Break into Blossom

I collect these kinds of images.

Robert Triscoli

Needs Source

Photo of Zizi Jeanmarie by Phillip Le Tellier

Needs Source

Lots more on my Break into Blossom board on Pinterest.

St. Patrick’s Day Flowers

Another cheapie bouquet from the grocery store. I made this awhile ago, but thought it would be pretty for St. Patrick’s Day, if you’re a holiday-decorating type. It’s green button mums, and a weed-type flower ~~whose name I don’t know~~ called Alstromeria or Peruvian Lillies (thanks, Lisa N.!).

I chose them because they’re the same color family, but totally different textures.

First I took all the crazy leaves off the bottoms of these guys.

Then I pulled the mums apart so I could work with arranging individual flowers instead of a stalk with a bunch of different heights.

They look cool together, and I was happy with the result.

Fair warning, both flowers lasted forever and then a weird thing happened. The mums didn’t grow in water, but the weed flowers did, so at the end of the week it was a big ol’ mess. Ah well.

Then I made this tiny guy for my bedside with leftover flowers.

Twofer.

If you liked this, you might also like:

10 Tips for Making Florist Style Bouquets from Grocery Store Flowers
Flowers for Jaime and Henning’s Wedding

I’m Speaking at Square, Come Say Hi

I’ve been publishing here for nearly fourteen years, so it’s ludicrous that I’ve never spoken in my hometown until now. If you’re a Bay Area entrepreneur or aspire to be, please come say hello at Square’s Open for Business Day celebrating women entrepreneurs.

I’ll be speaking with Square Founder Jack Dorsey to kick off an afternoon of workshops on social media, finance, recruiting, and analytics. I like the folks organizing this, so the information should be chewy. Also? It’s free. So it fits right into the tightest small business budget.

You have to register to attend, and there’s limited seating, so get up on it:

Free Reg on Eventbrite
Monday, March 10, 2014 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM (PDT)
Square Headquarters
1455 Market St
San Francisco, CA

See you there!

Young Adele Singing Sam Cooke

Doesn’t Adele just make your throat ache wishing you could do that too?

Penny Peonies, Made from Carnations

Hey look! I made fake peonies from carnations I got at the grocery store. If you miss Spring, or just can’t afford to pay $6-$10 for a single flower, this is a surprisingly satisfying solution.

I actually love carnations just how they are, so I got this big bunch of them at the supermarket for about $12 total.

I made a little work station by cutting off the wrappers and spreading them out. You’ll need floral tape, or masking tape if no one will be inspecting the flowers too closely.

This is how carnations come, so you’ll need to use the scissors to separate them into individual flowers. Once you have a good stack, take the fluffiest one for the center of a “peony,” then add five or six more carnations in a circular pattern around the centerpiece.

Once you have a bunch that’s the right size, pull at individual stems until there are no gaps between the flowers and none are sticking up when you hold them in a tight bunch near the flowers’ heads. Carnations are basically weeds, which means they’re super hardy, so don’t worry too much about bruising them.

From the top, it should look something like this. Once you have the right shape, wrap the stems tightly in floral tape all the way up to the bulbs just below the flowers.

They should look like this.

The amount of flowers I started with will yield you about six Penny Peonies, though half of them will have much shorter stems than the other half.

Whabam! Try this, it’s relatively easy, and will make you feel like a genius. Which, you obviously are.

Links

Mrs. De Florian left her Parisian apartment in her twenties, just before WWII broke out, and never returned. When she died at 91, her heirs unlocked a time capsule. I cannot get enough of abandoned places.

Trying out Gratitude 365 to record all my luckies. Do you keep a gratitude journal?

I want this desk, but where would you hide the cords?

A bunch of great tattoos: My heart in your hands, petals, Atlas, wheat.

This photo of a woman voting is so charming.

I just found out about Tippi Degré. She’s a French girl raised in Namibia, and there’s all sorts of incredible photos of her playing with wild animals. Watch the video at the bottom where a wild leopard playfully bites her shoulder. Amazing.

Esquire’s What I’ve Learned

Photo from Firstlook.org

I’ve always looked forward to Esquire’s What I’ve Learned interviews. Once a year, they come out with an issue that has several of them. The best parts from this year’s:

Keith Olbermann

“Your anger will cool into hardened passionate insight if you wait a day. Most of the things that make me angry, I try to let them sit. The heat that remains will be sufficient. The stuff that evaporates is the stuff that would have simply offended or made it histrionic.”

“Don’t assume that anybody above you actually knows what they’re doing. And if you find somebody who does, stick to them like glue. Because the further you go into our career, the more you will discover to your absolute horror that you are the adult.”

Glenn Greenwald

“Ultimately the reason privacy is so vital is it’s the realm in which we can do all the things that are valuable as human beings. It’s the place that uniquely enables us to explore limits, to test boundaries, to engage in novel and creative ways of thinking and being. Only if we feel free of the kind of judgmental eyes of others are we able to try different things out, to experiment, to evolve, to free ourselves of mores that are imposed on us or conventional orthodoxies about how we’re supposed to behave and think. And that, ultimately, is what is most valuable about being human: to be able to create new ways of thinking and being.”

“Surveillance breeds conformity.”

“There are different ways that kids who are gay take on the rejection and alienation they feel. The way I dealt with it was to say, You know what? You’re imposing judgments on me and condemnations, but I don’t accept them. I’m going to instead turn the light on you and see what your flaws are and impose the same judgmental standards on you.”

“If you’re gonna challenge people in power, you have to be ready to be attacked in effective ways. That’s the nature of power…”

Tina Louise

“You’ve got to get yourself in the proper state of mind to be useful to the universe.”

If you liked this post, I did another What I’ve Learned recap in 2010.

I Miss You, Old Glee

Glee Cast “Push It”

I think this was the first episode. Hold me close, first episode.

Glee “It’s a Man’s World”

Unwed pregnant teens performing an anger ballet. I hope the choreographer lies awake mentally revisiting this glory again and again. (This video starts in Spanish, but switches to the original recording when the music kicks in.)