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After our wreath making party last year, I decided to make it a Holiday tradition, so we were at it again this last weekend. 12 people came to the party. Friends brought food and drinks. I provided the greenery and materials for the wreaths. We drank, ate, and crafted for 5 hours. All in all, a wonderful day!

If you are reading this post because you are planning to throw a wreath making party, let me assure you, it is easy and FUN – No fear. Your friends will love it and you will be the super hostess hero.

What you will need for a party for 12 people:

Tools

12 – 18 in wire wreaths – one per person
1 wire cutter
12 pruning scissors – one per person
12 floral wire. 100 ft. 22 gauge.- one per person.

Basic greenery

2 big bundles or pine – I bought noble pine.
1 big bundle of cedar
1 big bundle of eucalyptus

Accents

2 bunches of holly
25 pine cones (not everybody will use them)
2 bunches of eucalyptus flowers pods
2 bunches of seeded eucalyptus

Holly

Basically, everybody had the option to use white, red, and/or brown accents, aside from the main greenery. You will need a person that knows how to do wreaths so she/he can teach the rest. In this case, I taught the workshop. I am a wreath expert by now!

For instructions to do wreaths, go here and here.

Last year, we used grapevine wreaths (18 and 24 inches). Grapevine wreaths are beautiful by themselves, so they are good if you are planning to partially cover it. If the idea is to cover the whole wreath with greenery, grapevine wreaths are NOT the way to go, because they are more expensive and you need more greenery to cover them (they are thick), that is why I decided to go with simple wire wreaths for this year’s party and the final results were better across the board. Here are the results. They all look pretty good, don’t you think? I didn’t have time to do a wreath until later because I was teaching the workshop, so I posed with the golden ring wreath I created the day before. BTW, tutorial for gold ring wreaths coming up on Monday!
I love this group of friends.

Most of them sent me photos of their wreaths hanging from their front doors or mantels – that made me happy.

Thanks for stopping by! Don’t forget to come back this Friday for the Winter Eclectic home tour where me and other bloggers show you how we decorated our homes for the Holidays.

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My mom is visiting from Chile this week. She likes flowers, so I took her to the Flower Market in DTLA, obviously. What a gem that place is. One of the reasons I love this city so much.

The idea was to buy flowers and spend the afternoon creating flower arrangements. If you follow this blog, you know that I have been trying to improve my flower arrangement skills in the last year (you can find proof here and here). This time, I wanted to do something special.

Choosing the right flowers for the arrangement is a very important first step. We chose the color scheme and the right flower sizes for the bouquet we wanted to do. My mom went big and bright. I went small and dark. In retrospect, I wonder if these choices have hidden psychoanalytic meaning.

If you like flowers, you know it is dahlias season right now, and who doesn’t love dahlias aside from a heartless and sad soul. We went for dahlias and many other flowers at the market. It was beautiful to see. (Remember to bring buckets with water to take your flowers back home, so they last longer.)

We also bought flower vases. My mom wants to take some to Chile and you can find a wonderful variety at the market. She bought 10. You might be wondering how is she going to take all of them back home. I am wondering the same.

We spend the afternoon arranging flowers and listening to music. It was so nice and relaxing. A beautiful day. My mom loved the “activity,” so I recommend doing this if you have visitors and want to do something outside of the tourist circle monster trap.

Next week, I will share some tips and tricks to do better flower arrangements. It is not as hard as it looks.

If you are going to the Flower Market, DTLA:

There is parking on the second and third floor of the Flower Market, entrance is on Maple Ave, between 7th and 8th Street.
Some of my favorite vendors close at 9 am, so be there early!
You can rent carts at the parking lot for $1.
Bring buckets with water for your flowers. If you don’t, your arrangements will last a lot less. I have proof.

Hi there, Mami! This is the arrangement my mom did. Her way of doing it was to place her main flowers in the middle and then add fillers as she felt like.

This is the one I did.

Hope you like them. Have a fun day!

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Posts

How To Throw A Successful Wreath Making Party

An Afternoon Doing Flower Arrangements

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