I use to work in this flower shop on the OTHER side of town much like any other flower shop people would come, I would greet them. Hello, how are you? hows your day been? blah blah….And it always made me laugh, the classic response was always……OHHH SOOOOO BUSY, JUST SOO BUSY. I always promised myself that i would never be one of those people…who is sooooo busy. When people ask how I am I want to say I’m so effing busy, i’m more busy than you or you or you. More than busy than I’ve ever been in my life. I stop myself and try to say, I’m amazing, I’m tired, I want the brides to give me a month off!

The long and short of it is. I have an eight month old baby and i’m running a business and I love it. And sometimes I don’t have time to write stuff here. We have done so much cool flower shit this season and I can’t wait to share some of it with you.

So, as we head deeper and deeper into wedding season it seems to get easier. Bebe on my hip, one handed arrangements or one handed typing or watching Serine make things that I want to do! Things seem lighter, I may have just got the right mix of helpers and staff. ( I hate that word, but you know what I mean)  I still feel like I am constantly chasing my tail when it comes to proposals, quotes and paperwork. While my amazing mama book keeper Kristy is away on maternity leave I have already turned her well organised systems into pure chaos. I’ve started seeing a business coach, which is pretty awesome. Always wanted to do something like that, and at this point it seems like a no brainer. It feels a bit like seeing a shrink, in the good way.

We have a huge few weekends of weddings coming up which I feel strangely calm and organised for but talk to me again after this weekend! Can’t wait to share the pics with you all. ( oh do people still read this!!?? sorry i know i’ve been slack)

A couple of pics from our NZ holiday. Beach, beach, family, sunshine, beach.

It’s Valentines day this week, Thursday to be exact. ( that would be tomorrow!) I’m not really one for gooey love stuff or dozens of red roses but i do love love. Cecilia fox are having a little soiree to celebrate love and life and all the good things. There will be Persian love cake, serenading and bubbly wine and of course some pretty amazing flowers to buy or just look at and smell and soak up the love! Come one come all to our little shop in Brunswick from about 5pm until about 7.30pm. Our awesome neighbours Lucky Buster will be open late too, they have the best gifts and the sweetest cards for sale. The perfect accompaniment to a gorgeous bunch of flowers from us. Loving our little local strip and all our awesome neighbours. 221B Blyth St East Brunswick. Valentines Day for Brunswick lovers.

Wow, 2012 was a huge year for us…. Baby, shop and double the weddings and events than the last year. I’ve barely had a chance to reflect on it all really but things are pretty amazing, we have had a beautiful month mostly off work visiting family and hanging with Dusty. Back to it this week and as usual most times i feel like i’m chasing my tail. Missing emails, not responding quickly enough to emails, and forgetting to put the out of office reply when we are on holidays. Who would have thought being a Mum and running a business would take up sooo much time. More time than there is in the day and the night and oh so much brain space! I have also aquirred an unhealthy obsession with Instagram.

If i haven’t responded to your email I’M SORRY! Do try me again. Most people realize that i’m really good at doing flowers but paperwork and emailing are not my forte. I’m certainly no business woman but i do love what i do.

This wedding was at fourtyfive downstairs, we love it there. The olive entrance tunnel was the Pièce de résistance by all accounts.

Catching up on some photos I didn’t get a chance to show you from autumn. I know I say this about most of the weddings i post here but this really may have been my favourite wedding ever. The theme was still life, and it was so exciting have the chance to create something so unique. These photos were taken while we were still setting up so you don’t get the full effect. I wish i’d got to see it in all it’s glory with candles lit and tables all set. Wedding photographers hardly ever have a chance to capture the table settings and flowers.

Back at Cecilia Fox HQ things have been pretty insane. One staff member down and me working with a tiny cute baby strapped to me and many breast feeding pit stops. It really doesn’t let up. Being a Mum is pretty much the most awesome thing that has ever happened to me. You know people say it’s good and it will change your life and all that but really, IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE in the best possible way ever. It’s also made me realise just how much i love my job. I really do love it.

Also, we are going to Tasmania…really excited, i mean REALLY. I need some garden gardenie flowers to flower a beautiful wedding. I want to raid someones garden ( with permission of course!) Lovely readers of Hobart and the surrounds Cecilia Fox needs you! Email me if you have any tips and or an amazing hydrangea garden that could use a trim.

Check out the shadows in these photos. So incredible. Andy the lighting guy at fourtyfive downstairs is an absolute whiz.

We had these stands made so we could make amazing canopies without having to suspend things or use vases. I love them..however they do have a couple of design flaws. 1. they don’t all fit in one van load 2. they are too heavy for one person to lift onto the table. 3. they don’t quite fit on a normal size table, if you want to have glassware as well. ( thanks to the awesome staff at Alto for working with us on this one!) 4. they are very difficult to store…apart from that they are amazing and perfect. These photos were taken when i was nine months pregnant, my last big wedding before Dusty was born. It seems like so long ago!

Most of you i’m sure have followed this story of Jill Meagher a young woman who went for a drink with colleagues after work and never came home. She was abducted, raped and murdered just moments from her home and minutes from our home in Brunswick. This story wasn’t just a story, it moved our community deeply. I had tried to distance myself from the media coverage, I’d just given birth and it was all too much to cope with. So tragic and so close to home. Last week i got an email with the letter below that had been sent to the ABC. I cried, a lot. With the title ‘a touching story’ the writer described her visit to our shop as a platform 9 3/4 experience. It seemed so surreal that she wasn’t sure if it existed.
Dear Jon, It is very nice to hear you back on air this morning. Like countless listeners, I can only imagine what you have all been going through at the ABC over the past two weeks. We have all followed and felt involved in that dreadful journey. The fact that you all held the fort under such difficult circumstances is a tribute to the professionalism of you all. I want to pass on my personal sympathy to you all. I also wanted to share with you a moving experience I had on the weekend.
I have not been able to put the terrible story out of my mind, nor have my 2 daughters, both living on the other side of the world, but both around Jill’s age, and former residents of Brunswick. So I decided I just had to take flowers to the church in Sydney Road. I headed off on Saturday from Croydon and tried to buy flowers on the way. I spent ages driving up and down St. Georges Road, then High Street – not a florist to be found. So I just kept heading west. Then, only a kilometre or so from Sydney Road, I stopped at a red light and looked vacantly to the right, at a ramshackle small group of largely empty shops. And there in a tiny frontage I saw flowers. It wasn’t like a normal florists at all – no obvious signage, and just buckets of sprays that appeared to have been cut from shrubs. But a bunch of vivid hot pink Ranunculi leapt out at me – that’s the only way I can describe it. They were what I had to have.
I then headed on to Sydney Road. As I approached the church, I knew by the ocean of flowers that I was at the right place. Just ahead of me, I saw a lone man wander in from the footpath, but apart from him there was no-one else in there, though people were clearly pausing to ponder as they walked by on the footpath. Lost in my own thoughts as I looked around, I suddenly heard a voice out of the silence: “She would have loved them… she loved that colour”. I looked around and realised that the man in the slightly shabby coat had spoken. Hesitating, I asked “Did you know her?” To which the answer came in a calm quiet voice, with only an edge of weariness “Yes, I am her father”.   I’m afraid I just burst into tears and hugged him. But the amazing thing was that HE was comforting me. He was so calm, so amazed at the magnitude of the public outpouring. I had read that he was almost disabled by grief at the funeral the day before, and I found it truly wonderful that he had somehow, through the harrowing process, arrived at this calm state.   I just thought you’d like to hear this little story. Jill and her lovely family will remain in my thoughts and prayers.

We made this amazingly cute human. Who would have thought life could be so sweet……Welcome to the cecilia fox team tiny Dusty Landsborough Mildren.  17 days old today. Favorite flower, sweet pea.

Now I’ve never been a Mum before, so i’m really winging it like any first time Mummy. I could stare at this little guy all day, and I pretty much have been for the last two weeks. Mostly feeding, cuddling and changing. Dad is of course a complete natural and already planning beach trips and bike rides.

Flowers have taken a back seat for me, but the girls are going strong, and lets face it our workshop is in my back yard there is only so much of a back seat i can take! We had our first Spring racing day at Caulfield last week,  Spring flowers melt my heart, Lilac, Viburnum, Dogwood soooooo good. And our first wedding of the season this week. Shit is about to get real around here. I have so many of last seasons weddings to show you too, oh and the shop is trucking along. I love it in there, so cute. Thanks to every one for your support especially our local cafes and residents. Such an overwhelmingly positive response, it’s been wonderful.

So….the shop is open! i hope you get a chance to pop in and hang out and smell the flowers. We are so pleased with how it’s all turned out, everyone has worked so hard to make this happen BEFORE the BABY!!!

I am absolutely on baby time now. I don’t know how long i’ll be there. Soooooo sorry if you are waiting for a quote from me or a response to an email…i really thought i could do it all but i just can’t. The girls are doing their very very best although i have thrown them in at the deep end. Please be gentle with them. I was realizing just how much information i hold in my brain and just how impossible it is to transfer that to anyone else. Or even explain something that is just so innate in me. 20 years will do that to you. I hope you all understand. We are really really excited about everything shop, baby, wedding season, amazing flowers. A wonderful old friend said to me recently that babies bring abundance, abundance of creative energy, change, courage and strength. Look out.

At the moment we will be open….

Thursday 9-6 Friday 8-7 Saturday 9-5 Sunday 10-2 any other time by appointment or by chance. It will change in summer too so check in with us.

The number there is 0499 880 018

Wow, it’s going to be to the wire…shop is still littered with sawdust and power tools but come Saturday morning it’s going to look AMAZING. I’m so excited and i’m so grateful and lucky to be surrounded by so many incredible peeps. Your support and help and LOVE on this project has been above and beyond.

Come and visit us 221B Blyth St East Brunswick at the end of the tram line on Nicholson St. Eat some popcorn a little watermelon and make a day of it…visit CERES and have breakfast or a coffee at one of the THREE awesome cafes within spitting distance of us. Oh and buy some flowers! I got so excited about buying whatever flowers I wanted at the flower market instead of being bound buy colours or flowers of an event or wedding. The shop will be spilling over with spring blooms so come and get em wonderful people. Can’t wait to see you all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx