For our last installment of this Valentine’s Day Series, we wanted to touch on perhaps the most cliché of all Valentine’s Day traditions: FLOWERS. Now, we’re not here to say flowers are bad. Actually, quite the opposite— we want to share with you our thoughts on having flowers at home.

And to do this, we wanted to show you how to select/style flowers TWO different ways:

Bringing home flowers from your favorite grocery store
Working with a floral expert to create a custom arrangement

(Photos: Joshua Fortuna)

Grocery Store Flowers

Because we’re true masochists, we split our duties among three grocery stores: Kroger, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. Of the three, we’ve had the best luck with flowers from Trader Joe’s, so that’s where we snagged these.

Honestly, we don’t try to do the most when we do our own florals: we’ll typically just pick some season-appropriate roses and hydrangeas.

Always hydrangeas.

We enjoy the look of a short bouquet, so we cut a lot of stem length from both flowers. For the hydrangeas, we fluffed them a bit, and arranged them evenly in a short glass vase for a classic look. We were about to do the same for the roses, but we were advised to go a different, more creative direction. More on that in a bit…

Honestly, there’s a lot we love about bringing home flowers from the grocery store:

“No knock on flower deliveries— okay I take it back; I hate flower deliveries— but there’s something romantic about coming home with a bouquet of flowers in a paper sack and taking a little bit of time and care to arrange them. I still have vivid memories of my dad coming home with grocery store roses for my mom, and seeing him prep them himself. ” (Eddie)
It reminds us of life as newlyweds. It was when we first got married that we began the habit of keeping fresh flowers in our loft.
“It’s like bringing new life into our space and is a wonderful reminder of how truly beautiful life is. I look at flowers and think of my mother because we had a red rose bush and tulips in our front yard growing up. Those flowers brought her so much joy, and I have a feeling I feel the same joy she use to feel.” (Angelee)
It’s a relatively inexpensive way to elevate the vibe at home. Flowers don’t live forever, and because of that, there’s an air of luxury involved in investing in something so temporary and frivolous.
Stating the obvious, but: THEY’RE SO PRETTY!

2. Custom Floral Arrangement

Now, while we love bringing home flowers from the grocery store, there is truly nothing like having a floral arrangement custom-made based on your tastes and the style of your home. That said, we were so lucky to have our dear friend Patricio Rivera come over and create a beautiful arrangement for our loft.

Patricio brought with him a variety of flowers, but we ultimately ended up with a beautiful, sculptural presentation of Poppy along with Butterfly Ranunculus and Bleach Fern.

One of the best things about having Patricio in our home (aside from his amazing energy) is all the knowledge he shared with us. He talked about the characteristics of each of the flower types he selected in our arrangement, and even gave us some great tips on how to care for and be creative with our grocery store flowers.

Did you know hydrangeas should be watered from above?! Mind: BLOWN

He also shared with us this beautiful technique for our store-bought roses.

CHECK IT OUT:

You can (very) carefully pull open the rose pedals to create exotic shapes out of this very common flower. Best believe we will be doing this with all roses from here on out.

Seriously, go FOLLOW THIS MAN to learn more about his work and work with him yourself. You’ll be glad you did!