Love You Bunches: A little tutorial...

And now, in response to the over-whelming demand, I will give a little tutorial on how to build a casket saddle. (Fine. No one asked. So what?)

First I go to the wholesaler and pick out the flowers and bring them home wrapped in brown paper. Like this...

Then you go get the buckets that you used last week and were too lazy to wash out.

Cleaning out the buckets...ugh! I hate it! It is without question the worst part of doing flowers. But it is a necessary evil to turn the above into the below.

Then you have to go back the the basement (again!) because you forgot the floral preservative and your clippers. Yes, the preservative is necessary! No, it doesn't matter that you'll be using the flowers the next day. (Thank you for asking!)

Then you have to process the flowers. This can be tremendously tedious depending on the type of flower. On all of them you have to cut away the cellophane wrap and clip off the elastics. On some you can then just clip the bottoms off quickly and shove - er, delicately place - the flowers in the buckets of water. On others (roses, for example) you have to go through every single stem - One. By. One. - and strip the petals and thorns before putting them in. On any kind of flower you can't have foilage below water level because they spoil the water. Depending on how many flowers you are working through, this one facet of the project can take hours! It is also horrible!! Unfortunately, it is also necessary.

Then you're left with the packaging...

Then you have to go to the basement AGAIN because you forgot a bucket for the oasis.

Then you put the oasis in the saddle....

The bluriness of this next picture is NOT a reflection of a lack of importance of this step. I forgot this step one time and I feel confident that I'll NEVER make the same mistake again! You forget these two seemingly small strips of tape and you can kiss your saddle goodbye!!