Yesterday was Mother’s Day and last week was Teacher Appreciation Week. There were a lot of flower bouquets going around!
Flowers are beautiful and many people enjoy receiving and giving them. Here’s how to handle them.
You can compost the extra leaves and stems as well as the petals from fresh cut flowers. I took the church waste home to my kitchen collector and it will go out in my curbside compost collection. Reuse a container from church to bring it home.
Dry flowers for arts and crafts, dried flower bouquets or candle making.
I’ve read several tips for prolonging cut flowers including sugar, Sprite, 7up or how you cut the stem. Share your tips with us!
The plastic wrapper needs to go in the trash.
Per MoreRecycling.com | PlasticsMarkets.org | RecycleMorePlastic.org | PlasticFilmRecycling.org: “If you can stretch the film or push your finger through and stretch it then it’s likely polyethylene and can be included in a store drop-off station.”
Flower wrappers can’t be stretched or pushed through so they go in the trash.
Don’t forget to save and reuse your rubber bands and elastics. Take them to Austin Creative Reuse or back to the grocery store.
Cut the stems first and that may make it easier to get the rubber band off rather than cutting the rubber band then stems.
Here are professionally dried flowers from The Gardeners Wife at the May Market of the Blue Genie Art Bazaar . They’re tied with a bit of fabric and a key and came that way. Her other bouquets come in tan paper and look just as lovely. This is a great way to reuse fabric and extra keys. Antique malls and Austin Creative Reuse have fabric and keys for projects like this.
If someone is allergic to fresh flower pollen they may appreciate dried flowers.
As long as flowers were dried with no chemicals or dye, they can be composted if something happens to them. Anyone else drop a book on theirs ever, no just me?
The container I used for my Gardeners Wife flowers above was a honey jar from Two Hives Honey.
Go through your cabinets or to a second hand store and find a vase, cup, mason jar, pitcher or ice bucket to reuse instead of paying extra for a new vase and creating another vase someone will need to rehome. Thrift stores receive a ton of vases so be kind and reuse.
The short and wide columnar vase pictured here has been so useful and I’ve used it so many times over the years.
The row above all include mason jars which are so versatile. Central Market and Whole Foods have tended to offer small bouquets in mason jars if you are interested which is great since there’s no plastic wrapper to trash and you can reuse the mason jar afterwards. Just make sure to get all the lid pieces they have out too.
Large mason jars and storage jars can be helpful for large bouquets of fresh cut flowers. Then they can be reused for storing things. This is my sometimes flour jar as well as a flower jar. Ha, flour vs flower.
Travel tip: pour all or a lot of the water out and seatbelt the vase into the car or carry it carefully on the bus. Bonus if you have a container to sit it in like a box or pot. Maybe bring a towel if you’re on the bus or a train just in case.
Above are the results of the bouquets I bought reusing vases on hand from Sunday. We passed out flowers for Mother’s Day after worship Sunday.
We had more leftovers than expected even with people accepting multiples so I left a vase for our admin (always show gratitude and remember everyone on site) and was able to take the rest home. I reused the reused vase at church for our admin and I found this nifty white vase at a secondhand store last year. I love it because it’s not my normal style (which tends to be glass) but it so caught my eye so I had to have it even though it wasn’t on my list!
Pastor Robyn requested pink so I had to drive around to a few places. We were also hoping for carnations which were hard to find. I’m so grateful to Central Market for having single flower type bouquets in many colors.
Dried flowers can be included in candles or turned into potpourri.
The candle featured above is also from the May Market at Blue Genie Art Bazaar and is by 7th Street Candle Co. Not only are the candles beautifully and lightly scented, she has a container take back program if you are in Austin.
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#flowers #bouquets #flowerbouquet #mothersday #momlife #churchlife #worship #loveoneanother #grateful #thankful#beautiful #pink #atxcomposts #memorialumc #austintx @central_market Central Market @the.gardenerswife The Gardeners Wife @7thstreetcandle.co 7th Street Candle Co Memorial United Methodist Church-Austin @memorialumcaustin