A Little Background Information

I am a first timer at this method of communication so bear with me as I test out different types of fonts and styles for the blog.

I love design, plain and simple. I went to school for Floral Design at Mississippi State University, Retail Floristry Management to be exact. In that major I took intensive floral design classes and competed in National Competitions. We had a comprehensive curriculum in Art, Horticulture and Interior Design. I finished my educational career as the Florist manager on campus. An intense form of trial by fire!

I started working with floral design as an Intern at the infamous Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC where I designed daily floral arrangements for feature rooms, including the Winter Garden and main dining hall, not to mention working in the gardens and around the estate with large events and weddings. Plus, let's not forget the wonderful Christmas season where over 200 trees and arrangements are displayed for two solid months.

Next, I moved to Charleston, South Carolina where I worked with the number one florist, Tiger Lily, for almost three years as a wedding and event designer. I planned extravagant weddings and events around the Charleston area, downtown, Mt. Pleasant, Seabrook and Kiawah Islands to name a few locations. During my work in Charleston I also had the pleasure of designing arrangements for lovely homes downtown on Battery and Rainbow Rows. The homes were fantastic, but I also enjoyed designing for local restaurants. My work was also featured on The Knot and many other wedding publications.

While at Tiger Lily I also taught Basic Floral Design, Design II, Wedding Flowers, Sympathy Flowers and Advanced Floral Design at Trident Technical College. I loved my three hours each week with my classes. As I taught my students, they brought a new thought process to how I viewed floral design.

I met the love of my life in college, only I didn't know it at the time. I suppose we could all have such a story. We married, moved to Texas, and I became a military spouse. What a long way I had traveled from my beautiful and eventful life in Charleston! I had a new adventure to tackle, real life if you will; deployments, marriage and excitement around every corner. Never a dull moment…just not in the social butterfly type of way.

So here we are four and a half years later. A new town, Little Rock, AR, a new base, a new home, a beautiful little 14-month old daughter, who is the apple of our eye and a new son on the way. (A long way from the place where I started my career.) Every moment has been a blessing and a struggle. The glamour and sparkle of the event world is fantastic, but it is also wonderful to be grounded by my supportive family.

During the years away from the event planning arena I have been coordinating weddings, keeping up with all the latest advances in photography, floral design and event planning themes just waiting for a way back “in” and the time has come.... I AM BACK! Watch out Little Rock.... I am full of energy and new ideas!

The Purpose of my Blog:
I would like to create a fun and informative place where people can acquire great ideas on how to do many things: recipes for parties, floral arrangments, themed party planning, home decor sewing and everything in between. I would like to take it a step further though and teach classes from our home by taking the simple ideas and expanding them into 2 hour class. I will post the class schedule and gauge the responses.  Thank you for the chance to entertain you.