Jo's Boys

Mini Roses

 

This is actually a very, very small arrangement... it is smaller than the faucet on the kitchen sink, which it is sitting near...

It's called Ikebana

And it's basically the art of Japanese flower arranging.

It's very minimalistic (which I love).

Here's what you do:  you need fresh flowers, but instead of putting them all in a vase, you use a flower frog or "kenzan" (which is a small metal spiked flower stem holder, basically) and you put that flower frog/ kenzan into the bottom of a beautiful container of some sort (or you buy a container that already has the flower frog/kenzan in it) and you carefully choose and arrange a few flowers and you get something like this:

Well, okay.

This container is probably a hundred dollars or so, and it might take a whole lot of reading/training/classes/practice before you can do something this stunning, but this is the general idea of what Ikebana is. 

Isn't it beautiful??

I'm very minimalistic in my decorating styles.  Which is actually an understatement.  I have entire rooms in my house devoid of furniture.  I can't stand any kinds of decorations or knick knacks or whatever those sorts of collectible objects are called. 

But goshdarn do I love minimalistic fresh flower arrangements.

***** Memory Flashback *****

It was the year 1995.  I had just left my hideously evil ex-husband.  I had a one-year-old and was desperately trying to slam my way through my Bachelor's degree.  I was on welfare... the whole package... food stamps/AFDC/the whole meal deal.  I lived in the cheapest one-bedroom apartment there was ~ in the projects, basically.  To say that my life was devoid of beauty was an understatement. 

But my Aunt sent to me a couple of ikebana containers that she called "flower frogs" ~ pretty much like this picture in that they were enclosed and you could just add water, but the ones she sent were square and not round.

Very minimalistic.  Very classic.  I had never seen them before. 

And, yes, I took a little bit of the money that I literally did not have (back then I was worried to death about feeding my one-year-old and keeping the utilities from being cut off, which they very often were) and I bought a small bit of fresh flowers and I cut them and added them to the kitchen, which doubled as my bedroom

(Yes, you read that correctly.  The kitchen doubled as my bedroom for in my one-bedroom apartment the one bedroom I gave to my one-year-old)

and just those few cut, fresh flowers arranged in that flower frog changed the whole place from poor/welfare single mother/projects to bright and hopeful. 

Somewhere, somehow in the no less than eleven (yes, ELEVEN) moves I have gone through in the last eleven years the original flower frogs she sent have been lost.  But thank the Lord they are sold at Michael's craft stores!!  And now that the house is on the market, most every room contains a small Ikebana arrangement of fresh flowers.  :)

I'll try to get pictures....

UPDATE: 

I went upstairs and got pictures of my three favorite Ikebanaesque flower arrangements that I have going on right now. 

This one is actually in Oldest's bedroom. 

Oldest has a sort of outdoorsy/camo theme going on, so I had to use plain river rock sorts of pebbles at the bottom of the glass container.  They cover the flower frog/flower pin/kenzan (whatever name you want to use for the metal spikes) nicely.  I like the contrast of having standing water and stones in there.

Cost of glass container:  $3

Cost of pebbles:  probably $1

Cost of kenzan:  roughly $1.50

This arrangement is in the boys' bathroom. 

I wish the picture turned out better so that you could also see that the little glass pebbles shimmer, but you cannot :(   ... you'll just have to take my word for it....

This bowl was more expensive...

Bowl:  $6 or so

Kenzan:  $4

Pebbles:  $3.50

This is upstairs sitting on the top of a low bookshelf.

The area needs a LOT of color, for it is pretty much bare.

Same as above:  everything purchased (except the fresh flowers) at Michael's

Bowl:  $3

Pebbles:  $2

Kenzan: $1.50

I just love these things!