A Different Kind of Recipe Book

Photo from Homestead Design Collective

If there’s one thing I love as much as I love recipes, cooking, wine and food, it’s FLOWERS. Even on a budget, our house has some kind of fresh flowers in it (don’t get me started on plants, that’s a whole series of posts).

If I could have a flower shop that also serves light bites and wine, oh man, that would be heaven. So, you can imagine how happy I was when I found The Flower Recipe Book created by Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo of Studio Choo out of San Francisco. Y’ALL. It’s a recipe book to assemble the perfect flower arrangements.

We’re lucky here in Austin to have Austin Flower Company and Central Market that has an array of fresh and some times hard to find flowers from this book. I had a lot of fun with the hunt to find some of these flowers and the assembly was almost spiritual (?) in nature. I guess that’s I love assembling flowers, it’s calming and awakens all the senses at the same time - the different textures, colors and smells of each flower and the final product is so stunning.

Some of my favorite “recipes” were:

Astilbe, Recipe 3 - featuring alstroemeria, heuchera leaves, hypericum berries, ranunculus, dahlias, roses, poppies, astilbe. Editor’s note: I made this when we had some of kid’s friends were over one night and received so many comments on pretty they were!

Cyclamen, Recipe 2 - featuring hebe, snowberries, air plants and cylamen

Lisianthus, Recipe 2 -featuring lisianthks, amaranths, roses, viburnum berries and feathers (SO PRETTY!)

Protea, Recipe 2 - featuring king protea, sprays of smoke bush (one of my favorites), protea, yarrow, sedum

Sweet Pea, Recipe 1 - featuring sweet pea, Christmas bush and spray mums