2010 - What a Year!

OK, I haven't posted in over two months, and now twice in one day. That's what waking up at 4AM will get you. So, before this month gets totally away from me, I thought I would recap this year here at The Treehouse Florist, and share a few personal events as well. Maybe you could consider this my Christmas card letter that I never send out. And not one tree was felled to share this!
January is typically a quiet month, as we spend a little time out of the shop visiting family and friends, not to mention preparing the tax documents and getting ready for the Mother of all floral holidays - Valentine's Day. In our six years, this was our best Valentine's ever.
While mulling over the previous year's sales and taking a hard look at our business and where we wanted to take it, we made the decision to leave all of the wire services. First, BloomNet in March, then Teleflora at the end of May. Since we had our website with Teleflora, we needed to act quickly to replace it. Flowershop Network was our answer, because we could get a decent looking website up in short order without too much work, and we could still relay orders for our customers. But, getting our own custom website was our goal by the next year.

Business this year included bouquets for the The Dance Academy production of Peter and the Wolf, adding on more churches for Sunday altar flowers, the most weddings we've done in a year, bringing home the blue ribbon from the local Flower Show for our design of Mardi Gras, joining flower forums and meeting some of the nicest, talented and helpful florists you would ever want to meet, getting a FB page, starting a blog, and most recently, getting our custom website up and running in less than a month (who knew?). Our special thanks go out to Brandon and EpicFlowers who helped make this all happen - yep, you guessed it, he's one of those special people I met in the florist forum.
Now that we have our new site up, hoping for a great Christmas season, and then having time to spend with family and friends.
On a personal side, my daughter and her husband bought a lovely home, and we got to spend some time with the grandboys. My son found his dream job, even if it is in DC. And we lost our mom to her battle with Alzheimers and heart disease, and then last week, a young man, my daughter-in-law's brother. A sad ending to an otherwise good year.

$10 off a $40 arrangement and a Merry Christmas!

All this week, we're giving you $10 off, if you order any $40 arrangement for delivery or pick-up anytime this month. But, you need to place your order by Saturday, Dec. 18th to receive the discount. Just consider it our little Christmas present to you. And if you stop by with the little ones, we have Candy Canes for them, complete with a card telling the Story of the Candy Cane. See you soon!

More on Bridal Consultations

Yeah, we ask a lot of questions during the consultation, many that you might not have given any thought to, but that's OK. We're the professionals, so we know what to ask.  When we ask about your dress or gown, it's because we want to make sure that the bouquet we design will match the style of your dress and event. A sleek, formal gown might dictate a more traditional bouquet style, whereas a kicky, contemporary dress would pair nicely with a less conventional bouquet.  The same applies to the formality and setting of your ceremony and reception. Our recommendations are based on years of experience, but we like to think of ourselves as good listeners too, so we take your likes/dislikes into consideration when we make our final recommendations to you.
Making your event memorable is what The Treehouse Florist is all about. You can count on us to interpret your vision into a beautiful reality by working with you to reflect your style, values and personality in every detail.

Brides-to-Be Florist Consultation Guide

Calling all brides - Here is a list of 10 things you should know when sitting down with your florist to discuss your wedding flowers, or really any large event requiring flowers.


1 - Your budget for the flowers, typically 8-10% of your complete wedding budget.

2 - Your vision or concept of the event, i.e. a formal church wedding, or casual garden wedding

3 - The style and color of your dress - pictures or fabric swatches are most helpful.

4 - The number of attendants and the style and color of their dresses - color swatches are great.

5 - Other people who will receive flowers, such as parents, readers, etc.
6 - The location and time of the ceremony and reception.

7 - Any restrictions imposed at the ceremony and reception sites, such as strewing of petals, open flames.

8 - The format for the reception, e.g. sit-down dinner, buffet, etc.

9 - The floral styles you like. Here is where it's helpful to bring pictures from magazines of your favorite flowers and bouquet styles, and let the florist know also if there are any flowers you don't like.

10 - The services you need the florist to provide, such as transporting flowers from the ceremony to the reception, set-up and tear-down of the reception site, or set-up only.

On losing your son

I don't quite know why I feel the need to blog about this, except that it was something that touched me very deeply.  On July 1st, a very prominent family from this little town grieved the loss of their only son, who died suddenly. The family owns the local funeral home that has been in the family for 125 years, which they are planning to celebrate later this year. What touched me was how the community came out to celebrate this young man's life. The viewing was not private, as one might think it could have been. But instead they welcomed the entire community to share with them the life that was their son's. There was a 1/2 to an hour wait to see and talk with the family, and the funeral was standing room only. And what a tribute they paid to him! Death is never an easy thing to deal with. But for those, like this family, who deal with it every day, I was given a new perspective on what it means to celebrate a life. Yes, I know they are grieving and will for quite some time, but it was wonderful to see, what they instinctively know, that this is all about the person's life and not their death.

Vase Recycling

Here at The Treehouse Florist, we're going green, and we're asking for your help in saving the environment by recycling glass vases.
If you've accumulated a lot of vases, good for you! You have family and friends who send you flowers. Sometimes these extra vases are taking up valuable storage space or are left on a dusty shelf, unused. If this is the case, you can bring your clean, used vases to our shop and we'll put them to use again. Or, if they really don't meet our quality standards, we will take them to the recycling center.
Here's How It Works
Bring your vases to our shop when you're in the neighborhood. Our shop is located at 22 West Main Street in New Freedom, PA and is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM and on Saturdays from 9:00 until 2:00 PM. If you come by when we're closed, simply place your vases (or box of vases) on our porch and we'll get them in the morning. We offer a FREE rose for every pair of usable vases we receive. If you plan to be a frequent recycler, you can "bank" your free flowers toward an arrangement in the future. Anyway, you look at it, those unused vases add up to value for you and us.
Why We Are Recycling Vases
No, there isn't a sudden vase shortage. And no, it won't really save us any money on vases. We just want to do our tiny part in helping the planet. And reusing and recycling is a great start!

Hello? - Your Local Florist

I will never understand why people think that calling or using a third party, like 1800Flowers, for ordering a flower arrangement will get it there any faster or cheaper than just calling their local florist direct.
I had a customer call me just yesterday for a funeral arrangement one hour before the family was arriving for the visitation, because 1800Flowers couldn't get it filled for her. She probably saved a lot of money by doing that. For one, she didn't have to pay a service charge by calling us direct, or a delivery fee because we deliver to the funeral home for free. And finally, the money is staying in the local economy which is always a good thing.
Check out the The 350 Project if you want to learn more.

Our first blog post

It's Saturday afternoon and I finally have some quiet time to sit down and try and understand this animal called Social Media, and set up a blog for my business. But...I just realized that Game 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs is on, and I may have to delay this for yet another day. But I got this far.