This is a collaborative post created with flower delivery company Flowerbe. Get 50% discount off any first order of flowers with the code ‘cate’.
January is a time for fresh beginnings and reflection, retreating indoors and nesting. But with those grey days and dark evenings, we all need little joys that can help uplift the everyday. So this month I’ve teamed up with Flowerbe to show a few simple ways that you can bring the outside in – to refresh and brighten up the home for the start of the new year.
Because once we’ve shaken off the excess of Christmas, we’re often in need of something palette cleansing. For me that means a cleaner colour palette and an understated, minimal aesthetic. When the leaves have fallen from the trees and everything is looking a little bare outdoors, bunches of fresh greenery and bright, white blooms dotted around the home can help uplift the spirits and inject a bit of life into an interior. It’s all about appealing to the senses and feeding the soul, with cosy moments and simple pleasures.
If you’re not familiar with Flowerbe, let me introduce them. Set up by brother and sister team Lisa Roberts and Sean Millard, Flowerbe supplies beautifully curated selections of loose-cut flowers, edited each month to suit a new creative theme.
Flowerbe’s selections are designed as an antidote to the standard, mass-produced flowers you see in the supermarkets. Instead of a pre-arranged bouquet, stems come loose and in multiple varieties, to inspire customers to get creative and make exciting displays in their own homes. It’s about adding your personal style and having fun with it. Says Flowerbe:
‘The flowers all look the same, in every store. You get home, ‘plonk’ them in a vase and that’s it. We think there should be more to the experience of bringing flowers into your home: allowing you to express yourself; styling your home with the seasons.
We want you to rediscover the joy, art and creativity of flowers, the whole essence of taking time and experiencing what it is like to create something beautiful, something unique and something to be proud of.’
For January’s curation, I chose fresh white and soft, grey-green varieties to style up a natural, woodland-inspired table setting. Different sized vessels form a relaxed, informal centrepiece along the table, with sprigs of delicate eucalyptus simply arranged around them. I used various height vases to create texture and layers, with individual stems of narcissus, hypericum and natural birch. It’s a really easy look to achieve if you have old jam jars, glasses and vintage tumblers lying about. It certainly doesn’t need to look perfect.
Candlelight provides a soft glow in the darker days, while each person’s place setting is made a little bit special with a decorative dish of ranunculus. Inspired by the Swedish tradition of ‘Fika’ – taking time out of the day to relax and enjoy coffee and something sweet – I can imagine gathering friends around the table on a cosy afternoon for freshly baked cinnamon buns and warming cups of coffee. Making a little effort goes a long way, transforming an everyday moment into something extraordinary.
For January, Flowerbe are offering a choice of three different selections. There’s the Tall selection, which pairs creamy yellow lilies with Lisianthus, frothy green Thlaspi and blue thistles. Or my personal favourite, the Short selection (first image below) that features paper white narcissus, elegant ranunculus, natural birch, mixed variety eucalyptus and wintery white Hypericum.
When I buy flowers I always like to split up the stems and dot them around the house, so every corner can be filled with a bit of greenery. It also means you can eek out arrangements for longer, discarding stems that are past their best and saving others in smaller vases. To increase the lifespan of your flowers, remember to change the water every couple of days and cut off any leaves or foliage below the water to prevent it stagnating.
As you can see my mini dachshund puppy Francis wanted to get in on the action behind the scenes and was a little star in front of the camera!
Below is the third selection, the Market Special, which includes stems from both the Short and the Tall selections. It makes a show-stopping, standalone bouquet or it can too be divided up. Below, I used simple picture frames to create a vibrant shelf display with single stems and branches. You could also press flowers and use dried stems to last through to Spring.
To finish off with, here are some more pictures of my tablescape, lit up with some simple tea lights. Because I always think candles shouldn’t just be saved for best. My mum always taught me to light a candle at dinner, even if we were just having cheese on toast, and it’s a habit that’s stuck. Now one of my favourite winter indulgences is lighting candles during the day when I’m working or if I have friends over during the day.
Also with flowers, don’t be afraid to trim them and have a play with their petals. Cutting the stems off these ranunculus and arranging them in a shallow dish with a little water creates a delicate, unusual display. Instead of the stems drooping after a few days, this way it allows you to appreciate the beauty of the flower heads for longer.
To help brighten up your January, Flowerbe are offering my readers a 50% discount off any first order of flowers with the code ‘cate’. What better way to bring joy to the everyday and find a moment of calm than with some floral faffing. Shop the January flower selections here.
Images: Jason Ingram, courtesy Flowerbe, and last eight images, but one: Cate St Hill
