Friday, December 28, 2012

LoCoFlo Bouquet featured in the new edition of Eco-Beautiful Weddings

We were super excited to see one of our fall bouquets in the new edition of Eco-Beautiful Weddings!

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Eco-Beautiful Wedding is a great resource for couples that want to have an amazingly beautiful, eco-friendly wedding. It’s full of ideas for creative decor, fashion, floral…as well as loads of gorgeous photos.

Speaking of gorgeous photos…we are so grateful to be able to partner with like-minded, green vendors such as our friends at Balance Photography. We worked with them on a fun photo shoot back in October out at Thorpewood, one of our favorite, green venues. The bouquet above was commissioned for the shoot and complemented the woodsy, mountain venue perfectly. It was filled with locally grown magnolia, eucalyptus, amaranth, wheat, dahlias and monkey balls. It was wrapped in a simple burlap wrap.

Thanks to Balance Photography and Eco-Beautiful Weddings for including Local Color Flowers  in the Winter/Spring 2013 edition!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Local Color Flowers is now WIND Powered!

CC Logo Powered By LargeEveryday we’re excited about something new at our new Charles Village studio space. As part of our on-going commitment to becoming a more sustainable small business, we’re excited to announce that we’ve switched to wind power through Clean Currents.
Wonder why wind power is awesome? Here’s some reasons:
  • Wind power is the 2nd most renewable energy source after solar
  • Wind power is a green energy source that doesn’t pollute the environment
  • Wind power is abundant and can be harnessed anywhere-including in our own communities.
Switching to wind power with Clean Currents was simple and easy and took very little time.  We’re thrilled to be one of many socially conscious businesses that have made the switch to wind power. It’s another way that our small business can help our community and our environment.

Monday, December 3, 2012

It’s a Wrap!

The 2012 wedding season is officially over! What a season it’s been. We worked on 82 weddings this season. That is definitely up from the 56 we did last year.

But the story isn’t in the numbers.

It’s in the faces.

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It’s in the flowers.

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It’s in the growers.

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The story is in all the great people that we worked with this year.

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Thank you to everyone who helped to make our 2012 wedding season such a success! We’re grateful to all of you!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Packing. Working. Moving.

This is a crazy week! We are packing up the shed. The shed affectionately got it’s nickname from our friend Emily, who, when she visited for the first time said “I didn’t know you worked in a shed”. 

We’ve been in our Hampden studio for two years now. When we moved in it seemed so glorious. So much room! A private entrance! A bigger cooler! Close to home! And if I’m being honest, the shed had been mostly good to us. We’ve done over 125 weddings in there. It never lost power, even during “Derecho” when our cooler was filled with hundreds of hydrangeas and it was over 100 degrees out. And we’ve become a part of a funny little community of artisans that work in adjacent “sheds”.

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But we’ve out grown the space. I mean…we’re busting at the seams. So it’s time to go. Eric has been packing and moving and packing and moving. Tomorrow we’ll do our last event in the space. Then…

We’re off to Charles Village!

Things at our new studio are …still a work in progress. In fact, painting just started today!

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But we’re going! This Saturday’s wedding will be the first in the new space. I’m looking forward to a little kitchen, and a big cooler, and heat and AC! Soon…

Friday, November 9, 2012

Thanksgiving is coming! It’s Time To Order Flowers!

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is just two weeks away! If you’re like me, you’re already planning your menu (with loads of local food), strategizing about what the farmers markets will have and feeling hungry (and grateful) throughout the process.

Whether you’re hosting Thanksgiving yourself or spending the day at a friend’s or family member’s house, local flowers are a wonderful addition to any celebration.

Local Color Flowers is excited to offer a variety of locally grown Thanksgiving centerpieces, wreaths, door decorations and more. In the spirit of the original thanksgiving, we’ll use the best flowers, branches, berries and fruits that are available locally to create a unique, seasonal addition to any Thanksgiving dinner.

If you have a large dinner table, maybe you’d like this 12 inch long centerpiece (could be made in a vintage wood box as well) filled with seasonal flowers (colors may vary depending on availability), ornamental cabbage, seed pods, veggies (can you find the brussel sprouts in there??) succulents and more!

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Or maybe you’d like to wow your guests with an adorable centerpiece made in a locally grown pumpkin or gourd.

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Don’t forget to decorate your door or mantle with a naturally styled wreath made with local berries, greens, branches, pine cones and more. (berry colors will vary depending on availability)

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Door swags are super cute too!

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Finally, if you want to bring your hosts a great little gift, how about Baltimore only ALL LOCAL gift basket! Filled with some of Baltimore’s favorite “stuff”, the basket is a great way to celebrate the goodness our region has to offer

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Buying local this Thanksgiving! To order, fill out the form on our website and someone will be in touch with you to go over the details (pricing, delivery etc). Or you can call me (410-262-1494) or email me ellen@locoflo.com

Thursday, November 8, 2012

LoCoFlo Swag Courtesy Of CommonSEED-press

I absolutely love our new LoCoFlo tees and hoodies! I’ve been wanting them for sooo long and now…here they are!

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Each tee and hoody has a different flower from our logo on the front.

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They’re awesome!

I first met Michael Clark of CommonSEED-press at a Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance meeting a few years ago. Michael was passionate about his work as a small, sustainable print shop. CommonSEED-press is located here in Baltimore and is committed to using water-based ink and organic cotton to produce a truly sustainable product. They’ve worked on apparel for some great local businesses including Hamilton Tavern and Woodberry Kitchen.

As happens with a lot of things, tee shirts and hoodies were something I wanted, but spending the time to design/create them always got pushed to the bottom of my list. A few weeks ago, for my 40th birthday, Eric showed up at the studio with boxes of LoCoFlo tee-shirts and sweathshirts!  He had worked with Michael and CommonSeed-press to create great looking, comfortable, sustainable apparel that we can wear at work, on deliveries and for fun.

I love them-and if you’ve seen me in the last few weeks, you’ll notice that my LoCoFlo hoody has become my favorite article of clothing!

Now that we’ve started, we’re hoping to have LoCoFlo “stuff” available for sale in the near future. Stay tuned for availability and options.

Special thanks to CommonSEED-press for their great work!

Sunday, October 28, 2012

A Trip to the National Arboretum

On Tuesday, while my dad was in town visiting, we decided to take a ride to the National Arboretum. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the ride down the BW Parkway was just gorgeous.  I’ve ridden by the entrance to the National Arboretum on New York Avenue almost once a week for 2 or 3 years on my way into DC to pick up flowers. You’d think I would have stopped…just once even…to check it out.  But nope…I just kept driving right on by.

What was I thinking??? The National Arboretum is awesome! It is a truly beautiful space that would be enjoyable for anyone to visit. You can walk, run, picnic, explore and more!

The first thing we went to see was the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. I don’t know anything about Bonsai (I cant wait for the winter to read books about Bonsai!) or Penjing (which I think is the Chinese version on Bonsai). Right now, the Autumn Bonsai Exhibit called “Beautiful Transitions” is in full “bloom”. It was incredible to see dozens of miniature trees and landscapes, some over 100 years old,  in full Fall color!

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Next, we walked around the perennial gardens and herb gardens. Even though it was late in the season, there were so many things blooming-I could have spent hours just touching and smelling things…and writing down things I want our growers to grow!

As we were touring around, from a distance we could see a huge field of purple and gold flowers with large …columns.

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The National Capitol Columns were the original columns from the East Portico of the Capitol building in Washington DC. When the Capitol was renovated in 1958, the columns were removed and put in storage. In the 1980’s, the columns found their permanent home on 20 acres of open meadow inside the arboretum. The view was stunning.

We finished our visit by driving around and looking at some of the other permanent collections (dogwoods, boxwoods, ferns) and making plans for a many more return visits!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Night Time Progress Meeting in Charles Village

So…at the end of July, we bought a super awesome building in Charles Village that will eventually become LoCoFlo’s permanent home.  Luckily, I used to work in construction so we have some amazing folks working with us to this little warehouse into a “home”.  Tonight, Eric and I stopped over to meet with the project manager to see how things were going. Of course, as we were driving over there, we remembered… there are no lights yet.

So here’s what I could see in the dark.

New skylights!!

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The future location of the cooler…

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And the new soffit! (bordering the new roof!!)

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While it may not look like much, to us it’s progress!

Coming this week…a little “kitchenette” and a fabulous new cooler/coolbot!

Stay tuned!

Monday, October 1, 2012

Howdy Neighbors!

Even though we are still several weeks away from moving into our new home in Charles Village, we got to meet some of our new neighbors at the Abell Street Fair last week. We set up a table to spread the news of Baltimore's best florist moving in to the 'hood.

2012 Abell Street Fair Fun!

We gave away boutonnieres to some lucky and high-stylin' fair goers, we sold some beautiful bouquets of locally grown flowers and had a generally awesome time. We loved the children's parade, Jazz Lunch grooved hard, and The Black Marks rocked our faces off. Thanks to Drew Walker and the Abell Improvement Association for a great day!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Baltimore’s Best Florist!

bob 2The City Paper’s Best of Baltimore came out today and guess who was named Baltimore’s Best Florist…Local Color Flowers! 

This has been such an exciting year for LoCoFlo! We brought on a great new designer, Carling Elder. We bought a permanent home in Charles Village which we’ll move into in a few months.  We’ve taken on new, creative projects and worked with more and more amazing clients and….Eric is going to be working full time on LoCoFlo starting next month! Woo Hoo!

One thing that hasn’t changed though, is our commitment to buying the most gorgeous, locally grown flowers from Maryland and Virginia’s most awesome flower farmers and using them to create beautiful, natural designs for our clients.

Thank you to the City Paper for naming us “Best Florist! We couldn’t be more excited!

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Thanks to all of our growers that work in the fields every single day growing flowers, foliage, herbs succulents and more for us to work with! We are so, so grateful to you for your hard work!

Thanks to all of our partners who refer us, who are kind and wonderful to work with, who give us advice and promote our work.

Finally, thanks to each and everyone of our amazing clients. Whether you’ve bought one arrangement from us or you’re our biggest wedding client. Thank you for buying local! Thanks for proving that doing the right thing is important…and beautiful. Thanks for making LoCoFlo Baltimore’s Best Florist!

Monday, September 17, 2012

Bringing Locally Grown Flowers to AIWF’s Farm to Chef Culinary Competition at AVAM

farm to chefDo you love local food, farmers and chefs? Do you care about community programs that teach Baltimore City kids about fresh food, where it comes from and how to prepare it? If you do…Farm to Chef is for you! Farm to Chef is taking place on Monday, September 24th at the American Visionary Arts Museum at 6:30. It’s an extravaganza of local food provided by local farms and cooked up by local chefs. It’s set up “top chef” style, so you can go around sampling all of the delicious offerings. Of course, there are judges (including Lucie Snodgrass – one of my favorite food writers EVER) and prizes and all sorts of cool surprises too.

While the Buy Local movement and Farm to Chef  is heavily focused on food, Local Color Flowers is excited to be donating locally grown flowers from some amazing local flower farmers including Farmhouse Flowers, Plantmasters, Seaberry Farm and more.  We’ll be showcasing the flowers, the farms and the super cool growers we work with everyday.  We’’re excited to share our designs with all the locavores that will be attending.

If you haven’t gotten a ticket yet, get one today! You don’t want to miss out!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

My Little Room

I have a new theme song. It’s called “Little Room” by the White Stripes. It’s only 5o seconds long –but it hits home every time I listen to it.

Check it out…

Given the lyrics, you can probably guess what my focus has been these last few weeks. We bought our new building just over two weeks ago. Whenever someone asks me “what’s going on with the building?” my response is…nothing much yet.   Although that’s not exactly true.

We’ve been working on a layout for the space.  (in addition to getting pricing for a roof  and hvac and electrical and plumbing).

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It’s just a rectangle and it’s twice as big as our current space…so why is it so hard to figure out where everything will go? I’m trying to balance the big dreams, with the logistics of our operations… not to mention cost, style and comfort and the fact that the space is big (but it’s not that big!).

Eric could see I was getting bogged down with so many things to consider. That’s when he told me about a (great) NPR story about a dude in Detroit and the White Stripes and the “little room” song.

The White Stripes advice is right on…

“Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started
sitting in your little room”.

I might not know exactly what to do with the space yet…but if I take a minute to focus on the great business we’ve built and the relationships we’re growing and the farmers we work with and the fabulous clients we get to meet…I know that THAT is what’s important and all of the details of our “bigger room” are going to come together…eventually!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

LoCoFlo Presents: The “All-Local” Gift Basket!

This past week our good friend Chef Beej Flamholz asked if we could make up a small flower arrangement with some “Baltimore items” for a friend of his that was visiting Baltimore. Leave it to Beej to always be thinking how to incorporate local products into his personal AND professional life.

I was super excited to work on this project because for a while I  had been thinking about a “farmers market gift basket”.  This was  the perfect opportunity to try it out.

I first put together a great  quart sized mason jar of locally grown flowers in “Maryland” colors. I know, I was stretching it a little, but using the beautiful “red” hibiscus foliage from Lynnvale Studio was  a must. They looked great with false sunflowers, cosmos foliage and big, beautiful hydrangeas from Farmhouse Flowers.

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Next I went down to one of my fave cupcakes places…Charm City Cupcakes in Mt Washington. I picked up two of their signature cupcakes-the Black Eyed Susan and the Pimlico.  They are both so good and a perfect addition to our basket.

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Since it was Friday morning and there was no farmers market open close to me, I headed over to the Baltimore Food Co-Op in Remington. The co-op is open to the public  and is full of our favorite local products. For this gift basket we included Zeke’s coffee (Tell Tale Dark-of course), Old Bay Hummus from Wild Pea, delish cheddar from Trickling Springs Creamery, Basil vinegar from Infused Spreads, and more! Of course, we had to stick a City Paper in there to give the recipient a good taste of what Baltimore’s about!

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Gift baskets like these perfect for gifts for any occasions. They are totally customizable depending what you love (baking, coffee, wine, bbq, gardening and more) and are a great way to show off where you live. Make your own or call us and we’ll create one for you!

Thanks Beej!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

June’s “You Deserve A Bouquet Today” Contest Winner: Grandma Barb

Local Color Flowers has been celebrating every day people in Baltimore for over a year with our “You Deserve A Bouquet Today” contest. Each month we accept nominations from folks who write a small explanation as to why their nominee should win. We have happy, sad, funny and just plain weird nominations. We love them all!

June’s nominees were no different. This month’s winner is Grandma Barb! Barb’s daughter Emily nominated her to win writing:

“I am nominating my mother, who really deserves a bouquet today! After working three days a week as a physical therapist, she spends her other two weekdays watching my 10 month old daughter so I can go to work. She is truly an all-star who keeps our family together. Please vote for Grandma Barb!”

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Barb received a bouquet of locally grown sunflowers, lisianthus, lilies and asters from Farmhouse Flowers. From the picture, it looks like she liked them!

Congratulations to Grandma Barb! Thanks for being a super mom and grandmom!

Do you have someone you’d like to nominate to win free flowers? All you have to do is submit a short write up about why your nominee should win. We’ll post the submissions for voting and if your nominee has the most votes..they win!

Monday, August 6, 2012

Grubwithus in Baltimore

Grubwithus LogoI’ve been listening to a fantastic podcast for the past year called Mixergy. Host Andrew Warner interviews entrepreneurs about their start-ups in an in depth and totally useful way. I’ve heard loads of awesome interviews on there but one of my favorite was with the founder of Grubwithus, Eddy Lu.

Lu tells the story of how he went from owning several Beard Papa franchises (super delish cream puffs from japan that landed in California) to starting Grubwithus. Grubwithus is a social media company that helps put together meals between strangers who might have something in common.  The way it works is you go to the website and search for your city. You can then see when meals are being offered (Chicago Sushi Lovers, San Francisco Singles, Baseball and Chat) and sign up. You meet at the designated restaurant, eat a delish meal and chit chat. Has anyone reading gone to a “grub” before?

The idea was brilliant to me. I immediately signed up (it’s free) but noticed that there were no meals scheduled for Baltimore. (figures!). You can start your own meal if you want. You just need 4 people to sign up and then it’s a go. I was going to make a meal…but then I saw that the Baltimore Entrepreneurs group is having their first “grub” in few weeks!! Hooray! I signed-up. I haven’t been told the location yet because they need a few more people to sign up first. So…I’m calling out to all Baltimore entrepreneurs. This is a cool way to share a meal and make connections with other folks like you here in Baltimore. Spread the word!

I’m going! Are you?

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

It’s Official! Local Color Flowers is moving to Charles Village!

As many of you know, LoCoFlo has been searching for a permanent home for a while now. Our criteria for a space included: close to home, preferably in the city, one story, space for indoor loading and at least 1500 square feet. Apparently, that kind of space is not easy to find. We searched and searched. We were even ready to buy a spot that fit a few of the criteria but was a bad fit in other ways. And then…we found this jewel in Charles Village.

This 2,000 sq/ft warehouse is perfect! It’s 3 miles from home, it has natural light (including sky lights), it’s got space for the locoroll, space for client meetings and classes and work and offices and parties! It’s in a great neighborhood and it’s only 1 block from the year round 32nd Street Farmers Market.

This new space is going to allow us to do all of the things we’ve been talking about and planning for for years. Eventually, we’ll start offering classes, open studio time, parties, a speakers series, a book club, market morning breakfasts and more!

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Now, before I get ahead of myself, let me say, we are going to have to do several months of work to get it ready. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to move in sometime close to the end of the year. If things going slower than expected, maybe early in 2013.  In the meantime, I’ll do a twice monthly post here on the blog to keep you updated on our progress.  You can also follow-us on Facebook where we’ll post updates and follow-us on Pinterest where we’ve been collecting inspiration for the space.

It may not look like much to you now, but we’re dreaming big! (or at least better!)

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This is a huge step in the life our business. From our early days of working in my dining room, to working in the back of the Michael Group’s offices, to working in our Hampden garage studio, to buying this building which will become our permanent home. We are so grateful and excited and overwhelmed! Thank you to everyone who helped us get to this point. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you at the Grand Opening!