Thursday 21 April 2011

Top of the Class

Back en France after a fantastic couple of days in London. First stop after the delights of flying Ryanair was the fabulous brand new boutique hotel the Zetter Townhouse - I took some pictures but have a look at their website photo gallery for much better ones Zetter Townhouse Gallery
This was my first experience of staying in a 'boutique' hotel and these guys have really set the standard high. So what rocked for me at the Zetter? I would say the in room George Cloony Nespresso machine and milk frother, the hand knitted hotwater bottle cover, the cross-stitch sampler room sign and having loose tea, a tea pot and tea strainer oh and the very original interiors. And what sucked? Not having anyone to share it with. Anyway enough about hotels, the whole purpose of the trip was to attend the intensive wedding flower course at McQueens. Having arrived at McQueens nice and early prepared to meet my classmates I discovered I was the only person on the course - so not only was I getting to attend the best flower school in the country but I had two days of one-on-one tuition. First off we covered flower conditioning then onto some wired work forming buttonholes and corsages.
 



After lunch we moved on to a hand tied bouquet and wired bouquet

  
Day two started with some more practice at wired work



Next on the agenda was different styles of table centres






With the final task of the day a hand tied white rose domed bouquet (very on trend)




Leaving just enough time to have a look at the online flower ordering system for Metz.  
A big thank you to my lovely course tutor Duncan for all his advice and enthusiam, and I guess I get to boast finishing the course top of the class! (somewhat by default)

Monday 11 April 2011

If it's good enough for Vanity Fair...

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your
life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.


Wise words from Mr Luhrmann on the eve of yet another career deviation. From working on the roof of the Rosebowl cricket ground this time last year to a crazy 12 months at the fabulous Chateau Rigaud it's off to London tomorrow for an intensive wedding flower course. Tres excited about the prospect of McQueens, these guys do the flowers for the post Oscar's Vanity Fair party so their flower school is going to be good. Not only that but getting to check out the brand sparkly new Zetter Townhouse boutique hotel into the bargain!

In preparation for this week have been attempting to do some revision on flower names, got myself a fantastic book called Flowers A to Z by Cecelia Heffernan and have been off scouting around the Rigaud gardens with camera in hand to see what I could find

The perfect tulip?
Amazing colour

Iris
Viburnum