You know I don’t have big plans for a productive day when I show up to work in a minidress and flip flops. Ain’t no work happenin’ in this get-up. C and I are so looking forward to this long weekend; we woke up this morning and immediately began negotiations on how early we’d close the shop this afternoon.

Since it’s almost noon and we haven’t taken any orders yet, my odds of lounging poolside with a cocktail and a book by 3:00 are looking pretty good.

Alfani dress (Macy’s clearance many seasons ago); Elle Denim jacket; TKEES Foundations flip flops via Shopbop; Romeo & Juliet Couture handbag via Hautelook

Duro Ulowu for jcpenney skirt (found in-store for 50% off!) | LOFT tee | Nine West sandals | Romeo & Juliet Couture tote via Hautelook | Tom Ford sunglasses

In my fashion fantasies, I have a closet full of delicate floral dresses and swishy skirts — a well-curated assortment of current designers and priceless vintage, dontcha’ know — and I sashay around my flower shop in them every day with Louboutins and pearls.

In real life, flower shops are messy and hard on clothes; and most days I can barely pull off a low wedge, much less sky-high stilettos.

A bold floral skirt paired with a t-shirt is how I compromise.

One of my goals for 2013 was to add more videos to the blog. Nearly six months into the “new year,” I’m finally posting my first one! Better late than never?

I filmed a how-to for this scarf-wrapped ponytail weeks ago, after a few of you requested a tutorial. Then I forgot about it. The clips sat untouched in iMovie for nearly a month before I stumbled across them, and pulled it all together to [finally] share it!

Have requests or ideas for other how-to videos? Please share them in the comments! {And have mercy, I’m still new to this “vlogging” business.}

1992 called, and it wants its pony back! This was my mom’s go-to hairstyle for me in elementary school, followed closely by the french braid. Of the two, this is the only one I can recreate on my own as a grown-up. Somehow my french braid always comes out crooked and weirdly… inside-out?

Check out Gal Meets Glam’s twisted ponytail post for simple instructions to recreate the throw-back yourself; no informercial “fashion hair tools” required.

LC Lauren Conrad polka dot pleated dress (Kohl’s sale, several seasons ago); Elle denim jacket (Kohl’s), Romeo & Juliet Couture handbag (Hautelook); Target sandals 

Tagged: @targetstyle, denim jacket over dresses, personal style, polka dot dress ]]> http://aprettypennyblog.com/2013/05/21/peachy-pleats-and-topsy-tails/feed/ 28 keiralennox IMG_9459 IMG_9485 IMG_9487 http://aprettypennyblog.com/2013/05/16/sack-dress-save/ http://aprettypennyblog.com/2013/05/16/sack-dress-save/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 18:00:19 +0000 keiralennox http://aprettypennyblog.com/?p=4586 ]]>

All the donuts and fast food of Mother’s Day week caught up with me, and come Monday zipping my jeans was a bit of a problem. Big boxy shift dress to the rescue! Oh, 20-year-old metabolism, why have you left me?!

Wearing: MNG by Mango Single-Pleat Shift Dress (jcpenney clearance, $20); Duro Olowu Tapestry Tote (found in-store for 50% off!); Nine West sandals

Duro Olowu Wood-Handled Tapestry Tote; Target clearance top; Lucky Brand jeans; 

Last October, I decided my shopping habits needed a reboot; so I embarked on a four-month journey to spend just $100 per month on clothes, accessories, and beauty products. It went so well for those four months, I proclaimed, “Hey, Internets! I’m going to keep this biz-ness up for a whole year!” To which my husband cocked an eyebrow and gently asked if I was really up for such a task, and I was all, “where’s your faith, dude?! I got this!“

Have I told you before that for a type-A control freak, I can be really impulsive? When I get excited about something, I must do it now! Planning be damned! Leap and the net will appear! It’s going to be awesome! Like the time I decided to become a Stella & Dot independent stylist, and spent an ungodly sum of my husband’s money on samples, just to quit in the red less than a year later. Or, most recently, when I almost accidentally murdered this blog trying to move it to a self-hosted platform one afternoon after deciding that morning to make the switch (a Google search and a credit card does not a tech-savvy blogger make, friends.) This impulsivity gets me in trouble now and then, and sometimes my “mouth writes a check that my @ss can’t cash.”

By now, you may have deduced that this is a confessional post about the status of that overzealous budget proclamation of yore, as well as a reluctant admission that my husband was {cough} right. It felt weird to take such a stance on the issue on my blog, and then just forget about it and let it fade into oblivion, you know? It felt like I had some ‘splainin’ to do…

This is not to say that I’ve been out making it rain in my favorite outlet stores; but the truth is, in the last couple of months, I haven’t been as meticulous in tracking my spending as I was in the beginning. It started with a girl’s trip last month, for which I needed at least two new bathing suits, and then it was new sandals for warmer weather, and then an overhaul of my spring/summer makeup routine. Then a couple of nights ago, after a brutally exhausting holiday week, I needed a little “me time” to relax and unwind and ain’t no therapy like retail therapy, and I thought I’d earned a teeny spree! Call this ridiculous justification, or epic failure, or just jumping the gun on a goal without really thinking it all the way through — I haven’t figured out what to call it yet myself…

Despite a derailing, I’m not naming the whole budget experiment a wash; it really did help me push the reset button on my spending, cleared up my prior confusion of needs vs. wants, and made me a smarter shopper. I achieved about 6 months of solid commitment, and for a girl who’s never budgeted in her life, I’m proud of what I accomplished! However, I’m cutting myself a little slack and saying maybe this experiment has run its course for me. 

So what’s worse: being a big quitter, or setting yourself up for failure with a lofty 12-month goal you didn’t think through? Either way, sometimes you have to know when to say uncle.

Uncle.

Thoughts?

P.S. I have a whole new level of respect for the self control of the people who’ve accomplished a year-long shop fast! Like my friend, Cathy, who’s in the midst of one now and sharing her journey on her blog. Go cheer her on, will you?

Another Mother’s Day is behind us! I thought it would be fun to give you guys a glimpse into what our days look like at the flower shop in the midst of a big holiday. Schedules go out the window, caffeine and sugar reign supreme, and our juggling act gets downright ridiculous.

Keep reading for the rundown!

Last Friday went a little something like this…

8:00am: Load the family into the car and head across town to work.

Swing through a drive-thru for reinforcements: iced tea for me, coffee for C, donut holes for everybody. During a holiday week, we toss a blanket over our ideals on proper nutrition and do whatever it takes to keep the engines running.

8:30am: Open the store, and immediately begin fielding calls and taking orders. Perform a little triage to prioritize the work tickets, pushing time-sensitive orders (like funeral arrangements) to the front of the line, and scheduling everything else appropriately. This can be really challenging when you’re processing up to 20 new orders per hour, but it’s crucial to get it right.

If you’re Doak, stand around looking adorable and wait for customers to come in and lavish you with attention.

11:00am: Get on those orders! Take a stack of work tickets and start poking as many arrangements as possible. Stop frequently to catch the phone and/or sit down with clients for unexpected consultations. {Pat yourself on the back for all the prep work you completed the week before, which is saving both time and your sanity.} Feel optimistic about progress!

Sweep the floors half a dozen times, because every 20 minutes they look like this:

2:00pm: Switch gears and get to work on a green-and-navy-themed wedding order. Stop taking orders for delivery because the growing pile of orders in the work ticket basket is making your palms sweaty and if you don’t put a lid on it, you’ll never catch up. Prior optimism is waning…

4:30pm: 6 bridesmaid bouquets, 4 corsages, and 10 boutonnieres later, switch gears again and knock out the prom orders. Silently curse the school board officials who scheduled two local high school proms on Mother’s Day weekend.

Meanwhile… 

Some employees are just so hard to motivate, you know?

5:00pm: Just as you’re starting to reach a level 8 panic about your quickly-depleting inventory, your supplier shows up with a fully stocked truck and you’re saved! Lose your mind buying heaps of fresh flowers like there’s no tomorrow.

6:00pm: Lock the front door. Go in the back to process the stack of boxes of fresh freight that arrived earlier in the day, as well as the armfuls of product you bought off the truck. This means wash out the flower buckets with bleach — if you can find buckets, because most are occupado in the walk-in cooler — then unpack the 12 to 24 bunches of dry-packed flowers from each box, carefully remove them from their protective wrappers, snip the stems, and put them in clean water.

Get a big mean blister from your shears.

7:00pm: Re-caffeinate. Run to the local craft store to pick up navy satin ribbon to wrap aforementioned bridesmaid bouquets, and pick up dinner for the crew. Waffle fries, FTW.

Oh, have I mentioned that this is just what I’ve been up to? C’s had his own chaos to manage including, but not limited to: handling all of the customer service, routing deliveries, managing the delivery driver, running the occasional delivery himself, and who knows what else. He could probably write his own blog post on the subject.

8:00pm: Drag yourself back to your design counter and all those looming work tickets.

Here’s the funny thing about holiday orders: one minute you’re ahead, with all of the next day’s orders completed; then you take a break to pee and come back to an avalanche of tickets, and now you’re 50 orders behind. Around this time Friday night, we had 60 arrangements to make for Saturday deliveries.

9:30pm: Keep trudging along, albiet a whole lot slower than the first part of the day. Try to resist the urge to lie down on the floor and go to sleep. Tell your staff, “30 more minutes, and we’re all out of here!“

10:00pm: Ha, that’s not happening.

11:00pm: Look at the clock and realize, “Cheese and rice, it’s 11 o’clock!” Count the number of remaining Saturday tickets. 25. Crank out just…a…few…more…

11:30pm: Make an executive decision. At this rate, your entire staff will be worthless come tomorrow morning, when you’ll need everyone on their A-Game for the final push. Kick everyone out, despite their protestations.

12:00am: Lock the doors, load the family in the car, and head across town to your bed.

All in all, it was an exhausting but awesome holiday week. We exceeded the goals we set, made a few mistakes we’ll learn from next year, and made lots of special mommas happy. Our tanks are empty, but our hearts are full.

I’m having difficulty forming coherent sentences this evening, as we’re on day two of Mother’s Day flowerpalooza and Chad and I just got home. So here are a few random thoughts for today:

1. When standing in your closet completely clueless about what to put together, if you pull items that are different shades of the same color, you’ll probably come out coordinated enough to keep people from thinking you dressed yourself in the dark.

2. I need more hats this summer.

3. I just found out about the Sam & Libby and Target collabo, and I want these sandals in every color because they look exactly like the Sam Edelman Gigi Thongs that sell for $65. Oh, and these snakeskin and turquoise loafers, too, please and thank you.

I spent most of last Thursday, Friday and Saturday designing corsages and boutonnieres for the prom-attending upperclassmen of my alma mater, with mild to moderate heart palpitations at the realization that my own senior prom was ten years ago.

See those cute kids up there? In high school, I had an after school and summer job at a private preschool working with 2-6 year olds. {I also spent a lot of time in tanning beds.} Those same kids have poured into our shop over the last several weeks ordering prom flowers because they’re in high school now. And as if that isn’t depressing enough, none of them had a clue that the lady at the flower shop is the same girl who rubbed their backs at nap time, chased them around the playground, and babysat them on the weekends. Wahhh…

It feels like just yesterday that I was cruising around in my white ’97 Jeep Cherokee with the windows down — cranked by hand, mind you — listening to Incubus, The Get Up Kids, and the Dixie Chicks and spending my entire [tiny] paycheck on clothes, eyebrow waxes, tanning salons, and mani/pedis. Now I’m thinking about my 10 year reunion. What the what?!

There are few things we can count on in our unpredictable flower business. One of them is that, during the the week before a major holiday, we’ll have one or two days that are mind-numbingly slow and boring. Today is one of those days.

The empty squares on the calendar before Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas are blessings disguised as apocalyptic flower shop end-of-days. They make us bite our nails and wring our hands and sweat through our t-shirts, but they also give us a few precious hours to catch our breath and get organized before the main event.

This is my fourth Mother’s Day in the flower biz, and of all the holidays it’s my favorite. I think we all take a little extra pride in designing special arrangements for moms, who deserve an entire calendar of days of recognition but settle for just one. Mommas are always so thrilled to receive flowers from their families, and I love spending the Saturday afternoon before Mother’s Day delivering orders and seeing each lady’s reaction. There are usually tears, sometimes big hugs, and one sweet lady even invited me inside last year and asked if I was married because she had an eligible son… ;-)

Chad and I call this “Flower Power,” the special ability that hand-delivered fresh flowers have to make someone feel loved and appreciated. It’s almost magical, ya’ll.

I guess I’ll take advantage of this quiet day and close the shop on time! It’s Taco Tuesday, and I have a date with my own special mom and step-dad (and some queso).

Sidebar: If you’re planning on sending flowers to a special lady next week, can I make a tiny request? Call a local florist, instead of those 800-number guys or the big online order gatherers. Sure, they’re tempting with their cheap prices and tooted up advertising, but buyer beware. They take your order, then drop-ship the flowers in a box on your doorstep or route the order to a local florist after taking a BIG commission off the top. Many times you’re left with an arrangement well below the value you paid for, or it’s never sent at all. Skip the corporate middle-men, and work with a local shop whose artisans will create something fresh and unique that you’ll be proud of. And as a bonus, you’ll get the warm-and-fuzzies from supporting a small business in your community!