Candi's Floral Creations

Every year we decorate a few area businesses for the holidays.  I’ve chosen to feature Cafe Allegre; an upscale Italian restaurant and Inn located in Madison, CT.  The owners, Vicky and Silvio, also own and run The Woodwinds, located in Branford CT.

Decorating 8 Christmas trees, 2 mantels, a 20′ bar area, 3 rooms, and the front entrance, etc it can get a bit pricey.  My cost cutting solution this year was to use glittered gold garland, and a lot of it!  Since it takes up so much space, I didn’t need as many ornaments on the trees, garlands or wreaths.  Plus, I found these great plastic ornaments that were decorated with a gold glitter design….they looked fabulous and no one could tell they were plastic!  They were perfect to use on all the outdoor wreaths, trees and garlands.

Another trick is to use a lot of ribbon.  Although really nice ribbon can be expensive,  it takes up a lot of space.

When I decorate my trees, garlands, or wreaths, I always start with a theme.  Cafe Allegre’s theme is gold and burgundy.  Once I knew my colors, then I start on thinking of about 4 main things to decorate with.  I find that if you use too many things, it becomes very busy, which is not good for a restaurant.  You want to keep it simple, but full.

I chose: A gold Glitter Garland, Burgundy and Gold Ribbon, Burgundy Poinsettias, and Gold and Burgundy mixed ornaments.  Some of the main trees and garlands had a bit more, but not too much more.  You want your trees to have personality and to look intriguing.  You don’t want to just fill them up with all ornaments…that’s not creative!  Once you choose your 4 main focal pieces, then you can have fun and be creative with mixing up the colors, hanging ornaments from ribbon, adding ornaments to the center of poinsettias…etc

I hope you can get some ideas for you home, enjoy!

Remember, you can click on the pictures to get a better view.

Decor for the "Garden Room"

More for Garden Room

Moss Ball Topiary for the Garden Room

I’m not the kind of person to throw a party for myself, but, I did! ….and boy was it a great time!

My friend Erica, the owner of Ambiance {chic} Wedding Designs(it was really her idea!), and I thought it would be fun to celebrate the fact that one of our weddings we designed together was featured in Martha Stewart Wedding Magazine.  We had also just revamped our websites and wanted to show them off!

In the wedding industry you work with so many vendors every weekend, but it’s always just business.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with the same photographer, but we’ve never spoken to each other about anything other than the wedding we had been working on together.  So we thought it would be a great idea to invite all the people we love to work with within the wedding industry as well as family and friends.

We had a wonderful turnout!  Even though the loft was filled with photographers, coordinators, videographers, florists, bakers, etc  There wasn’t much wedding talk.  It was such a great night to just get to know these people I’ve known for years…if you get my drift. Networking usually is so boring, but we made it fun!

Erica took care of the designing the email invite, linens, lighting, the music, etc While, I had a blast designing the centerpieces.  Remember the winter party was called “Fire and Ice”.  So the “fire”part of our vision was to use a lot of candles, but we wanted to be creative about it.  Some candles were floating in water with ice chips at the bottom of the candle holder, while I rolled other glass candle holders in actual sugar so they would have a frosted look. We even embellished plain glass hanging candle holders by adorning them with chandelier crystals and hung them from silver wire.

I love the look of various size and shaped glass vases and candle holders….but then love to mix up floating candles, floating flowers, and single flowers in the vases.  I like doing this because it keeps people looking all night!

For the “Ice” feel, we used accents of fake snow( which I learned is very versatile!), chandelier crystals, crystal garlands, iced birch branches, and my favorite accent…a rhinestone in the center of a rose.  We only used white hydrangea and roses so that all the other accents could really shine through!

We use two different height centerpieces, again, it keeps the eye moving around the room and I couldn’t decide on which centerpiece to design…so I used them both!  That was the fun part about designing for my own party…I could REALLY do whatever I wanted!

I won’t bore you with anymore details……let the pictures finish the story….Enjoy!

Me and David Tutera

I did it!   I met the fabulous David Tutera!!! For all of you who don’t know him, he’s the best wedding designer/planner out there!  He tells the brides like it is, in such a delicate, “real”, compassionate way.  Sometimes brides need to hear the hard truth about style and taste for them to really move on to design the wedding of their dreams with STYLE!!

Let’s face it, not everyone has great taste or may have great taste but are but are not sure how to bring all the details together to create your story.  That’s why you hire great professionals that have the skills and know-how to take your thoughts and ideas and create a wedding that is really all about  your style and  personality.  David does this and does it with such passion and compassion.

His newest book is out in stands now and it’s called “The Big White Book of Weddings”  It’s very detailed and helpful when planning your wedding.

He also has a TV show on We Tv called My fair Wedding.  It’s all about what he’s about, taking the ideas that brides have and executing them in a more style and savvy way!  FABULOUS!!!

One thing I love about having a storefront is that I get to decorate my front window!  It’s something I always loved to do and would volunteer for that task at every flower shop I ever worked at.  My secret goal is to one day design a window for Macy’s.  Wouldn’t that be so cool?

Anyway, this winter was so busy for me that I didn’t have much time allotted for my window, so I went simple.  Sometimes simple is best.  It took me maybe 2 hours, at the most. Everything I used I already had at the shop.  I had an idea of how I wanted it to look, wintery, not holiday-ish!  I designed the main centerpiece and explained my vision to my best assistant ever, Sarah, and she amazed me!  She knew exactly what I had envisioned……such a reversal since I am always the one to figure out the visions!  She did such a great job and even added her own little touches.  I’m in love with it so much, I’m keeping it up until the end of February…no need to rush it!

Having a winter wedding??? We have lots of ideas!!  Tall vases filled with fake snow and birch branches can be used as  centerpieces or to flank your ceremony aisle, or even just to fill a corner within your venue.  They can be rented for a nominal fee.

My shop's winter window

Winter Window Display