Do We Sell Flowers?

Image courtesy of Simon Says Roses

A recent post from a fellow florist reminded me of how I often answer the question posed in this graphic by Simon says Roses.

Yes, we sell flowers, but so much more. When a woman first becomes a grandmother, a little girl receives her first communion, a couple celebrates a 50th wedding anniversary, a girl goes to her school prom, a loved one passes away, becomes ill, or celebrates a special birthday, we're there to honor that event, not just with flowers, but with all of the emotions that come with them - the joy, pride, happiness, sadness, thanks, love, apology, hope, cheer, sympathy, comfort, peace. And we consider it an honor when you choose us for those events.

So, when you send or give flowers, it's not just flowers that you're sending, but all of the emotions you want to share with that person. Flowers say what is sometimes too difficult for us to say; or when we can't find the words, the flowers can speak for us. Here at The Treehouse Florist, we always remember that the gift of flowers is actually one heart speaking to another (and that's why you'll find two hearts in our logo). When you need to make someone's heart smile, think Flowers, think The Treehouse Florist, where emotions reign, and flowers, too.

In lieu of flowers ...

Lots of well meaning people every day use this term in obituaries for their loved ones. While they may not want to be overwhelmed with flowers that they then have to take home or distribute, they obviously don't think about the very real, and very opposite, possibility that using this term can create.
I received a call from a business associate yesterday, telling me that she needed to send flowers to her friend, whose husband had passed away. She had been at this person's viewing the night before and was appalled to find almost no flowers there. "It was so sad" she said, and wanted to make sure that her friend knew that she cared by sending flowers the next day.
This is just a reminder, both to those who opt to use this term and to those who act on it. Even when you read "in lieu of flowers" in an obituary, it doesn't mean you can't send flowers, especially if you are partial to giving flowers to express your sympathy. Remember, that a viewing or visitation for a loved one completely devoid of flowers is a very somber one.

The Dance Academy Production 2013

Every year, I tell myself I'm going to get better at blogging, but always fall short. Pretty obvious, since this is  my first post this year.
So perhaps I should take a few lines to update you on what's been going on here at the shop.
The year started out quietly enough, given the non-winter we had here in the mid-Atlantic. We had an absolutely fabulous Valentine's Day - best ever. Eventually, we got to prom the week before Mother's Day and have been crazy busy up to last weekend, at the annual Dance Production we sell flowers at.
Here's where things got really crazy. We thought the show started at 7:00, so when we arrived at 5:00 and saw how packed the parking lot was, we were in for a surprise. Apparently, the show was starting at 5:30 and all the dance moms and others who had pre-booked flowers were waiting to collect them from us. Good thing we were otherwise super organized. Got the vans unpacked in record time, and everyone sorted out with their flowers before the show started. And even managed to take enough new orders to keep us busy until intermission. Whew!
Next year, we'll make sure to double-check, and triple-check the start time, so it won't be so stressful.


So here are a couple of pics of flowers for the show. The first are the crazy dyed daisies we use in all the mixed bouquets. And the second is a pic of the princess wands we sold - glitter everywhere! And the girls love it!

Birthstone Flower Arrangements

Make someone's next birthday extra special with the gift of flowers designed around the color of their month's birthstone. August is Peridot, a kiwi/limey green color gem. Each month we will design a new flower arrangement with that month's birthstone in mind.

We hope you like this month's flowers and can help us name it. For now, it's called August Birthstone Arrangement. However, if you submit the name we choose, we will send this arrangement to you or anyone locally. Just let us know.

Every one needs a Valentine

For whatever reason, some of us may find ourselves with no Valentine one year. Divorce, separation, death, war, all these things can separate us from those we love, leaving us with no one to celebrate Valentine's Day with. There was a point in my life when I had no Valentine, and I don't like to see that happening to anyone.

So, every year, since we have been a florist, we try to remember those who may find themselves in this or a similar situation, and make sure that they receive some flowers on this day of Love.

Do you know someone who could use the gift of flowers this Valentine's Day? Give us a call, send us an email, let us know a little bit about them, and we'll send flowers to the first 10 people who respond. Because we think everyone needs a Valentine.

Read on if you want to hear more about why we started this practice.

It was 1999, widowed and alone, I found solace in poetry in those quiet times. Around Valentine's Day I received the attention of a long time friend. It was then that I wrote the following poem.

Last year I had no valentine,

But a gracious man stepped up,

Suggesting he could play the role,

If I were so inclined.

The broken heart I had then

Was ready for a mend

And so I told this kindly gent

"My valentine's a friend."

Since then the friendship's grown

With some direction from above

For now this man is more than friend

He's someone that I love.

Trash to Treasure

OK, as a florist, we use a lot of water and generate a lot of trash. I’m used to living in the country with a well and septic system where we could put out all the trash we wanted.
Our shop is now downtown, and we have to pay per gallon of water and sewer used, and we’re only allowed 6 bags of trash twice a week. Well, a busy florist can easily generate more than what they allow us. So, we either “stuff” the bags til they’re too heavy to lift, or we have to hold some until next trash day. That is, until now.
A neighboring family recently started to compost, and they’ve asked if they could take our fresh trash for use in the compost heap. (I confess to knowing very little about how this all works for them, but apparently one needs certain percentages of dried, fresh materials, etc. to make the perfect compost.) But, we were ecstatic because we had someone to haul away some of our trash.

How cool! They even agreed to separate it.  But, as the one who does most of the designing, I’ve found that it’s really easy and efficient for me to do the separating as I go about my day. One big barrel gets all the fresh waste - leaves, stems, thorns, guard petals, broken blooms,etc, and the regular trash bins get everything else. Our neighbors take a couple of barrels on our big processing days, and the girls love processing the flowers this way, as it makes for much easier clean-up for them.

I can’t begin to tell you how well this has worked out, both for us and for them. We now no longer exceed our number of trash bags per pick-up, and I can go a whole week without having to change the regular trash bags at the work table.

The Traveling Bouquet

The dog days of summer have arrived. In an effort to keep our marketing skills honed, and spread a little kindness at the same time, we are launching a Traveling Bouquet program. Every week we will deliver a bouquet to a business, nursing home, senior center, police station, fire department or the like, wherever there is a mix of people. Attached to the bouquet is a note that says: "This is a Traveling Kindness Bouquet. Please enjoy these flowers for the day, then pass them on to someone else who could use a little joy, along with this note. See how spreading a little sunshine improves their day, and yours!" The idea is that everyone can use a little pick-me-up now and then, especially during these long, hot summer days, when they can't get outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Our first bouquet was delivered today to Accolades, a local nursing home, where two ladies are going to share the arrangement for the first two days. After that, who knows? It could get passed to another resident, to one of the nurses or go home with someone's relative. The good thing is that some cheer is being spread around. And it makes us feel good to know that we had something to do with it. Here is a picture of Lois and Treva at Accolades. It was hard getting them to smile. ; -)

Cemeteries aren't so scary ... or sad

When flowers are lovingly left at grave sites and tombstones, cemeteries can really be quite lovely.
A recent thread in a forum I belong to was boohooing the fact of less-than-robust sales of flowers at cemeteries particularly over Memorial Day. And, how sad it was to see empty tombstones and bare (devoid of flowers) cemeteries.
So I wanted to share with you how pretty a cemetery can look when decorated, in this case, with fresh flowers.

Mr. Robinson became our customer after his wife passed away and commissioned us to provide flowers for his wife's grave, a new arrangement every season (in silk). This year, he passed away too, and his daughter asked us to provide fresh arrangements for each of her close relatives, as they were all buried in close proximity. The cemetery looked so pretty at his graveside service. I hope you agree. Now she will be taking up her father's charge of providing flowers seasonally at their tombstone. What a good daughter!
So, as a reminder, next holiday, birthday, anniversary of your loved one, please remember them by placing some flowers on or next to their grave site. Note to self, Momma's birthday is July 9th - and high time to get some new flowers on her grave.

The Treehouse Florist "jumps in" with fellow florists to support The 3/50 Project

The 3/50 Project is dedicated to saving the brick and mortar stores that our nation is built on.

3 – What three independently-owned businesses would you miss if they disappeared? Stop in. Say hello. Pick up something that brings a smile. (Research reveals that flowers create instant delight and happiness, and increase enjoyment and life satisfaction.) Your purchases are what keep these businesses around. The staff at The Treehouse Florist and their employees not only appreciate your business, but they also shop locally, spending money with other merchants to support local businesses. Who said "It takes a village"?

Some of the local businesses The Treehouse spends its dollars with:

McKnight Appliances

Paesano's Pizza

Corbin's Auto Repair

50 – If half (50%) of the employed population spent $50 each month in locally-owned, independent businesses, it would generate more than $42.6 billion dollars in revenue*. You could spend all $50 at The Treehouse (we'd like that!), or spread it around to other local businesses. Imagine the positive impact if 3/4 of the employed population did that!

Some of our employees' favorite businesses in town:

Bonkey's Ice Cream

People's Bank

Boomtown Tattoo Studio

Matthews Garage

Hodle Tavern

68 – For every $100 spent in locally, independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. So if you buy a $100 flower arrangement at The Treehouse Florist, $68 of that money stays in the local economy of southern York County. If you spend that on a national chain, only $43 stays here. If you spend that $100 online then $0 comes back - zero, zilch, nada. So remember, when you shop 1800flowers.com, you are adding nothing to the local community.

1 – The number of people it takes to start the trend … you.

Pick 3. Spend 50. Support your local economy.

*Employment statistics courtesy U.S. Labor Department 2/6/09 report; 68/43 stats courtesy Civic Economics 2008 study

Nice Gift!

A bride from our early years in the shop was celebrating a milestone birthday for which her husband ordered a vaseful of roses for her party. Care to guess how old she is?
We'll let the pictures tell the story, as the order is filled. Is it ....

Nope.                                                                             Is it...... Nope

Yep, she's 50.
And when I was asked if I had a vase big enough for 50 roses, I said, "Oh, yeah, sure". But let me tell you, I don't think I could have gotten any more in this vase. And very heavy ... definitely a two person delivery.
Happy Birthday, Diane. Hope you loved your roses - you sure have a wonderful hubby.

Yeah, that's right - It's all about HER!

For those guys who think that Valentine's Day isn't a big deal to their wife, fiancee, girlfriend, wannabee girlfriend, or someone they want to attract, please think again. It's all about you showing that you think she is special to you, at least on the one day that everyone counts. If every woman in the office, except yours, received flowers, chocolates or some other gift, it's a BIG DEAL. So next year, don't be one of the guys we heard from the last couple of days who were trying their best to get out of the doghouse. Of course, we'll be more than happy to help you on either side of Valentine's Day, but your life will be a whole lot nicer when you get your gift to her before or on the big day. Just thought you should know.

Our New Website

We've been working diligently together with our new florist website provider, Epic Flowers, to update our website over the past couple of months. This change brings us a lot of flexibility and a host of new options, not to mention a much friendlier web presence.  One of the greatest features it provides is mCommerce. Some of you might be asking “what exactly is mCommerce?”.

Great question!  For starters,  Wiki defines it this way:

"Mobile Commerce is any transaction, involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is initiated and/or completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the help of an electronic device."

So, basically, it means you buy something using mobile access, like a smartphone.  This definition can be expanded to talk about "True mCommerce", which uses a site that is re-formatted for mobile use.  You may not have noticed it, but all of the big boys are on it!

Below are the standard sites for eBay and Amazon, and next to them, the mobile versions, re-formatted for the iPhone.

So, why is this important to you?

If you’ve tried to do any online shopping from local businesses through your smart phone, you’ve probably found the process to be less than desirable.  The reason is that most independent eCommerce sites are not capable of providing a truly mobile formatted page.  So, you end up zooming in, zooming out, and fumbling through the shopping cart process.  Mobile formatting changes all that.

Here are a couple of screen-shots of what the The Treehouse Florist’s new mCommerce-ready site looks like on the iPhone.  We know you’ll love this new feature, because you no longer need a computer to order flowers on-line. And, we hope you enjoy browsing our new site from the comfort and ease of your smartphone.

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About Us - Vase Recycling

Visit our Blog

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.