How to Create A Red, White, Cream And Pink Floral Arrangement For Your Formal Dining Room Or Foyer That is Similar to One Featured on Desperate Housewives Season Two

That Bree Van DeKamp (Hodge now) is she a peach or what? She always has the most tasteful and elegant furniture and floral arrangements in her home. This beautiful and elegant floral arrangement was sitting on the window ledge during the episode in Season Two where George told Andrew to go to his room. Andrew and George had fought in front of the house earlier in this episode. Now you can learn to create a large floral arrangement for your formal dining room for special occasions.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• A large bread bowl
• About 12 long floral picks at least 10 inches long or use something solid and cylindrical but smaller in diameter than a pencil like 12 long wooden chopsticks
• 8 large blocks of floral foam held in place with floral picks and then soaked in water to create a foundation for the flowers to go into. When the floral foam is thoroughly soaked remove the picks so
• 20 large long stemmed“Brazilian Beauty” cream or off-white roses
• 20 large long stemmed “Brazilian Beauty” stark or optic white roses
• 20 large long stemmed “Brazilian Beauty” red roses
• 20 large long stemmed “Brazilian Beauty” baby pink roses
• Five vases with water in them to hold the flowers in as you are preparing them to be arranged
• About 5 to six handfuls of rose “greenery” to go around the sides of the bowl
• A sharp knife to cut the stems of the roses by one inch underwater so that water can get into them
• 5 packets of Flower food the kind that comes in little packets
• A small bowl or even the bottom of a gallon milk container jug that you cut off truncated the top and just use the better part of the bottom. You have to put water in this and then you will cut the
• flower stems underneath the water with the knife.
• An adult friend who is capable of using a knife to help you.
• A cold room or lots of space in your refrigerator to put the flowers in there while you work to keep them fresh.

1. Go to a floral wholesaler and purchase the roses that you need.
2. Get a large bread bowl or other large container that is watertight and can hold about 80 flowers in it.
3. Place eight large blocks of green florist’s foam in the center of the bread bowl. Try to place four blocks of green florist’s foam to create a flat layer on the bottom of the bread bowl and then place four blocks of florist’s foam on top of that.
4. Now you want to place long green floral picks or the wooden chopsticks if you are using those into the floral foam in the corners of the floral foam and push all the way down to the foam surface beneath. This should hold the top layer of florist’s foam in place on top of the bottom layer of florist’s foam.
5. Add enough cold water into the bread bowl to soak into the florist’s foam. This should take some time as the foam should be thoroughly soaked with water. The foam may even need to be left in place overnight to get soggy with water but still stay firm as there is so much water that the florist’s foam needs to soak up.
6. Get a large bowl a plastic bowl will do or you can use a knife to cut off the bottom of a one gallon milk jug and clean it out and use that as the bowl.
7. Fill the bowl with water.
8. Prepare the vases that you will use to hold the flowers in after the stems have been cut. You have to move fast after you cut the stems to put them in water otherwise the roses could die. It helps if you have the air conditioning on and the room is cold.
9. Put water in the vase and add one packet of flower food to each vase. You will do this for all five of the vases. Use cold water in the vases as much as possible.
10. Now you are ready to cut the stems off of the bottom of the roses. Get the large bowl or plastic milk jug bottom and fill that up with cold water.
11. Place the rose stems into the water and one by one use the knife to cut one inch of rose stem off the bottom of the stem at a diagonal angle. Make sure that you cut the rose stem underneath the water so that water is the first thing that is sucked into the stem and not air. Just leave that flower there for one minute to soak up some water.
12. Quickly grab a vase with water and plant food already in it and place the rose in there.
13. You are going to have to cut the stems and put it into a vase 80 times so this is a good time to ask a friend to help you so the process goes along much faster.
14. So now you have all 80 flowers prepped sitting in vases and ready to go. Take the bread bowl and put it in its final location in your formal dining room now that the water has been thoroughly soaked up into the florist’s foam.
15. Carefully pick out the chopsticks or floral picks that you were using to hold the foam together. Do this carefully as you don’t want to break up the foam. Pull the chopsticks out vertically and slowly. There will be a small hole in the foam but don’t worry about that just try not to break the foam as much as possible. If you do break the foam it’s not that big of a deal as you can just stick rose greenery into that piece and put it on the inside edge of the bread bowl.
16. Take one cream colored rose and place it into the foam in such a way that the stem is pointing towards the bottom part of the foam at a 45 degree angle and the “head” of the rose is just slightly jutted out about two inches from on the outer edge of the bread bowl. What this looks like is the outer edge of the bread bowl has a flower head so that it looks like it is trimmed in roses on the rim of the bowl.
17. Take a red rose and place it next to the cream rose to that it also appears to be sitting on the edge of the bread bowl.
18. Take an optic white or stark white rose and place it next to the red rose so that it appears to be sitting on the edge of the bread bowl.
19. Take a baby pink rose and place it next to the stark white rose so that it also appears to be sitting on the edge of the bread bowl.
20. So you are going to alternate the cream, red, optic white, and baby pink roses until you have lined the rim of the bowl. You are basically trying to go around the bowl with the alternating colors of roses being arranged into the florist’s foam in a spiral fashion where the rose heads are jutting out about two inches away from the bread bowl’s rim.
21. Place the stems into the florist foam at the bottom of the foam. Then place the stems on the next layer of the foam going up in a spiral fashion. So the stems are being placed into the foam in a spiral fashion to finish out using the rest of the flowers but save about 15 roses for the last step to fill in the top.
22. Use some roses to put one rose straight up in the center of the foam. Place another rose of a different color at an angle beside the first vertical rose on one side of the vertical rose. Then place another rose of a different color on the other side of the vertical rose at an angle into the florist’s foam. Ladies you know how they train you to pluck your eyebrows and they tell you to put a pencil at an angle to tell where the arch of your brow should be? That is the same sideways angle of the rose that I am talking about here like maybe 45 degrees outward from the central vertical rose.
23. Now you want to place two roses into the florist’s foam but in the other plane of the arrangement. So you placed a vertical rose and two roses into the foam at an angle but all three roses looked like they were in a straight line with a center rose and two roses angled beautifully from the center rose but those roses were all in a horizontal plane. Now you also need to place two roses beside the vertical rose but in a vertical plane this will give the arrangement a “cross” of roses that are angled in to the central roses and the roses sprayed out like that look beautiful.
24. Now you are going to turn the arrangement a little by placing both hands on the bread bowl and moving it a little to the right and place a rose at an angle that is sitting further outward from the first grouping of roses in the center of the bread bowl arrangement and create a new horizontal plane where you will put two roses into the foam at an angle on either side of the first five flowers since they are the new central flowers that you are arranging around now and place two flowers in at an angle on either side of the first five flowers in a vertical top and bottom way.
25. Turn the arrangement back to the way that it was before by turning the bowl back to your left a little. Now use the remaining flowers to fill in the open area of the top of the arrangement so that it looks like the roses are spreading out or fanning out to reach you but the whole top looks like an arch or a curve of roses. It would help if you knew what floral arrangements in stately homes look like and how the flowers fan out at the top of the arrangement. What you are trying to do is fill in the flowers in an asymmetrical and angular way.
26. Fill in the remaining places in the florist’s foam with greenery. You are primarily looking to fill in the top edge of the florist’s foam by cutting the greenery with the scissors and placing each leaf into the foam individually or in little sprigs to fill in the areas where you can see the foam. You cut the greenery short and it just fills up the space without calling too much attention away from the flowers.
27. Now you are all done with your floral arrangement and ready to invite some psycho like George over for dinner and parade him around as your new man in front of your kids. Awwww, you make such a cute couple.
28. But seriously folks...hello readers, can someone please help out my girl Folk? She is trying to get started in the music business and I do not know that industry at all. You can either type “Folk” in the search box above and pull her up or you can just click on her picture in the AngelBean’s friends box. I would really appreciate it. Thanks :)

Tips & Warnings

• You really have to care for your roses by taking off the outer petals if they appear to be loose. You can do this by putting your index finger and your thumb on the outside of the rose petal and gently bringing your fingers together by pinching the rose petal’s outer leaf and bending the rose petal back and pulling it off of the flower. This is what needs to be done every day to keep the outer flowers from browning or appearing too loose. This “rose care” will keep the flowers around for a while. Well, that and changing the water every day or adding a little water to the florist's foam so that it doesn't dry out every day.
• If you are more familiar with using florist “frogs” that may be the better way to go here. However, I learned some basic floral arranging when I worked at a florist shop years ago with foam so that I why I mentioned the foam. Floral frogs about three or four is what you need to keep the flowers in place in the bottom of the bowl. So use the floral frogs idea if you are familiar with using them.
• Brazilian Beauty roses have a head on them that is at least two inches across. They have a full head of petals or have lots of petals on them with long stems. They are gorgeous.
• You don’t have to make this arrangement yourself. You can tell any florist you want 20 roses each of red, cream, baby pink, and stark or optic white Brazilian Beauty roses arranged in a large container for your formal dining room just don’t be surprised if it costs more than $1000.00 to create.
• I am going to try this someday with really good silk roses, you know, the kind that you can get from the floral aisle at Michael’s craft store.
• You can use a short cylindrical shaped "Birthday Cake" piece of floral foam instead of using multiple blocks of foam if you'd like.
• Watch out because “every rose has its thorn” and long stemmed roses especially.
• You have to cut the rose stems down to size as you go because I don’t know the size of your bread bowl. The first set of roses that rim the bowl their stems may not need to be that long you know.
• You shouldn't need baby's breath for this arrangement. However, if the florist offers it to you take it. You can leave off maybe one rose from this arrangement and use some rose greenery and the baby's breath to create a single rose to give to the friend that helped you with the flowers as a thank you gift.