Grocery Store Bouquets

Last week Friday, hubby took the girls on a much-anticipated "Special Day with Daddy." These special days out with just dad live long in my daughters' memories no matter what they end up doing. Don't laugh, but this special day began with redeeming a trunk full of bottles and cans. My girls love to feed those machines. As much as they love cashing in.

So before heading out to lunch, they unloaded the back of my minivan at the grocery store just down the street. They hadn't been gone all that long when I got a call from hubby, telling me they were pulling back into the driveway soon and that I should go outside to meet them in one minute. I asked twenty questions about why, for what, and what he was doing, but it was clear he wasn't going to tell me. So I threw on my jacket and shoes and headed out full of curiosity.

As I ran up to the van, hubby rolled down the window and the side door slid open. He handed me a bouquet of flowers and they girls announced with excitement from their seats in the way back that they used their money from the soda bottles to buy me flowers. "It was daddy's idea but we paid for it with our own money and we got to pick them out!!!"  Good hubby. Good dad. :)  Of course I gave them all hugs and kisses and told them how thoughtful and giving that was to spend their "hard earned" money on flowers for me.

I waved them off for the rest of their special day as I skipped back into the house to continue preparing for my oldest's birthday party that was to take place that evening. I filled one of my favorite vases with water and the flower food, took the cellophane off the flowers, and plopped the bouquet into the vase. With party preparations at the top of my list I didn't have time to do much else with the flowers...but I wanted to!

So the weekend came and went, including a birthday party, dinner and crafting with some of my best buds, and a day tending to and cleaning up after a pukey kid. Enter Monday. Of a brand new week with a wide open empty calendar. In other words, finally time to break down the bouquet into bud vases and place them around the house. Wheeee!!

First I pulled out all the little light pink roses and put them in a short white yard sale vase on the end table by "my side" of the couch.

Has anyone else read Voskamp's "One Thousand Gifts"? Since reading a critique, I now have mixed thoughts on it.
More of what I've gleamed from that book to come in a future post.

If my friend Angie is reading this, I hope she appreciates that this white vase that used to sit on my office desk year-round with fake tulips in it now holds fresh flowers. :)

Why couldn't my end table always look this uncluttered?
More on what is usually stacked high on on this table to come in a future post.

So after removing the roses from the bouquet, next I took out the chrysanthemums. Yes, they are died a bright pinkish red. Except one flower sort of missed most of the die. I cut these down short to put them in the Dugger family's toothbrush holder this vase scored for $1 at a yard sale this summer. I placed this in the middle of the buffet table in my kitchen.



Next I put two large pink carnations in a 10 cent green vase that I scored at the same yard sale as the yellow vase above. I placed these on my night stand beside my favorite little hobnail milk glass lamp - one of two I scored at a yard sale years ago for $5.

One carnation and one mum perfectly brighten up the bathroom in a vintage bottle behind the toilet.

And because my girls' favorite part of the bouquet they picked out was the tacky foam heart decoration, I placed that with the flowers that were left in another one of my favorite little green yard sale vases on the dining room table, where they will see it most.

Ain't nothin wrong with a grocery store bouquet for Valentine's Day!