Of Petals and Paris

The city of Paris is a study in urban elegance, a place graced with magnificent parks and lovely outdoor markets. I had the good fortune to spend a few rainy days in France last month, and thought that I would share some of the things I saw on my holiday. Much time was spent window shopping and getting lost in the Marais district, discovering different kinds of cheese (Reblochon & Saint Marcellin!) and watching busy Parisians go about their day from café terraces. And can we talk about the pastries? Delectable. A visit to Pierre Hermé will always make my heart sing.

My favourite Parisian floral shop is nestled in a side street not far from the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a place where fragrant flowers, vintage ornaments and whimsical taxidermy are artfully displayed within its dark grey walls. While wandering through the streets of Paris, I noticed that each neighbourhood is home to at least one florist who fills their boutique with alluring botanical displays and pretty bouquets. Yes, they are serious about their flowers here, and I have become quite smitten with everything they have to offer.

Truth be told, the real reason I went to Paris was to take part in the marathon along with 40,000 other runners who together made the trek down the Champs Elysées, across the city and back again. Months of preparation can never predict what happens on race day, but one thing is for sure…it was an inspiring experience that I will remember for years to come.

Heading to London For The Olympics?

Amy and I recently took a trip to Europe to see the latest trends in European floral design, relax before a busy wedding season and EAT!

Here are some places that you can’t go wrong with.

St. John Bread and Wine

Vancouver has a tremendous diversity of ethnic foods, but they don’t have proper British food like St. John’s.  Head here if you want to experience local British Fare.

Neal’s Yard Dairy

This was definitely a treat.  The cheese was delicious and the staff very helpful.  We bought a serious selection of cheeses, picked up bread from the nearby Le Pain Quotidien, then had a nice lunch outdoors.

Jamie’s Italian

Our pictures don’t give this yummy restaurant justice.  It was our favourite meal of the trip and I highly recommend it.  You can even get half orders of each dish so you can try a larger variety.  I think we ordered everything!

Wheeler’s Restaurant

We came here to dine after watching Anthony Bourdain’s latest TV show “The Layover“.  Wheeler’s is owned by a Macro Pierre White who had become the youngest chef to be awarded three Michelin stars at the time.  Book a table here for more British fare, good portions and be sure to order the Governor ale.

Le Pain Quotidien

When you’re in England, you have to have your fix of a proper British Breakfast. When you’ve played out the English Breakfast, check out Le Pain Quotidien.  It’s convenient, light and reasonably priced.

Floral Design Courses

If you love flowers as much as we do, there are many florists in London that offer one day and half day courses. A great way to spend a day if you’ve been to London before and have already seen the sites and attractions.

Jane Packer

McQueens

Take A Tour Of The Worlds Largest Flower Auction With Us!

Come along with Amy and I as we explore the largest flower auction in the world, Flora Holland in Amsterdam. We get to see thousands of buckets full of beautiful tulips to wagons of tacky dyed baby’s breath.

Design Inspiration From Taipei Floral Expo

Right after our trip to Europe  attending “Christmas world 2011 in Frankfurt“, we were so inspired by different elements:

Authentic, Optimistic, Eccentric and Graphic.

Authentic: The fusion of old and new creates original recycling chic – simple and natural.

One of our new designs after being inspired by the “Authentic” theme, is this woodsy goody arrangement designed with recycled cardboard and natural hydrangea stems.

Once we find out about amazing events around the world, we try to go there for more and more inspiration. This time, we are in Asia, specifically Taipei, Taiwan.

It was fun to visit Taipei Taiwan and I learned a lot!

1) The Golden Christmas Theme can be applied to the “Eccentric” theme:

Ornamental decoration, animal skin optics as well as materials like velvet, embossed leather, feathers and wooden beads create exciting effects.

Colours: Gold bronze and white

2) White and Blue Theme can also be applied to the “Authentic” theme: The fusion of old and new creates original recycling chic

Using white twigs to create different shapes and function is such as creative ideas.

3) Optimistic: Lively theme use of artificial materials like plastic, foils and rubber coatings combined with artisan techniques.

4) Graphic: This trend plays with geometric patterns in different shades of white and a velvety black.

Check out more pics in the slideshow below!

We love being inspired by all cultures, colours and themes. I wonder where you will find us next???

Hit the road! Pisa or Rome!

It’s just past 6:00AM at a cargo airport.  We speak no Italian nor German, we just missed our flight from Frankfurt to Rome and had no idea how we would make our way there.

We decided to board a Ryan Air flight from Frankfurt to Pisa with mixed feelings: frustration, exhaustion, and adventure.   That’s the fun of traveling though, never ending surprises and excitement so we just enjoyed the moment!

We landed in Pisa with just enough time to get a blurry picture of the Tower of Pisa and quick plate of pasta before getting to the train station to catch the last train out for Rome.

Missing the plane turned out not so bad!  Not only did we get to see the leaning tower of Pisa and eat a cheap and tasty plate of pasta, the train to Rome actually dropped us off one block away from the hotel we booked!

After a long day of walking and eating, it was great to come back to Italian television, the one English movie channel and the rainforest shower head…

We had a simple goal for our trip in Rome, find beautiful florists to connect with and check out some historical sites along the way.

Coliseum. Check.

Spanish Steps.  Check.

Pantheon. Check.

Where were all the florists?  The research we did online were proving to be disappointing. Feeling defeated after asking many locals where the best florists were located, we finally found this place!  “Tulipani Bianchi”

The store was clean like a hospital but warm like a church.

They had pretty cool arrangements like this one…

The owner was very friendly, telling us that his shop is one of many in Western Europe, then proceeded to show us how he wraps bouquets in Rome.

Feeling productive, we then chased the second goal of coming to Rome.  EATING!

I would normally never eat an artichoke on a plate, but this was amazing!

Beef carpaccio was very different at this Roman Restaurant compared to the dishes we’ve had in Vancouver, the slices were so thick and I was stuffed after eating just a few pieces!

Yup!  After eating the appetizers and the pasta, we also polished off this pizza!

The next morning we were hard at work, buying buckets of flowers online, replying to emails and searching for more florists to visit.

As we walked the city, we took in more sights like the Vatican and Trevi Fountain:

We visited many flower shops, but could not find one that we feel we could establish a relationship with and be confident to recommend to our clients who want to send flowers to Rome.

Night came and reading street signs became difficult….no, that’s not true, it was because we can’t read Italian!

We had one more shop on our list.

We immediately fell in love with the cute little store and the owner was the nicest guy we met on our entire trip. The name of the flower shop is called: BLOEMEN

He told us that Italian’s in Roma prefer to spend their money on clothes and fashion and less on flowers, but even though he had a low volume of customers, he carried and stocked rare and premium flowers. The roses are so big and fragrant.

Simple but artistic design with a piece of drift wood and moss in a big glass cube.

Purple and green arrangements with branches. These are one of my favoriate designed by Claudio.

Although we had a significant language barrier, we still had the same taste in floral design.  He even went to the trouble of showing us his favourite floral design books.

It was funny that he really liked Jeff’s designs since his show was just starting to air on TLC.

If you ever need to send flowers to Rome, we highly recommend his services, he is so passionate about floral design and quality!

Visitors to Vancouver, you’ll have a much easier time finding great florists…..we hope you choose us as we love being inspired, enjoy beautiful floral designs and we’re always looking for ways to make everyone around us happy!

Our Frankfurt Adventure

If you’ve already read our last blog post, you know that Amy and I flew to Europe to elevate ourselves and find inspiration.  One of the main events we attended was a trade show called Christmas World, which is the foremost meeting place for the international decorations industry.

Although we booked our ticket a few months prior to our late January departure, we didn’t have anything else planned until a few days before we stepped on the Lufthansa jet.

Between deliveries, I would hop on expedia.ca, priceline.com and easyjet.com to find deals on hotels and flights.  However, every search result made me think of the crazy amount of bouquets we would have to sell to pay for these super high prices.

Our departure date was now countable by the hours and my sister who was taking Yoga Training Courses, said she met a cool girl in Yoga class that was from Frankfurt.  The German Yoga girl tipped us to check out a website called Design Hotels.  The hotels found on this website were amazing and half the price of the hotels Expedia was giving me!

We decided on staying at the 25 Hours boutique hotel designed by the Jean company Levi’s.  They had free wireless internet and they were super close to the train station and subway.  We got to the 1960′s themed room.

We were inspired by this hotel’s attention to detail.

From the jean pocket room number….

….the belt buckle handle on the mini fridge….

…the Evisu branded clothing hanger…….

….to the jean fabric wrapped Hotel Information Binder….they thought about every single item in the entire hotel.

After settling into our hotel room and being pleased our late booking worked out for us, we hit the town exploring.

Lunch consisted of beer and a few sausages, then as we walked around town we checked out some cool flower shops.

Our main observation from seeing various flower shops in Frankfurt was that buying flowers was a big part of their daily culture.  The abundant flower shops in Frankfurt reflected this, along with their cute designs.

After a long day of walking around town, we worked up a serious appetite.

Amy’s pork shank was awesome, but my sausages and sauerkraut was no better then the one’s from Costco.

The best meal of Frankfurt was from this hut in the middle of a pedestrian square.

A few days prior to departing for Frankfurt, I was dumping out our compost in the back and the owners of  the yummy La Quercia restaurant was also outside.  I told them how expensive flying throughout Europe was and they told me to check out Ryan Air.  After jumping on their website, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Flights from Frankfurt to Rome on Air France was around the $500 range, while flights from Frankfurt to Rome on Ryanair was only £39!!!  I clicked on checkout as fast as my computer could handle it.

When I booked the ticket, I only had one choice in terms of flight time on the day I wanted to travel, so I just booked it and went back to delivering.

The night before our departure from Frankfurt to Rome, I went to the business centre to print out our tickets and realized our flight time was 6AM! Meaning we had to get up before 4AM to checkout.  This was fine and we were used to it from getting up early to buy flowers from the auction back home.

When we checked out the next day and I asked the receptionist if there was only one Frankfurt airport, he said “Yes”.  Then he gazed up to the ceiling and hesitatingly asked “You’re not travelling with Ryan Air are you???”

I then replied “Uh…Yeah…” to which he basicly looked defeated and said that Ryan Air fly’s out from a Cargo airport 1.5 hours away from Frankfurt.  It was just passing 4:30 AM now….

That’s like calling the Abbotsford Airport the “Downtown Vancouver International Airport”!!!

The buses that depart the Train Station to the cargo airport leave every hour, so we had no choice but to pay for a £200 taxi fare to get there hopefully in time.

It seemed like we were making good time and we were finally approaching the airport around 5:40AM.  It was snowing and the taxi driver was sliding but he pressed on…..until he took a wrong turn and took us to the parking lot rather then the terminal…..

We missed our flight by minutes and the next flight to Rome was the next day

I found a flight that was leaving at 11 AM to Pisa and figured we could take a train from Pisa to Rome.  Check out our next blog post to see if we made it!

Inspiration from Frankfurt

What happens when passion isn’t enough to run a small business? Gotta learn more! That’s why we booked the ticket to Frankfurt, Rome, and Paris, starting our new adventure to explore the trends, to look for inspiration, and to improve.

Our first stop, Christmas world.

Christmas world is the foremost meeting place for the international decorations industry.  Attending the trade show are many suppliers all around the world to showcase their newly launched products and cutting edge designs.

Too bad they don’t allow photographs at the show without proper media credentials, so the only picture we have is of me buying ice cream for breakfast!

We looked at a million different styles of ribbon, a thousand ways to package a bouquet, various materials, textures and objects to compliment an arrangement and a mountain full of vases.   Of all the products we touched and felt, a small company from Belgium had the most beautiful products.

My favourite product with an accompanying creative design.

Good thing my fiance Caley knew how to speak French with the supplier so we could find out more about their product.  He was also very very nice and allowed us share these pictures and his designs with all of you.

Second stop, TREND SHOW.

According to the TREND SHOW we attended, the four trend styles are: Authentic, Optimistic, Eccentric and Graphic.

Authentic: The fusion of old and new creates original recycling chic – simple and natural.
Colours: warm grey, peridot green, petrol blue, sand grey, alabaster and linen white

Optimistic: Lively theme use of artificial materials like plastic, foils and rubber coatings combined with artisan techniques.
Colours: mocha, salmon pink, dark red, emerald green, canary yellow and aquamarine

Eccentric: Ornamental decoration, animal skin optics as well as materials like velvet, embossed leather, feathers and wooden beads create exciting effects.
Colours: gold bronze, olive, wine red, dark ruby red, deep blue-green

Graphic: this trend plays with geometric patterns in different shades of white and a velvety black.
Colours: gold and silver

We do not follow trends for the sake of following them, instead we combine our personality and what we already have to draw inspiration for our designs.  After listening to the ideas and concepts discussed at the trend show, we found ourselves to fall in the trend style of ‘Authentic‘.  We are in essence, simple and natural in our designs.

One of the first designs I created after returning from Frankfurt was this one:

By combining the concepts of the Authentic trend, I have created a design that reuses drift wood as a plant pot to give a natural look.

We try to reduce garbage, reuse resources, and recycle. By decorating ordinary cardboard boxes, we recreate a new natural looking pot for Hyacinth. We have sold many of these items already. I am surprised that they are really popular.

They sold out so quickly we never got a chance to take a picture, I will post some up soon once I design more!

UPDATE: Here is a picture!

To see all our most recent designs, check out our flickr page!

After reading this blog, what kind of trend style are you?

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