Garden Party 2009 Holiday Hours

Please take note of the following holiday hours and closures:

December 24th (Christmas Eve): 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
December 25th (Christmas Day): CLOSED
December 26th (Boxing Day): CLOSED
December 31st (New Year’s Eve): 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm
January 1st (New Year’s Day): CLOSED

Interesting Request – Skull of Flowers

A few days ago we got an interesting request from our client.

Here is a transcript of our phone conversation.

Me: Hi good afternoon Garden Party Flowers.
Client: Hi, I want to send my good friend flowers.
Me: Sure no problem, do you have a style or colour preference?
Client: Can you make me a skull?
After a few seconds of silence…
Me: Sure, would you like photo’s of the design before we deliver it and a paperless invoice to your email?
Client: Really? That would be awesome!

Amy spent the next two hours designing and sculpting a skull.

I was laughing so hard the whole time she was making it because it looked more and more real every time I looked over.  After she finished, We had to deliver to Stella’s on cambie street where the recipient was celebrating his birthday. When we arrived, his jaw dropped and couldn’t believe what he was getting.  He loved it and so did random people at the restaurant coming to check it out.

Here are a few more angles of the skull we took at the store before delivering:

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Last night we supported both the StreeToHome charity and the James Lee Foundation by donating and decorating the DDB Canada office. The event brought together the DDB creative agency folks, their friends and their clients to raise money to benefit these charities.  Judging by the turnout and generous donations, I am sure they succeeded.

Although I was outbid on everything I bid on, such as box seats to watch the Canucks and a necklace for Amy, we still had a great time and we hope our donation will help those in need in our community.

Amy’s inspiration of the above design comes from her background as a Psychology major.  She is deeply aware that addictions, mental illness and other disabilities are some of the major reasons for homelessness.  The glass bowl  at the base of the tall vase contains twigs wrapped like a birds nest to symbolize a home provided by the  Streetohome Foundation for those who are homeless.  The roses at the mouth of the vase, shows the warmth and generosity of those who attended this charity event, to raise awareness and funds to solve the homelessness.

Here is a better view of the design:

Other sponsors and donors are listed here:

Learn to Make a Gorgeous Wreath, Start to Finish

This year we decided to make our own wreaths by hand, we feel they smell extra awesome and we are able to make a custom size depending on our clients request.

What you’ll need

Scissors, pliers, floral wire, and a wreath frame.

Evergreens: Pine, Cedar, Fir Silver, Kochea, Silver leucadendron, eucalyptus.

Step 1: Make a mini Xmas evergreen bouquet…..

Step 2 After making mini evergreen bouquets, we can add in more unique flowers such as silver leucadendrons and eucalyptus

Step 3 After making mini evergreen bouquet and additional silver flowers, we can start to attach each bunch on the wreath frame

Step 4 Keep on adding evergreen bunches……

Step 5 Keeping on adding until it forms a perfect circle!

Step 6 Enjoy the holidays, the family, and the spirit

Enjoy the process of designing! Create and Share! (Jung shan Amy Hu 2009)

JUST ARRIVED: @blablakids dolls!!

Just in time for Christmas, the folks at blabla shipped us our latest collection of blabla dolls.  Come by the store to see which ones came.  We are located in between Kitsilano and Point Grey at West 4th and Alma in Vancouver, BC.

Welcome to Vancouver @Havenshop

Haven Vancouver Grand Opening

Our longtime good friends Dan and Arthur opened their long awaited store in Gastown today.  The grand opening coincides with the anniversary for their Edmonton store they opened three years ago. We are soo happy for them and you can count on seeing alot of our funky floral designs here.

For their opening, Amy designed an exotic arrangement for the main table. She used tropical anthuriums, heliconia’s, ginger’s and wild out of control twigs.

Here is a video of their brand spanking new store:

Floral Design for the new flagship Aritzia

Today the new flagship Aritzia store opened at Pacific Centre in downtown Vancouver, although their clothes don’t fit my pear shaped male body, I know Amy and Samantha love the store and buy clothes from here every time they go to the mall.

If you stop by this week, you’ll be able to see this super tall arrangement Jamie prepared for them.

Have a happy Thursday!

Good Food and Good Flowers in Seattle

It’s been a while since Amy and I took a quick trip outside of Vancouver, before opening the store, we frequently traveled everywhere from New York to Beijing, London to Shanghai and Taipei to San Fransisco.  We’ve been going full throttle trying to bring everything elegant and contemporary we’ve seen to Vancouver at very reasonable prices.

We decided to head down to Seattle to find a quality florist to recommend to our local customers.

All I remember is arriving at our store around 10 am to hear Fat Cat yelling for his food, then looking at the clock which all of a sudden showed 2 pm.

We quickly changed our plans from making it a day trip to a overnight trip. I went on  priceline.com, just to see how much a hotel night would cost us.  After browsing the listings, a decent hotel in downtown was looking pretty pricey.

I was wondering what William Shatner was trying to tell me, I clicked him and he told me I could “Name my own price”.  So I did, and got a 4 star hotel in downtown Seattle for $79!!  I recommend anyone going to the states to give this a try, if you have lots of time before your trip, low ball them until you get an accepted deal.

We made it downtown by 6 PM and were stuck in traffic long enough for Amy to find a good restaurant using the Urban Spoon iPhone app.

After shaking the iPhone, it recommended the Crab Pot Restaurant and Bar. It was amazing. We have video, but it’s too savage.  After seating us, the server tied bibs on to us and laid a few layers of paper down on the table. When our seafood was ready, they dumped the entire serving right on to our table!  No plates.  No cutlery. Amy and I didn’t mind though, we immediately started hammered away at the crab shells with the mallets they gave us. My fingers smelled like crab, butter and mussels until Monday.

Garden Party Travel Tip: Do not bring your first date here.

Here are some pictures I found on flickr:

This meal took us out so we retreated to the Westin Seattle downtown to pass out.

The next day, we set out to find all the flower shops that were rated the highest on Yelp.

Pike Place Market Flowers

Pike Place Flowers

Our conclusion after visiting the majority of the flower shops on Yelp’s top ten list, is that Vancouver residents are quite spoiled with high quality flowers and designs.  Before leaving though, we called Garden Party Floral Designs (www.gardenpartyflowers.COM) to see if they were open. It turns out they are a studio that specializes in corporate, special events and weddings without a retail store front location.  The lady who answered the phone was soo nice, and told us she gets many emails from people who are looking for us.  Check out their website, the flowers look the most gorgeous of all the shops we visited – great job TJ, see you February!

As we prepared to head back to Vancouver, we devoured a chowder soup sampler and dungeness crab roll from a place we walked by called Pike Place Chowder.  It was soooo good!

Amy at Pike Place Chowder