Love, Right Now: Flowers

Reading Joy's Real Life Blog Tips today felt soo good, this post came at the perfect time. I have felt kind of discouraged with this place on the web lately. I sometimes feel like I cant keep up, like there are so many great people out there doing great stuff that there is little point in me writing blog posts that lack in the writing AND the photography department.
And then I always thought I needed to do more, be more structured and professional when structures of all kinds make me want to run into my room, hide under a blanket and/or surf the web for the rest of the day.
Yesterday evening I had the great epiphany that since this is my space here, I can actually do what I want. Like talk about flowers.

Let's talk about flowers.
I never realized I had a thing for flowers until a friend's new girlfriend opened her own flowershop and I started going there to get to know her and support her. This was in November, and since then I bought myself flowers almost weekly.
Flowers have such an amazing ability to make a room come to life. They make me smile, standing there on my kitchen table, whenever I come home and walk into this room.

Obviously, I think, I didnt make this myself.

Here are a few things I have noticed in getting into this new habit that might be helpful if you actually have no clue about flowers but want to start buying them for yourself. And I absolutely think you should!
♥ To be safe, stay monochromatic. While I think mixing orange, white and rosa poppies worked, a bouquet of white, yellow and red tulips just looks all over the place and cheap.
♥ Even if you can't afford to buy a whole arranged bouquet of flowers, invest in some greenery/branches that contrast with the delicate flowers. 6 poppies alone in a vase look sad and alone, with their huge heads on their long naked stems. Throw in a few cherry branches and you've added texture and a flower more when they start to bloom.

♥ Don't throw out the the branches/greenery with the flowers. Just buy a few flowers to replace the old ones, take everything out of the vase, rinse the stems off, maybe snip and inch off, too. Discard anything that looks like it's rotting or starting to mould. Arrange the new flowers together with what is left.
♥ Don't worry too much about the arranging. I try to keep with buying odd numbers of flowers, but then I tell you to buy 6 poppies because really it is not that important. And once home you might decide to pick one flower out to make a mini arrangement for another room. I have also found that I can work better with the flowers in a vase than in my hand (as I saw my friend doing it). Just do what comes naturally to you and try things out. The flowers wont keep forever no matter how you arrange them, so stop worrying and enjoy them.
♥ Try something new. And learn about new flowers and their names. I want to buy some ranunculus the next time I go out to buy flowers.
♥ Try to stay away from roses. I like roses, too, and I have some in this pictures, too. But they can feel a bit boring, too.

And now go out and buy yourself some flowers. And not just because it is Valentine's day. Actually, you might want to wait until tomorrow or the weekend and stay away from the flowershops today. But do buy yourself some flowers, you deserve it!