On the eighth day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me: eight maids-a-milking.

I mentioned early in December that I was given a milk bottle set for Christmas from a lovely fellow-student who works at Vive La Rose, which means I now have two sets and eight mini milk bottles. So I took great pleasure in going to Jane Packer, on a quiet, rainy morning, to buy a few flowers to fill the bottles for New Year's Day, the eighth day of Christmas. I saw the lady who ran the hand-tied course I did at the flower school there back in the spring, and she seemed pleased that I was pursuing a course in floristry and trying to create my own designs! As ever, I enjoyed stepping into the shop and looking through the carefully selected flowers, which are beautifully arranged by colour. I picked a stem of silver brunia, two lilac Boyfriend (aka Ocean Song) roses, one creamy-white Majolica spray rose, and two white parrot tulips. And here they are: eight milk bottles. Happy new year!

I won't make a list and send it to the North Pole for Saint Nick

We had our college Christmas party a bit early, due to assessments and Ofsted inspections. I managed to get my Secret Santa name a massively reduced Paula Pryke book – which seemed to go down well. I almost squealed when I opened my present. A girl at college works at Vive La Rose, a beautiful florist that I’ve mentioned before, and had got the mini milk bottles that I’m so keen on, filled them with different sweets, and put silver foil milk bottle ‘tops’ on them. These are so colourful and cheerful; I almost don’t want to eat the sweets! Except I do, because I’d like to have eight milk bottles in time for the eighth day of Christmas!

I did another candle table centre today. I got lots of coloured or scented candles and bought some eucalyptus and red carnations from the local florist (I would have preferred to use roses, but they won’t last as well in foam). I’m pleased with this one. I hope it brings a smile to my friends’ mother, whose birthday is next week.

Milkman on your doorstep

It’s a shame that as shopping habits have changed, people don’t buy milk from milkmen as much as they used to. The milkman from my childhood delivered orange juice, bread, and even potatoes!

Could you imagine a milkman delivering flowers? I saw these small milk bottles and holder in the beautiful and friendly West End florist, Vive La Rose, and I’m waiting for the right occasion to use them. I tried them out with some garden roses, jasmine and viburnum bodnantense. The dark red rose is a David Austin rose called William Shakespeare 2000 and ‘it smells to heaven’...but in a much nicer way than Claudius spoke of in Hamlet.

The gorgeous bouquets on the Vive La Rose website are inspired by and named after places such as Moray, St Ives, Maldon and Oxford. I wonder if some of my favourite British towns and cities will get their own bouquet one day – a red and white tribute to Sunderland or a coastal-themed Swansea arrangement, perhaps?