A Little Flower Arranging for Our Purple Party…





Last week I showed glimpses of a family celebration for my daughter and explained how I made the Martha Stewart-inspired ribbon chandelier. Today, I’m sharing the floral arrangements. Fresh flowers are a beautiful way to decorate an event and pull together a color scheme. I’ not a professional, but love arranging flowers and wanted to create some for our family celebration.

A couple days before the event, I went shopping at the San Francisco Flower Mart and boy was it inspiring. It’s a great time to go because the vendors are over-flowing with gorgeous springtime flowers. To coordinate with the event’s purple color scheme, I was drawn to these beautiful cabbage {aka brassica}  with lavender centers and knew I had to use them some how.

Here are some of the floral arrangements created for the party.





In a clear glass vase, I layered the ornamental cabbage with black calla lilies {actually a beautiful prune purple color} and bells of Ireland {a nod to our ancestors from Ireland}.

In the mint julep vase {purchased at the San Francisco Flower Mart}, I surrounded white long stem roses with delicate misty blue statice {aka Limonium}.





Six mini mint julep vases I purchased on One Kings Lane arrived the day before the event and as I was arranging the flowers. I didn’t plan on using them, but it was meant to be. Originally, I had clipped five white roses to be placed in a wreath for my daughter’s hair. The first hair wreath had white roses with sprigs of misty blue – it was way too heavy looking and a no go. I ended up only using the misty in the wreath hairpiece and although not perfect, it was sweet. I thought to myself, “Why did I cut these roses prematurely? They are too short to do anything with. What a waste.” Then I remembered the sweet mint julep vases. I decided echo the larger white rose & misty mint julep arrangement using the petite mint julep vases.

The misty blue floral wreath didn’t stay in my daughter’s hair and end up hanging around the neck of our white ceramic horse. We thought it fitting though because it was also the day of the Kentucky Derby.

One of the arrangements that I ended up really liking was the tightly packed dark purple carnations with pops of yellow with Billy buttons in a vintage milk glass bowl. It’s a dramatic look, but like it mixed in with the more feminine arrangements.

Do you enjoy arranging flowers?

*all photos by Jennifer Jacobson or Simplified Bee