Alcoholic garden at the Singapore Garden Festival

Hic! Hic!

yes it has taken me awhile to start posting these.
The Singapore Garden Festival was on the 15th July for a week, and i went on the first day and promptly flew off on my travels for July hahaha
So this (and some of the ones to follow) will be slightly delayed...
but as they say GREAT things come to those who wait... sooo

 - those of you who went would have seen these - but I loved these as a great and quirky idea esp if you live in a box in the sky like me.
save your bottles - even the sauce bottles will work with this, though you miss out on the colours that come on the etched alcohol ones
put in a little earth/compost and either start with a baby plant or seeds and away you go -
clear bottles obviously work best cos you need the sun -

and then put them in a crate, box, planter, pot, anything that you like and you have your garden all bottled up ;)

yellow yellow lovely flower

was at my suppliers today, and early in the week it is usually quiet - and i love it - cos it means i can spend my time with the flowers, get to know them - walk around multiple times and not worry about getting in anyones way.
it means I can linger with new flowers and foliage and think of ideas in my head and experiment with the broken flowers on the ground just to file away in my head for another day.

so anyway - today they had the loveliest golden yellow calla lilies in stock - imported of course but it is so rare to see them so beautiful. really they were almost singing!!!
found some field daisies going cheap (this is singapore everything costs money ;) ) and got some for my dining table.

created some napkin rings - these are perfect for a garden wedding, and you can dress it up as much or as little as you want. you can virtually do this with any flower - just the greens you have to get something sturdy like bear grass or acorus (which is just a fancy name for local bear grass) - dont use wild lalang you will cut your hands and it will tear when you knot it.

you will recognise the biscuit tin from charlene's book launch - the yellow of the callas really pop and the pink just brings out the psychadelic in me ;)

Panjang gets married!

V aka Panjang ;) finallllly got hitched - and what a quick romance this was. One minute she was telling me about all the hits and misses she kept being subject to, and the next thing you know she sends out this photo and the caption reads the love of her life??!!! in true form V had to be rather dramatic, and yes the love of her life is now her husband for life...
I was given the honour of taking care of decoration arrangements in the bride's hometown.
We were definitely both on the right brainwave when I sent her a picture of my ideas and she had happened to be thinking along the same lines!!
V decided on fuschia pink, orange and brown for her Sangeet ceremony, and the wedding was to be a red and white affair. The Sangeet colour theme kept making me think of lollipops!!! SOOOO... we used lanterns and a lot of wood and then more sedate arrangements for the Gurdwara (sikh temple) the next morning.

This was my first wedding of doing multiple events, what a learning curve!! and I had all V's aunts and cousins helping - they probably hate me by now, but hey! I pulled it off...V and N heres to an eternity together.

Some photos are courtesy of Chin Aik Lee, who was official photographer for the event - some are mine (the less polished looking ones ....sigh....)

flower ball drama

This is such a classic look and is really popular these days - the style is compact and close, and there are so many options that you can choose from. Here I used lovely iceberg roses, carnations and even baubles. the black butterfly adds an interesting texture and detail to the design.

TAXI!

my close friend, Charlene Rajendran recently published her book called Taxi Tales on a Crooked Bridge (yes its a plug - its my blog and I can plug if I want to!) about taxi drivers, their quirks, the relationship between passenger and driver - it also inevitably touches on identity, belonging, perception and life as a malaysian here in singapore.

the book was launched in KL, and recently in

singapore - to brighten up the space she asked me to bring a little flowerpower action along!

this one was fun, cos I had the perfect vessel for the flowers - as the book and author are rather quirky, I used an old biscuit tin, and included flowers which were a fun take on old favourites -like ping pong chrysanthemums, local asters, and even found the gloriosa lily - especially cool since her mum (who is named after this particular bloom)

attended the day!