Micro weddings & Celebrations 2022-2023
The Pandemic is gonna be here a little longer than we thought, and many are still trying to plan their weddings or celebrations that we have put on hold since Covid came into our lives. One way to still get to enjoy friends & family to celebrate is to keep it small & simple! You can contact me for all things flowers that you might want, from bouquets to center pieces. If you need help finding other vendors, I have several great ones to recommend. If you need flowers for a graduation or Memorial service, or a presentation at the office that needs a little extra beautification- let’s figure out how I can help you make memories!
Contact me at floralsurroundings@gmail.com
Floral Design Party At Your Home
Ready to have some friends over for lunch or dinner, and add an activity? How about designing flowers together? I will come to your home and set up for a demonstration and workshop for you and your friends!
A great idea for your brides maids, for your book club or your family reunion.
Contact me via email to discuss your plans, what flowers we can use, and what kind of design you would like to do. Are we making a flower crown, or a center piece, or a rustic country style arrangement? My email is floralsurroundings@gmail.com
Pricing will fluctuate due to project/ products and season.
Steampunk- My long awaited project!
STEAMPUNK FANTASY WEDDING
For those looking for something “out of the box”
Steam engines are adding a cool vibe to this fantasy.
“Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retro futuristic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.
Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.”
I have been fascinated by the STEAMPUNK theme for many years, and still hope to be able to create a wedding within this theme one day. Now I have finally decided that the time is right, and have found an exciting venue, a great photographer & a talented makeup artist that will help me create my fantasy! I like spending my days searching for the right accessories to make this happen. I have searched many antique stores and dealers of salvage materials to collect enough to set up for a photo shoot. My favorite places are Mongers Market in Bridgeport, and Stratford Antique Center in Stratford Connecticut. To walk into these places is to travel back in time.
“Steampunk fashion has no set guidelines but tends to synthesize modern styles with influences from the Victorian era. Such influences may include bustles, corsets, gowns, and petticoats; suits with waistcoats, coats, top hats and bowler hats (themselves originating in 1850 England), tailcoats and spats; or military-inspired garments. Steampunk-influenced outfits are usually accented with several technological and "period" accessories: timepieces, parasols, flying/driving goggles, and ray guns. Modern accessories like cell phones or music players can be found in steampunk outfits, after being modified to give them the appearance of Victorian-era objects. Post-apocalyptic elements, such as gas masks, ragged clothing, and tribal motifs, can also be included. Aspects of steampunk fashion have been anticipated by mainstream high fashion, the Lolita and aristocrat styles, neo-Victorianism, and the romantic goth subculture.”
Keep your eyes on my social media & website come March and you’ll see what I have been working with this winter!
Working with wedding celebrations here on the East coast in the US, is all about following trends among wedding couples that are traditional most of the time. The trends that are shown in media are mostly white, blush romantic and classic. It is not easy to dare to be different. Something is expected of these couples today. The pressure is enormous to follow rules and expectations. Maybe expectations of parents & family, the pressure of following your family’s tradition about ceremony space, about what guests to invite, what to wear and how to look. To check of that list- that someone else have made up, of things that “have to be included”. A wedding is suppose to mirror YOU, the couple that is getting married. To dare to be different might seem like a big challenge for many, but I urge you to search for YOUR dream about your special day. There are plenty of non traditional ways to live and celebrate today. I even think the pandemic has helped shift the idea of what is important these days. We dare to go smaller. We dare to save. And it is OK, no one should tell you how much you need to spend ( on time or $$$) on a wedding if you don’t want to. Make sure you feel comfortable with your vendors so that they help you create the wedding of your dreams. Be yourself. Be bold. Dare to go outside the box!
Can’t wait to work with this!
And here is a sneak peak from our February 27 styled photoshoot at Essex Steam train, Essex CT.
A night of creating center pieces, getting to know new friends!
At the Scandinavian Club in Fairfield.
Work-Shop…
A fun night to learn something new! Meet new friends!
We meet at the Scandinavian Club in Fairfield, have a glas of wine, share some laughs over cheese & crackers, discuss & compare, create & discover! I feel lucky to be able to teach and tell others about my passion for flowers, my years of experience and the love of color & texture.
Sign up now for the december 13 work shop!
Washington DC 2021 - First Lady's Luncheon
From my days in DC working for the Congressional Club & American Grown Flowers.
Join me for Holiday Floral Design Class at the Scandinavian club in Fairfield
You’re invited!
Please join me at the Scandinavian club in Fairfield on November 15, 6.30pm-8.30pm
We will meet at the Scandinavian Club in Fairfield, 1351 South Pine Creek rd, at 6.30pm. I will bring in all the material, and we will work on basic design- nothing crazy advanced- of a Thanksgiving Center piece, so that you yourself can decorate your home for the holiday! After this last year I think we all look forward to spending time with friends and family in a cozy setting at home. I am planning to bring a variety of interesting flowers, with different colors and texture, and teach you how to get them to work in your tablescape. You need to be vaccinated to attend, I want to keep everyone as safe as we can be, so please be ready to show your vaccine card. You will have your own table to work on. Bring a knife and a clipper/ secateur.
We will have some wine, seltzer and goodies to snack on, I am a believer that if you are fed and happy, your inspiration will flow easier!
The cost of this class is $150/ person. You can pay with a credit card or with Venmo. Sign up when you go to my website,
www.floralsurroundingsllc.com
Look under “News”, and scroll all the way down, and you’ll find the sign up! Can’t wait to meet you! What a fun night to do together with a friend, or maybe a family member you don’t see too often! Or come and meet new friends! I will also hold a December class, the 13th, so you can continue to learn floral design and get more practice with me in the weeks to come.
Late summer weddings...
The Sweetest little Flower girl!
There is always the question, will she wear the crown at all, or maybe even be napping during the ceremony? Well, this little girl wore it like a princess all day!
Love to see this couple including their little daughter on their special day! This was a small intimate wedding at the Stamford Museum & Nature center, in Stamford CT,
Enjoy a little tease from my August wedding.
-Do you Host Floral Design classes?
A lot of people ask me, and I am happy to say- YES, now we will have some upcoming classes!
I feel ready, do you?
I will start a few floral design classes at the Scandinavian Club in Fairfield, CT this fall/ early winter season.
There will be a limited size class, 12 spots, and you will get 3 classes, one per month in October, November & December. Let’s prepare for the upcoming holiday season. Get together for a low key, beginners class, learning a few things about cut flowers , how to take good care of them and how to decorate your tables in your home when you are planning a gathering of friends and family.
These classes will be for you who are fully vaccinated & are wearing a mask inside to keep yourself & others as safe as you can. I really appreciate that! We will space out the tables, and keep up with the current rules of the club and of the state. The details will come soon, keep checking in under NEWS on my website, for the dates & time for these new classes. Can’t wait to see you! Bring a friend!
And yes, I feel a glass of wine / seltzer & some snacks will help us produce better in class! Make sure to sign up, and come and meet some new friends at the Scandinavian Club this fall!
How to find warm shades of corals & orange
Love vibrant colors?
If you get married in the late summer- fall season, you might want to choose colors that reflect the season. One of my favorite roses to work with is the orange rose Cherry Brandy, that has a little pinkish tint in it. There is also a true ( well, everyone sees color different!) salmon colored rose called Miss Piggy. You can see the Miss Piggy in my Kiska wedding, and the Cherry Brandy in the Flynn wedding. In Lilly’s wedding I also used one of my all time favorite natural additions to a bouquet or arrangement, the Fiddlehead fern, that with it’s curly shape gives you that whimsical touch that makes a design special, and something for everyone to discuss over dinner! Also great for the boutonnieres!
Dazzle your wedding guests with colors & flowers they soon will forget. Let them find unique flowers and foliage in the center pieces on their tables, I promise that will start conversations!
Inspiration
How do we get inspiration?
We all need to keep learning, at work & in life. We are never finished. It is so easy to stick with what we know, what is comfortable. In our own everyday lives, at a workplace. It is not everyone who jumps on a chance, who challenge herself to what is unknown. I have always felt that life is a journey that we can form to our liking, it might be a bumpy ride doing it, but happiness takes work. I vote for happiness. Working with flowers has been my passion from a very early age. As a 13 year old I heard a radio interview with a florist who just received her journeyman certificate. It inspired me. Go and get it.
As an intern at an established florist in Stockholm my first year at the Floral design school, I had a mentor who pushed me further into the idea of making this my future profession. To work with someone with a lifelong experience was very inspiring. To get to learn the do’s and don’t. To dare to learn new tricks. I kept mentors in my life.
We should never stop learning. We need to push ourself to go further, to find new ways, to follow trends and to learn and be inspired from other people around us. At work, and in our everyday lives. Find a teacher. Find a mentor. Get inspired.
I hope to hold workshops that might inspire someone else. If someone learns how to make something beautiful out of flowers, wouldn’t that make your day? Get someone inspired to go out in their garden and bring in the spring & summer to their table. To create beauty. I have just started to freelance. To work up close with another very talented designer, to learn her ways, to discuss methods & technique again inspires me. I am so happy I took these steps that will keep me on my toes, I will learn & get new inspiration!
Inspire. Breath. Learn. Grow.
The definition of Inspiration:
a :divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation
b: the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions
c: the act of influencing or suggesting opinions
Is there a way to learn about floral design in Fairfield, CT?
Want to learn more about cut flowers & design?
Tina’s Floral Design workshops!
I will hold a few different workshop. There will be a workshop for you who always wanted to learn a little bit more about how to take care of cut flowers, and how to throw together your own centerpiece when you have a dinner party planned! Sometimes you only need a nudge in the right direction, learn what flowers or foliage to choose, and what material you might need. Sign up and join me at a location in Fairfield, CT, learn in a small hands-on class together with others like you, newbies who are eager to learn something new!
Image from a workshop with sales staff from Hansen’s Flower Shop/Bruces Flowers & Beachwood florist!
I will also offer workshops for staff who are already in the floral industry, like in the picture above. Sometimes florists get very busy, and it is hard to find the time to teach your extra staff, like students who might come in to work after school, and they are thrown into helping customers, many times without any real knowledge about what they sell. If you own a shop that you know might need a little extra help with this, or if you work extra in a shop and feel this might be what you need- contact me and we’ll see how I best can help! To train your staff before a big holiday like Mothers Day, might be the best investment you can do. But don’t wait until the week before the big holiday, plan ahead so that your staff can be ready & helpful when you need!
I can teach you to go from this…..
…To a more refined style, that will show off your new skills. Small vases, cube & cylinder arrangements, taller vases. Center pieces. These classes will all be unique and will change with the seasons.
Spring bulbs
Frittilaria Meleagris, a checkered little gem for your spring garden.
Many of our spring bulbs are very small, and easy to miss if you don’t look for them. Bring them inside, fill small glass vases and let them spread cheer inside your home.
Muscari, Grape Hyacint, one of my absolute favorite flowers. So small, but yet fills my heart with love and awe!
hYACINTHOIDES HISPANICA EXCELSIOR, Spanish Blue bell!
How do I find the right floral designer for our wedding day?
Congratulations! You are about to get married and now is the time to start to find the right vendors for your special day.
It’s a jungle out there, so much information and ideas on the Internet, it will get overwhelming. Take a deep breath.
Find professional vendors who can guide you through the process.
I have some vendors that I am happy to connect you to, you find their links on my
“ PRESS PAGE”. You can also listen to this podcast that I was part of, and that will give you more knowledge about how and where to start.
It is important to get to know each other. To have a connection. To trust each other. I always love to meet with my couples and listen to their plans, to hear about how they met, what is important for them, how we can make their wedding personal. I have years of experience to share with my couples, and I will help you plan to get as close to your dreams as we can. Lilly -who is pictured above, we had that special connection right away. I feel so honord to be part of someones wedding day, to feel like these are my friends who I want to have the best day ever, with memories for years to come.
Are you ready to connect? I can’t wait to hear from you! Let’s walk this walk together.
How to bring the Bridgerton family style into your own home
Have you seen Bridgerton? The Netflix saga has taken the world by storm.
If we had water coolers to hang out next to at the office, this would be the show everyone would be talking about… giggling, swooning & blushing at the same time. Men & women. Young and old. Maybe not together, that might get really awkward!
Compared to the more realistic “ The Crown”, this show is In Your Face, over the top.
I love all the colors, the furniture, the table settings, the décor of this show. The grandeur. The golds and the pearls. The delicate details in the fabric of the ladies’ dresses, the heavy velvet draperies. The music, sounding quite familiar somehow, but played by century old instruments by men & women in wigs. Oh- the wigs. The sensationally stunning British queen.
Let’s make this a dinner theme, an intimate dinner for two, or let it fill a table of 12 one day.
Bring together the colors, the textures of fabric and the flowers of spring to set the table for a grandiose dinner with only the best the kitchen can whip up. Afterwards, relax in the warmth of a crackling fire with a crystal glass filled with your favorite wine.
These pictures are from a photoshoot we did with EngagedCT in Storrs, Connecticut.
How we can help save our bumble bees with container gardens
Now let’s take care of our bees and butterflies!
Most of us are aware that we are losing honey bees and other beneficial bugs due to our changing environment. We must all do our part to help Mother Nature, and we can by choosing plants that attract our flying insects and hummingbirds such as Hibiscus, Monarda, Crocosmia, Lilies, Heliotrop and Borage. Choose the colors that they are looking for. Make sure they have water when the heat sets in, and you can do this by adding assorted water features to your garden in a peaceful setting. We all need to do our part.
My niece Addie, senior in high school, decided to start a beehive in her garden! Can’t wait to follow her bees this spring and see if any honey will come out of it this summer. Long live the queen!
What a great project for our younger generation, to in a very small way, make a big change to our neighborhood environment.
Click here pre-order your container gardens for this late spring.
A funny tale of Greenhouses & Chrysanthemums
Ever since I was a little girl I have always loved greenhouses. Growing up in a suburb west of Stockholm I was lucky to have access to many of them because the area was full of greenhouses and greenhouse nurseries. Some had theirs out of their small villa garden, and some had rows and rows of long greenhouses made of glass. I loved to walk through them, feeling the humidity, smelling the moist soil, and touching the seedlings, tender and green, soon filling the greenhouses with geraniums, roses or chrysanthemums. It was like a vibrant secret garden that I stepped into. For a long time I thought, “this is where I will work, make my future.”
When I went to Säbyholm Horticulture School at the age of 16, the one of a kind school led me further into the growing of plants in greenhouses, learning the technology and care that was all a part of this profession. At a mandatory internship, I chose to be placed in one of the nursery companies close to my home, thinking this would be a great path going forward. Today I still remember the rows of budding chrysanthemums. There were thousands of them. “Today Tina, your job will be to pinch the mums so that they will grow wider and bigger.” So I started at one end of the greenhouse and went down the aisle of low wooden benches.
That week in the greenhouse with the thousands of chrysanthemums taught me one thing… This was NOT what I wanted to do in my future! And to this day, I do not really like chrysanthemums!
In the late 1990s my husband agreed to adding a small greenhouse to our backyard. In late February I can step inside, breathe in that scent of moist soil again while sowing the spring’s first seeds in small pots, write the names of flowers on those wooden markers, and fill up my water buckets from the hose. This is where I let my two children grow up, in the greenhouse and in the vegetable garden outside. This gave them a chance to get dirty and wet and to learn how to grow plants from seeds. Is there a better way to grow up?
Antiquing in Sweden
Are we there yet?
Back in the mid 70s to early 80s my family spent our vacations traveling through Sweden down south to a rental house on the west or east coast, or in Skåne, the most southern county of Sweden. We drove for hours (at that time with no seat belts in the backseat and no AC) through the country passing fields of rapeseed, dense green forests and clear lakes.
We stopped for gas, ice cream and lunch that always ended up being grilled hotdogs and French fries, the best treat you could ever get!
And we stopped at Antique stores. Millions of them.
My mom had taken up the innocent interest in glass. What started with a collection of old pressed salt cellars, ended up as a lifelong passion for antiques, and landed her a job at Stockholms Auktionsverk as a glass expert.
We HATED the stops along the way to our vacation house. It was the time when many roads still were local winding roads out in nowhere, before the faster modern highways got you from point A to point B faster. We rolled our eyes every time we had to stop AGAIN. My sister and I stayed in the hot car reading comics, or followed her inside to browse to get the time to go faster and to stretch our legs. How could you be interested in all that old stuff?
Fast forwarding to today.
Both my sister Annika and I have somehow gotten this bug that makes us both wanting to stop along the road to check out antique stores. Now our families are rolling their eyes in the car every time we scream “No, turn around, let’s check out that antique store we just drove by!”
I have a thing for old stuff. My home is filled with old & new, antique, vintage and Mid Century Modern. I love antiquing, browsing for containers, vases, paintings and furniture. Old tools. Cast iron fences or urns. Steampunk. Part of my work here at Floral Surroundings will be to offer unique one of a kind containers to my clients homes or events. Colored depression glass or beautiful handmade pottery from the 30s to the 50s. Well known artists/ factories or just unique because of their shape and beauty. Check out my page HOME & PATIO.