Baltimore’s Best Florist!

The 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!

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!

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

Do 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!

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).

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!”

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!

Grubwithus in Baltimore

I’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?

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!

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!)

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!