anastasiaehlers » yellow

spring brights

anastasia — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:30:14 +0000

as promised, so begins the recap. this cheery celebration took place at mt. pisgah last spring. spring time is dodgy around here, but that day was glorious. as i was rounding the big bend in i-5 heading south, the sky just opened up into completely spectacular sunshine.

the bride’s grandfather built the arbor for the altar with wood he milled himself! i hung little bud vases and bottles gathered by the bride from it. the glass caught the light in a way i couldn’t photograph properly. altars are always hard for me to get good snaps of.

the bride’s bouquet had tulips, craspedia, muscari, ranunculus, leucadendron, veronica, and grasses, with the world’s most fun pompom ribbon. the maids carried live plants potted in terra cotta with more of those darling little poms.

centerpieces were groupings of found jars, bottles, and vases. each table had a box of fresh berries for guests to enjoy. the whole vibe was casual, a little rustic, and a lot of fun.

brights

anastasia — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 01:17:26 +0000

A cheerful arrangement for your enjoyment. Maria Theresa garden roses, craspedia (aka billy balls, aka alien antennae), sweet peas, ranunculus, green trick dianthus, mimosa, tuberose, and maidenhair fern. If you can get past the mimosa, this one smells ah-mazing. Here’s to sunshine!

P.S. Scroll back up and use the fancy new subscribe box to get fresh posts delivered to your email inbox through FeedBurner, pretty please!

eugene luxe bridal event

anastasia — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:14:46 +0000

What a week! Party in Vegas, launch a new website, featured on Wedding Chicks, then design design design for the Eugene Luxe Bridal Event on Thursday night. These gorgeous photos are by the very talented Erica of Erica Ann Photography. We met freshening up before the show and then she swung by the booth towards to end to get some snaps of my table and I am so grateful! There’s more beautiful images from the whole night on her Facebook page, so give it a like while you’re there.

The show was a blast, and I’m so pleased with my booth. It was all decked out in white and green (much thanks to Doodle Dog Creative for the new palette and logo!) and featured a make-it-yourself corsage station set up on my newly-refinished vintage desk (in grey and metallic silver, if you’ve been following the blog and are curious what I chose). I can’t even count how many women stopped by to make a corsage and it was wonderful to have the chance to chat with so many phenomenal gals. I am so looking forward to getting to know everybody better over the next couple of weeks!

Thank you so much to everybody that offered their time, muscles, and support to help me get everything together for the event. In particular, the always-enthusiastic ladies of Moxie Events, Jayme and Russ, Sharon at Office Max, Erica, my best pals Chelsea and Andy for being my “staff” for the night, my parents for stopping by, and Robbie for not minding that I haven’t cleaned up the aftermath from the show just yet. I am the luckiest gal I know.

inspiration | lemon and lavender

anastasia — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:00:00 +0000

clockwise from top right: sweetapolita, ann taylor, elements in bloom, sylviahelen, the knot, the disaster that is tumblr. inset: succulent favors/escort cards by kelly via the knotty bride

it’s been a little while since i shared an inspiration board, hasn’t it? i actually put this board and another one together for an upcoming wedding. the other board won out, but miss bride said something along the lines lines of “anastasia, you jerk, now i have to drop everything and go on a quest for lemon bars!” (forgive my paraphrasing if you’re reading this, jenn).

if this inspires you to make a batch of lemon bars, i know two women who would certainly help you eat them. if it inspires you to design a wedding, that’s cool too.

the humble peony?

anastasia — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:00:00 +0000

humble is not the word for the peony. nor are shy, homely, or understated particularly good ways to describe everybody’s favorite flower. the showy blooms might as well be as big as your head. they are so heavy that the plant can hardly support them, and gardeners must stake the stems or choose to appreciate the flowers lolling in the soil.

these show stoppers actually made my brakes squeal yesterday. yeah. i pulled over just to snap their photos. i don’t think anybody saw. i thought about covertly snipping one with the clippers i had stashed in my purse, but these were garden peonies, and not on my side of the fence, so that’s just wrong.

these are the sort of peonies that make me wish i was a little pixie so i could roll around in all those fluffy petals. is that weird? yeah…it is weird. because peonies, pretty as they are, are often covered in ants attracted to their sweet, sticky nectar. and nobody wants to roll around in ants. gross.

mostly native to china and asia, the peony has a remarkably long history of use as an ornamental plant. all of the widely cultivated varieties are from the asian species. in fact, the united states only has two of its own species. or just one species and a subspecies. it depends on who you ask.

public domain image via wikimedia commons

paeonia brownii is native to the united states. oregon, even. i’ve had the pleasure of seeing this guy in person, and in fact he should be blooming right about now, or just wrapping it up. we’ve had a late spring though, so i bet he’s going strong. i’m afraid i don’t have time to head towards bend and check. p. brownii grows in the sort of high, dry forest full of sagebrush and pondersa pine that live on the other side of the pass.

paeonia brownii is remarkably ugly, but i can’t help but feel a little proud that it grows wild nearby. everybody gushes over peonies so much, and i can’t help but smile and think of this one every time i read about some blogger swooning over a bouquet. and ants. don’t forget the ants.

botany lab | ranunculus

anastasia — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:00:00 +0000

i came to floral design in a roundabout sort of way. before i snipped stems and made bouquets, i trekked through the forests and wetlands around oregon staring wide-eyed at wildflowers. my major in college was biology, but only because the university didn’t have a botany program.

much of my focus was given over to systematic botany, studying the evolutionary relationships between different families of plants. it’s still fascinating to me to relate commercially grown cut flowers to each other and their wildflower relatives.

one of the largest families of flowering plants, the ranunculaceae, is also one of the most diverse. it’s an ancient family, and the diversity of it lends well to hybridization for our purposes–it’s easy to select for a bazillion petals over time, which is precisely what we’ve done.

ranunculaceae is the buttercup family, and the typical form is easy to find in the spring time. these guys, ranunculus occidentalis, are native to the area and a great example of a few key characteristics of the family–five petals and lots and lots of stamen.

florists mostly use hybrids of a different species, ranunculus asiaticus, aka persian buttercup. they seem pretty wildly different from those sweet little buttercups until you peer inside and notice all those stamen.

photo by aviad2001 via wikimedia commons

hellebores and anemones are part of the ranunculaceae, each in their own genus. it’s getting easier to spot the relation, right? if you buy these guys at a flower stall or nursery, they’re much closer in appearance to their original form, unaltered by our artificial selection. kinda. hellebores are remarkably easy to cross and hybridize, and i swear there’s a whole gardening subculture devoted to doing just that. gardeners have come up with all sorts of crazy colors for hellebores, and have even added rows and rows of petals. the latter seems to be humans’ favorite way of altering plants for our own enjoyment.

photo by jerzy opiola via wikimedia commons

photo by haolrd supfle via wikimedia commons

things get weird when you consider delphiniums (also used by florists a lot, at least around here where they’ll be growing like weeds in a few weeks) and columbines, with their crazy spurred petals. the spur that juts out behind the face of the flower holds a tasty nectar reward for passing bees, enticing them to stay awhile and unknowingly gather lots of pollen to deliver to the next flower over. what look like petals in this case are actually sepals, fused in various ways. as alien as they appear next to the buttercups and anemones, the many stamen are still present, and they bear the same sort of fruit as the rest of the family.

thanks for indulging my science kick. i could go on and on about all sorts of flowers and their relatives. which ones would you like to see next?

spring wildflowers at mt. pisgah

anastasia — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:00:00 +0000

on sunday afternoon, we hiked to the top of mt. pisgah. the day was perfect for it, not raining, but not too hot. predictably, i wanted to do nothing but ogle the flowers.

western buttercups

oregon iris

fawn lily

shooting stars and camas

houndstongue

and some fantastic fungus for good measure

all the usual suspects for spring flowers around eugene. are you heading for the arboretum’s annual wildflower festival? see you there!

daffodil fields

anastasia — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:00:00 +0000

ok, “fields” is a bit of an exaggeration. but the daffodil beds at midway farms are lovely.

i loved all the frilly stamens of the hellebores.

this mother hen adopted a bunch of ducklings.

is there anything more adorable than a smiling duckling?

apollo loves daffodils too.

rob and i borrowed my mother’s camera and enjoyed a slow saturday. the farm’s resident duck/chicken/turkey/goose expert handler, a thirteen year old boy who i think was named nick, gave us the grand tour and introduced us to the regulars. on the way home, rob drove us south again along peoria road, a mostly deserted country back road where his uncle taught him how to drive. we can’t wait for our own vegetable garden, and wish we had the cash to burn on a fancy new camera.

you can check out more pictures from the outing on facebook.

flowers at home | february 28

anastasia — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:24:00 +0000

ms. jane is kindly hosting another online flower party. today, i have a lot to bring to the potluck, even if it’s all leftovers from my photo shoot over the weekend.

the mess saturday morning before it was camera time. i don’t know why, but i can never seem to use just one pair of clippers. perhaps if i have five strewn all about my kitchen, it will be more efficient than hunting for a single pair.

for lack of a better place to put them, flowers even ended up on top of the fridge after the shoot.

i bought the nintendo magnets for my husband years ago as a housewarming gift for a new place. i still love them.

a mossy orchid on the bathroom counter.

a messy vase of branches that i hesitate to call an arrangement. the larkspur is dreaming it could be transformed into spray of cherry blossoms.

anne nunn, a fantastic eugene photographer had just finished an engagement session for a couple we’re sharing this summer. click the link; it’ll make your day better, i promise. i was freezing in a scarf and sweater, so i have no idea how our bride, brianna, managed in her dress. the sacrifice was certainly worth it–she looks amazing in her photos. i can’t wait to see the pics from our little session.

it is also worth mentioning that this is the last day to win a silly little terrarium. if you’re just stopping by for the flower party, why not take home a souvenir?

it’s autumn!

anastasia — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:46:00 +0000

so with the torrential downpours in eugene over the weekend, and um, right now, there’s no denying that we are in the thick of fall. better yet, i carved a pumpkin and made spiced cider to celebrate with wonderful friends on saturday. we even went to the pumpkin patch in the rain. i can’t remember the last time i carved a pumpkin.

the best part about fall–even better than jack o’ lanterns and apple cider–is the gorgeous autumn leaves. in other places around the world, the color display is practically over. luckily for oregonians, the leaves are still gorgeous and mostly intact despite the storm. my neighborhood has some beautiful colors, so i decided to take a walk this morning and take advantage. luckily, the rain let up for me.

thanks for the leaves, neighbor

a trip around the block and a few snips later, i had a paper sack full of awesome. and a pair of spiders, but i’m not squeamish.

so tempting just to leave them on the counter like this.

mmm…fall

compulsive arranger that i am, a vase was the ultimate destination for my finds. i added some dusty miller leftover from saturday’s wedding around the bottom. doesn’t it remind you of the grey sky? it’s like the non-depressing version of rain clouds.

to make your own leafy arrangement, all you need is a rain jacket and a pair of pruning shears.

head for you yard or a nice walk.
choose leaves of different sizes and textures. go for the full fall spectrum or make it monochromatic–whatever suits your fancy.
when you cut them, leave a length of the twig attached so there’s a stem to place in your vase.
pull off any leaves that would end up below the water line of inside the vase.
i arranged mine loosely in hand first, then cut the stems and plunked them in water.
fall leaves, y’know, fall. they are kind of delicate, but should last at least as long as fresh flowers in water.
enjoy!

happy autumn, everyone. have a great halloween this weekend!