September came in like a lion with the heat and left like a lion with the heat! While we are experiencing an unusual heat wave, some of our zinnias and cosmos are still reaching for the last drops of sun before fall is truly upon us! We even had one last new Cosmo color bloom and it’s perfect for the season! It’s actually a little darker than it looks here, like a real pretty burgundy, but clearly also gorgeous when the sun is hitting it and bringing out the pink undertones.
September happened to be a slow month for us when it comes to flowers and coffee so we’re not breaking down this post quite like we have the past few months. We still have flower beds to maintain and plenty of ideas brewing in our minds of what could enhance our business, but there was no planting, full garden days or additional work done with coffee this month…well, aside from trying new recipes and making fall concoctions in our kitchens (more on that in a moment!)
One thing we did continue working on though is bouquets! We started this last month and fell in love with our cosmos bunched together with baptisia to add a little greenery. Since we don’t have much of a fall flower selection in our garden this year, we picked up some pretty fall florals from our favorite spot, Trader Joes, and used those to create a video to share! A few things to call out from this experience…
- If you’re looking for good selection and very reasonable prices, shop for flowers at Trader Joes – you know, when your local small business flower farmers don’t have what you’re looking for that day 😉
- We are loving the orange and burgundy colors right now, so cozy!!
- Creating time lapse videos take practice! Time lapse is great so people can learn how to make these bouquets without watching a five minute video, but you do have to remember the difference in speed. We were okay for the most part, but you don’t really get to see the bouquet at the end because we didn’t hold it up to the camera for a slightly extended period of time to take the time lapse aspect into consideration. Here’s the video for fun…and when there’s no flowers to tend to over the winter we’ll be working on our recording skills and writing a post with all the little details you need to make the perfect bouquet!
Our tulip bulbs from Johnny’s Selected Seeds also got delivered at the end of the month! We’ll be planting those in October along with cleaning up and cutting back the last of our Summer flowers! A little bittersweet, but we’re also really excited for all things Spring that we’ll be planning over the winter…
- greenery to pair with tulips
- designing a flower cart to take to a local shop in town on the weekends
- finalizing our gift sets that combine the flowers with the coffee
and enjoying all the festive drinks along the way like the pumpkin spice latte in the main photo at the beginning of this post! If you’re looking for all things pumpkin this fall, check out Once Upon a Pumpkin; the blog is written by a registered dietician with a serious love for pumpkin and as an added bonus she also has the cutest dog… obviously named Pumpkin! her recipe calls for oat milk, which we didn’t have on hand so we tried with regular milk (pictured) and coconut milk (our favorite). Recipe calls for
- 8 ounces strong coffee
- 3 Tbsp milk (suggesting oat or coconut)
- 2 tsp pumpkin puree (we did about 3)
- Generous sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice
You combine the coffee, milk and pumpkin in a blender and blend on high until frothy and then pour in a mug and sprinkle with the pumpkin pie spice! Super easy! The only thing we’ll try next time is blending only the coffee and pumpkin together and steaming the milk separately to make it nice and foamy and pouring that in and then adding the spice! This drink isn’t overly sweet so if that’s your thing we’d suggest making one of the Tablespoons if milk pumpkin creamer 😉
And a little random chit chat as always from the month…
- Kryn had a foster dog, Mars, who was lucky enough to find her forever home with two other fur siblings! Of course we included a photo of her below!
- Racing season started on Sara’s side (Dad/Daughter duo race dirt bikes together) and Hailey brought home two first place trophies!
- The Giving Campaign kicked off at our corporate jobs; we love to make note of this because the amount of money the employees and company give back to local charities each fall is really remarkable!
Bloom where you are planted
