight Hydrangea.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this bush!  It starts blooming in early August and at first the blooms are white, but as the season progresses the colors of the flowers change to an off-white, then a green, and now pink.  They last so long too!  It's October and I've had blooms on this bush for over two months now!


Here is what this exact same flower looks like when it first starts to bloom.  My husband surprised me and picked this bouquet for me a few months ago!


I love to bring the change of seasons into my home by cutting fresh blooms off of seasonal flowering bushes or trees.  There is nothing better than the smell of Lilacs wafting through my home in the spring, or the gorgeous blossoms of cranberry trees.  In the winter, you could cut evergreen branches, holly berries, or red dogwood and create an arrangement, or simply put them in a vase.



I personally don't enjoy fussing with flower arranging.  My favorite way of arranging flowers is to just fill a vase with a mass of blooms.  I do try and keep a taller bloom or three in the center, and then fill in around the edges with smaller, shorter blooms.  I also pick a vase that suits the flowers well.  I chose this pretty pink vase to coordinate with the soft pink in the flowers.


I try to have a fresh bouquet of flowers all year long in the center of my dining room table.  It adds so much elegance and warmth to the room.

And finally, the last and simplest way to use flowers to decorate your home is to Collect Small Bottles to Display Small Blooms.  I often will have little tiny flower heads that get knocked over in a rain storm that I don't want to throw away because they are too pretty.   So I place them in tiny little bottles that are just big enough to support their tiny little stems.  Just cluster a few of these bottles together, and wa-la, you have a pretty flower display.


This pretty cluster of four flowers and small bottles sits on a coffee table in my sunroom.

So before you throw your next little bottle into the recycling bin, think, "Would this make a good bottle to display a flower in?"  Here I used a taller, narrow bottle to hold a coral geranium from my garden.  The little tiny trio of smaller bottles were perfect for the marigolds!


And if you have small children or grandchildren who love to run into the house with a fistful of dandelions for you, little bottles are perfect for holding those too!

I hope I've inspired you to bring more fresh flowers into your home.  Remember, even if you don't have a garden or yard, fresh flowers are available everywhere!  You don't even have to leave home to get some.  Just go on-line and contact BloomNation and they will deliver them straight to your doorstep!  BloomNation is a wonderful resource because they partner with independent florists in your community  and showcase their hand-crafted arrangements in their on-line marketplace.  And if you would like to see more floral inspiration other than what I have shown you, BloomNation has a fabulous BLOG  and a Pinterest Board!

Have a great day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE.

5 comments:

  1. Very nice Amy your house is looking cosy.
    Ageeth

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  2. The fresh flowers add such a nice touch! Especially love the hydrangea arrangement. I need to plant them in my garden. I usually pick up a bouquet of flowers when I go the grocery store, they are so inexpensive there! And in the spring/summer months I usually keep an orchid on my mantel. Oh, and of course I love picking violets from the lawn in spring before my husbands mows it :-)
    Great idea to decorate with a mum in Fall. I usually have them outside. But I have just the right spot for one, so next time I go shopping I'll buy one for indoors.

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  3. You have so many wonderful places to sit in your home! The flowers in the glass jars/vases are pretty and the mums, too!

    Carrie
    curlycraftymom.com

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  4. Beautiful flower arrangements, Amy. The house doesn't look right if there are no fresh flowers here and there.
    Many thanks for joining us at Floral Friday Fotos.

    ReplyDelete

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