As you may have noticed I was missing in action last week. I was on a whirl wind tour that simply had me gone from my studio for several days. First I went to Chestertown Md. to meet with an upcoming client and then I headed to VA. Beach for some much needed time with my good friends the Chapel Designers. My trip to VA. Beach has been on the bucket list ever since I became friends with Chapel Designers Isha Foss, of Isha Foss Events, and Daevid Reed of Daevids of Norfolk. Much to my delight I found Chapel Designer, Trish Van De Merkt along the way. Our little road trip turned into quite the adventure. It was awesome to see the studios of both Isha and Daevid and my time with my friends was incredible.

One of the funnest moments was when Isha got behind the wheel of a huge box truck. Yes that girl can seriously drive!! Plus check out her pretty load. It took a box truck, a sprinter van, and several sports utility vehicles and cars to get all of Isha’s decor to her event. Isha put up over 2,000 yards of fabric for this event and seeing that install was simply mind boggling and beyond inspiring.

Trish and I spent a bit of time in the cooler last week and we loved every minute of it !!

Our time in Daevid’s studio was a bit overwhelming. I have never seen so many props and decor items. Seriously Daevid has better props then all of the decor companies in DC. His flower shop and design space takes up several floors and ranges from carousel horses to chandeliers. Oh and puppies, he has 3 sweet dogs. His cooler was also full of lots of pretty!!

Thankfully Trish and Daevid happened to be heading to Leesburg, which meant that I roped them into helping me with a secret mission photo shoot that I am doing today. Because of the big shoot, we spent all day today gathering beautiful blooms. Along the way we even found Chapel Designer Morgan of Petals and Hedges and Donna of First Dance Floral.

This is a photo of designer Morgan Walker and her delightful garden center. Many of the plants I have been planting on my property come from Morgans garden center Petals and Hedges.

After spending time with Morgan and enjoying her delicious garden center,  we headed to Green Stone Farm where we met with growers Barbara and Dennis. While there we bought buckets of beautiful blooms, we got poppies, snapdragons, ranunculus, sweet pea, eremurus, blue berries, and alium. We had a hay day at her farm!!!

This picture is of Lindsay and Barbara. Lindsay helps on the farm and does the designing for markets and CSA.

We had such a lovely time at Green Stone Farm and we were beyond excited to get home and design. But…

first we had to harvest all of the flowers at my house.

Here is the start to some of the pieces we are creating for our big photo shoot. So much has happened in the last five days I can’t even digest it all yet. One thing is for certain I sure love hanging with my Chapel Designer friends.

In addition to all of this, our studio designed an amazing wedding that was loaded in peony and viburnum from my garden. I would say the last five days have been very full. This week will also be super busy so I will be back with you as quickly as I can.