anastasiaehlers

from left to right: brewster, mike, saul, hiroshi, lucas, sharptooth, octavian, and moe.

thanks to everybody for the facebook likes and name suggestions! in particular, i have to give something of an honorable mention to circulating for making the suggestion i look to the greek language. my family’s greek so i suppose that means i am too. i spent the better part of an afternoon reading about flower myths and words only my grandmother can properly pronounce.

at the end of the day, my favorite suggestion, “pick me,” came from miss elisa marcheschi. there’s a spot of bad news, however, as there’s already a business with that name and i don’t want to step on their toes. but! it’s simply too charming to pass up, and shall certainly inspire something similar.

“picking flowers”

“daydream and pick flowers”

what do you think?

semi-relatedly, in the eighth grade i ran unsuccessfully for class vice president. i filled the halls with lots of punny posters including one with a giant construction paper nose and the slogan “pick a winner!” perhaps if i had instead made giant construction paper flowers, i’d have won.

on the facebook side of things, random.org chose new friend mr. branden barton as the lucky duck to get a terrarium.

yay for elisa and branden! go ahead and pick yourselves a dino friend! feel free to re-name him, funny enough, these guys haven’t learned their names yet.

snow in eugene is rare, therefore i love it. with a good snowstorm comes the best excuses to snug in and relax, enjoy hot cocoa and and a good book. or perhaps a video game, considering my inescapable geekiness. they’ve promised us snow for over a week now, and it finally came.

you might have noticed the shiny new menu bar at the top of the blog. it’s a rotten tease, i know.

enter to win me!

rawr!

some dinos are talented enough to stand up

i have a pile of new air plants. they’re pretty awesome. i also have a pile of toy dinosaurs. at three bucks for two dozen dinosaurs, how everybody doesn’t have a pile of toy dinosaurs i don’t know. but *you* could have one dinosaur chilling with a couple of tillandsias in a cute little hanging glass globe. there’s two ways to win:

this blog needs a name that’s snazzier than just “anastasia ehlers floral design.” i’d like to blog about wedding and flower stuff other than just what my business is up to, but this somehow feels like a sham without a proper name for the blog. leave your best suggestion or two or three as a comment. if i use yours or am inspired by it to come up with something–bam! free terrarium!

fresh out of ideas? no problem. head on over to facebook and click like or follow this blog with your google account (not rss–i can’t track that accurately enough). i’ll send another terrarium to one lucky new friend.

giveaway is open until the 28th, so get crackin’. if you’re into fine print click here:

• naming contest may or may not have been inspired by comic book letters columns. *innocent whistle*
• winner must be in the united states. i can’t ship live plants internationally.
• some terrarium assembly required. i’ll send you everything you need, even instructions! some of the pieces are pretty small, so keep away from the little ones, please.
• there’s certainly nothing stopping you from entering the contest both ways, but you can only end up with one terrarium.
• if you enter by submitting a name idea, you relinquish all ownership of the name to me, anastasia ehlers, to use for whatever purposes i so desire. you’re not liable if by chance it’s not original and somebody takes offense, but i do try to do my homework.

the beauty of the willamette valley in summer is one of those secrets that nature guards pretty closely. most people rightly associate our sweet little home with rain and stay away, which suits us just fine. if one ventures to stay past the rain, he’s persuaded to leave by pollen determined to suffocate every last person in the valley. but survive that trial, and you’ve made it–the rewards are pretty great.

taking advantage of this, weddings naturally happen outside here, utilizing all the gorgeous vistas in the rolling hills to the south, or perhaps the converted farmland north around junction city. trouble’s afoot, however. these wonderful places–and believe me, there’s a lot of them–are starting to come under fire. it’s easy to build a pretty patio, rent some portable bathrooms (if you’ve planned an outdoor wedding in the eugene area, you know how hard it is to find a permanent restroom. yuck.), and call a place a wedding venue. the problem is, most of the land in these lovely rural areas is zoned solely for farming, making it legally complicated to host events.

via tripadvisor

now, king estate winery is being examined for operating a (rather delicious) full service restaurant on their agricultural property. they and other local wineries have been in the process of filing the proper applications to make sure non-wine related operations and events are legitimate. while wineries certainly have the attention of the state, county, and community groups involved, i expect farms and other properties that regularly host events will be drawn into the discussion too.

what does this mean for your wedding? double check with your venue about whether or not they have obtained the proper land use permits for hosting regular events. i’d ask to make sure that information is included in your contract. the best decision would be to only hire a venue that’s completed all the necessary requirements. if you’re not sure about this, you’d better examine their policy regarding what happens to your event and your money if they have to cancel because all their events are shut down. i expect popular venues will be ready for these sorts of questions–make sure that you’re comfortable with their answers.

for some more information, scope this article featured in the register guard today. moving forward from here should help define the sorts of events wineries and other rural venues can host and what practices and amenities they need to do so. with a little luck it may even lead to may even lead to more flush toilets (for the record, the ones at king estate are lovely).

p.s. it’s worth noting that this only applies to places that regularly host and profit from events. your aunt that’s letting you get married in her lovely old barn in exchange for clearing out the blackberries is a-ok, assuming you all get the appropriate insurance and whatnots.

next monday is valentine’s day. no, i don’t do valentine’s flowers, but i’m really terribly flattered that you asked. alright, now that that’s out of the way, here’s some food for thought about valentine’s flowers.

• back in the olden days, when we were too shy for bad pickup lines, hormonal youngsters send coded messages via bouquets of flowers. different flowers held different meanings or stood for different kinds of affection. and you thought it was hard to convey tone through a text message.
• valentine’s day and mother’s day are the two holidays with the most demand for flowers, with mother’s day in the lead. as it was once put to me, “everybody has a mother; not everybody has a girlfriend.”
• there’s something of a rose shortage this year. savvy shoppers will order flowers in advance and get something gorgeous that isn’t red roses. that gets you the best value, nicest flowers, and if your ladyfriend is like me, brownie points for being “different.”
• even florists like getting flowers, but we may secretly critique the design. it’s nothing personal, darling, we know you didn’t arrange them.
• if your sweetheart is out of town, or perhaps you’d like to send a valentine to your grandmother (for even more brownie points), please please pretty please with sugar on top take the time to find and call a local florist in her town. order gatherers that claim to deliver nationwide or–even worse–pose as local flower shops take a cut from what you pay them and have no idea what the local florist has in stock. how do you know if a florist is local? take the time to call them and speak to a real live person. if you’re determined to look online, find their google place page and check out the reviews and the map to their real local flower shop. you want to spend money on lavish gifts for your true love, not on the call center for the middle man, right? for more info on this subject, check out the detectives.

i hope you have a fabulously romantic valentine’s day!

what flowers does the florist keep in her own home?

tulips past their prime, plopped unceremoniously in a goodwill vase that reminds me a little of those metal vases (or are they urns?) at cemeteries. it has that odd conical shape to it.