Fresh Flower Arranging by Mark Welford and Stephen Wicks

Fresh Flower Arranging offers step-by-step designs for making the perfect fresh flower arrangements for your home, office or special event. It's filled with tips of the trade and valuable information that will have your pieces looking fresh and beautiful for days.

Great book! It's beautiful as well as informative. There are instructions for 70 flower arrangements to either make or get inspired by. The authors, who are ex-ballet dancers who've moved on to their secondary careers, have created some absolutely stunning arrangements. With the help of a fantastic photographer, Carolyn Barber, this book shows off their work exquisitely.

I love that the book starts off with principles. The theory section offers guidelines on design elements for making successful flower arrangements. The care section provides an equipment list and shows you how to care for your arrangement. The skills section details the steps needed to complete some basic arrangements as well as other tips for arranging flowers. The basics are important in any craft.

The rest of the book features step-by-step instructions with large photos and very good explanations on how to complete the projects. Each has a large photograph of the finished project along with a list of flowers used (with photos), other materials needed, substitutions and insider tips to complete the project.

There are a number of coordinating floral arrangements for weddings no matter the season. There are designs for boutonnieres, bouquets, pew ends, and table centrepieces. All are really lovely.

There are so many beautiful arrangements it was hard to choose some favourites. The following are the ones that stood out for me:
• Rose Topiary (pages 108-111) - I'm partial to any topiaries so it's no surprise to me that I loved this one. It left me speechless.
• Floral cupcakes (pages 122-123) - I'm not a huge cupcake fan, but this arrangement using a wire cupcake stand and a variety of pink flowers (hydrangeas, roses, peonies) was just delightful. I think it would be perfect for a bridal shower or better yet a baby (girl) shower.
• Towering liatris - (pages 228-229). When we lived in the city, I had a number of liatris growing in the garden. This arrangement is simple yet stunning.
• Gerbera in Lines (pages 248-249) I love daisy-like flowers. These are presented in a fun, whimsical and beautiful way.

The table of contents is basic and only lists the very high-level sections, although, it does have pages numbers for the individual wedding collections. That'll be handy for those looking for that kind of thing. The index is pretty extensive. I found a lot of the items I was looking for, including individual flower types, vase types, arrangement types and many other items specific to this craft. The authors have included a resource list at the back of the book complete with addresses (web and some snail mail) for the major floral societies, organizations, flower markets, florists, suppliers and home ware stores in the USA and Canada.

Highly recommended for lovers of flesh flowers. If you have a garden and love bringing fresh cut flowers into the house for display, you'll most likely enjoy this book. I can't wait for this snow to melt so I can get out into the garden. When I have some blooms to use, I'll be attempting a few of these projects.

For more information about this book, please visit DK's website.

I'd like to thank Chris at DK Canada for this review copy.

Fresh Flower Arranging by Mark Welford and Stephen Wicks, Dorling Kindersley (DK), ©2011. ISBN 9780756658595(Hardcover), 256p.

Flood Watch - 2011 - My Backyard - Quick Update

Last week we had a brief, but major, panic attack after we saw that our neighbour had sand bags stacked in his driveway. The bad thing was that this neighbour is further away from the river than we are. We figured if he needed sandbags, we were in trouble because it looked like the river would have to go through us to get to him. After some quick phoning around, we discovered that he is indeed a little lower than us and has the sandbags just in case. I hope he doesn't have to use them.

The forecasted peak levels on today's flood sheet/report are well below the record levels set in 1976. In fact, they are about 8 feet lower. That's good news for us. Having said that, there is some precipitation on the way that might negatively affect the predication. Also, there still hasn't been a lot of runoff (according to the report) and tons of ice remains on the river. That means ice jams, which could cause the water to rise rapidly, are still a big concern.

Predicted crest is still weeks away: April 28 - May 7. Waiting is not fun.

I'll post some photos of the yard early next week. With some warmer weather predicted for the weekend, we should have a lot less snow.

Disclaimer: If you came here for information about the Manitoba Flood 2011, you've probably come to the wrong place. This post (or series of posts) will focus only on my backyard and house. If you are looking for general information regarding the flood, try the Government of Manitoba website, which can be found here or here for more area specific information regarding the Cartier, St. Francois Xavier and Headingley areas.

Children's Book of Art by DK Publishing

Children's Book of Art presents an introduction to art featuring artists, art pieces and techniques. Young and old readers alike are taken on a tour of art world starting with some early cave paintings, followed by the old masters, and finally on to more modern pieces.

I loved this book. The format is similar in format and style to Children's Book of Music (my review) except with art instead of music. Both books are equally entertaining. This book is divided into 3 sections: Early Art, Modern Art and Sculpture. It has large photographs and easy-to-read descriptive text. I loved that the featured paintings were explained and labelled.

There are lots of little sidebars directing the reader to try something they've just read about. For example, Vincent van Gogh painted himself more than 30 times. That page tells the reader to "try a portrait of your own". There are so many wonderful things in this book that at times I had a hard time getting through it. I kept getting inspired by the pieces or techniques. I wanted to try everything!

There are four types of pages in the book that take the readers through the art world. These pages are: Artist or Sculptor profile, How did they do that?, Gallery, Art Style.

Each artist or sculptor profile featured a timeline of their life as well as a list of artistic influences. Some of the artists were well known to me, like da Vinci, Matisse and Picasso. I liked reading the information and seeing their work. There were other artists that were lesser known, but equally interesting. These included Austrian-born abstract artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (page 100-101) (Nope I didn't make that name up) and Damien Hirst (page 132-133). The pages (108-109) featuring China's terracotta warriors were amazing.

The pages titled "How did they do that?" were my favourites. They contained lots of information about techniques and materials used by the artists. For instance, six hundred years ago, artists had to mix up their own colours. It was interesting to see how they did it and where the colours came from (page 28-29). The most expensive colour? Ultramarine. Other pages included instructions on how to use oil paints and water colours as well as how to sculpt marble and much, much more. The instructions were rudimentary of course, but they still gave me an idea of what's involved in the art. I also loved the pages on making mosaics and land art (page 128-129), which was awe-inspiring.

The gallery pages showed works of art with common themes. I found these very interesting and loved the subject matters presented. It was like visiting an art exhibit at a gallery.

Many different styles were featured on the Art Style pages. Some of these include: Dreamtime art (Australian), Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionism, Surrealism, Street Art, Modern Art and different kinds of sculpture: African, abstract. I loved the stories told on these pages and loved learning about the artists who produced pieces during these periods or in this style.

The table of contents was pretty good as it listed the sections of the book as well as subjects in each of the sections. The glossary was nicely laid out with clear, concise definitions for terms used in art. Unfortunately, the book does not have an all-encompassing index. It did, however, have a listing of the artists featured in the book.

Highly recommended.

For more information about this book, please visit DK's website.

I'd like to thank Chris at DK Canada for this review copy.

Children's Book of Art by DK Publishing, Dorling Kindersley (DK), ©2009. ISBN 9780756655112(Hardcover), 141p.

Wordless Wednesday - Will Pose for Peanuts

More Wordless Wednesday.

HarperCollins March Madness - The Finals!

At long last, we've reached the finals for HarperCollins's March Madness.

Two books remain. It's head-to-head matchup between Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

A few weeks ago I never would have guessed that these two books would be vying against each other for the overall title. Sadly, I haven't read either of them, but from what I've heard both are great. Either one of them would make an excellent addition to the Hall of Fame.

I'm definitely going to be voting for Murder on the Orient Express because I'm a mystery fan. I know The Hobbit is hugely popular, too and I did try to read it once a long time ago, but it just wasn't for me.

Go vote now, then enter the contest. You could win all 64 books!

Who are you voting for?

Saturday Snapshot - Shoes on Wellington Crescent

I took this photo a few years ago. The shoes hang near an underpass on a route we used to take quite often when we lived in the city. One Saturday afternoon, I snapped a bunch of photos. I don't know anything about them, other than they have been there for years. I love the baby runner (aka tennis shoe) at the top.

There was a recent article about the shoes in the city newspaper. Click here if you want to read it.

I haven't seen these shoes in quite awhile, but it's sort of neat to see that it's still there albeit deteriorating.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books. To participate – post a picture that you've taken (or one taken by a friend, or a family member) then add your link on Alyce’s site using Mr. Linky.

Finished Off by Rebecca Kent

In Finished Off, Meredith Llewellyn is the Headmistress at Bellhaven Finishing School. She's already seen one spirit, when a little girl spirit, who wants to be reunited with her family, appears to her. Meredith begins investigating the fire which claimed her family and finds that there's more there than meets the eye.

I enjoyed this book. It was well written while the story and characters were likeable. It kept me thoroughly entertained for the few hours it took me to read it. The story takes place in Edwardian England which was particularly exciting for me. I love reading books set in the past.

I really liked Meredith and her ways of investigating. She stayed true to being a lady while getting to the bottom of things. I also liked reading about Reggie, Grace and Olivia as they added some tension to the story.

While I enjoyed the book, it left me a little wanting, but I'm not sure why. This is the second book in the series of three books, but the first one I've read. Perhaps that had something to do with it. I didn't feel like I missed anything (this book can definitely stand on its own), but I wished I had read the previous one first. That kind of thing doesn't usually bother me.

Rebecca Kent is the pseudonym of Doreen Roberts Hight. She also writes under the names: Kate Kingsbury and Doreen Roberts.

Recommended. For fans of Hight/Kingsbury/Roberts/Kent and for other cozy lovers. I think those who believe in ghosts or like reading books set in this time period will especially like it.

For more information about this book, please visit the Berkley Prime Crime website.

For more information about the author and her other books, please visit Doreen Roberts Hight's website.

Finished Off by Rebecca Kent, The Berkley Publishing Group (Penguin), ©2009. ISBN 9780425228111(mass market), 196p.