Living West Michigan
Breakaway Brilliance - Living in Bloom with J Schwanke
Clip: Season 1 | 4m 18sVideo has Closed Captions
J Schwanke and Kylie Ambu create centerpieces using random containers found around the house!
J Schwanke and Kylie Ambu create centerpieces using random containers found around the house!
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Living West Michigan is a local public television program presented by WGVU
Living West Michigan
Breakaway Brilliance - Living in Bloom with J Schwanke
Clip: Season 1 | 4m 18sVideo has Closed Captions
J Schwanke and Kylie Ambu create centerpieces using random containers found around the house!
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(upbeat music) - So we have some beautiful flowers, we have some fancy looking tools.
J, what are we making today?
- We are gonna make a breakaway centerpiece.
When you and I were talking about it, I think that it's fun to bring flowers home, right?
- Of course.
- But then sometimes we wanna maximize it.
And what can we do that would make it bigger or better yet?
Flowers all around the house.
- Love that.
- So we have a bouquet.
This is a bouquet that you could pick up at any grocery store or a flower seller, anything like that.
And so we're just gonna cut the band on it.
It comes with these packets.
So it's always great for us to put the packets in the water, measure, on the back directions, pour 'em into the vases.
And so we go in, we never use a scissors to cut our flowers.
- No scissors.
But we use bypass cutters, I also use a knife, but that's dangerous, this is better.
- Yeah, no, this is safer for me, thank you.
- So then choose your flowers and you can put those into those vases.
So now we have great things like, I love this, I love a spray chrysanthemum, because a spray chrysanthemum is big, it has a lot of different things on it.
We're gonna pull off any leaves that fall below the water line.
- Okay.
- And drop it into our vase.
- There are a lot of leaves, let me just... - Ask if we want it to be shorter, we can make it shorter too.
The shortcut is always your your best friend.
- Oh, I think I may have cut a flower, but that's... - That's okay.
Well, I think the great part about this is that we can take these flowers and we can do fun things with them.
So this is called Echinops, it's a type of thistle.
And so I can stick that down in this vase, and you know what, I'm gonna cut 'em even shorter.
And then when I do that, it almost makes an armature to go around the flower.
- Yes, it's like a hug.
- Exactly, exactly, it's so cute.
This is called hypericum.
- I was gonna ask, these are beautiful.
- This is St. John's Wort.
- Okay.
- So it's the fruit of St. John's Wort, there's over 27 different varieties.
- Wow.
- All different colors.
- These have to be the prettiest, 'cause they're gorgeous, I'm assuming, I can't imagine prettier ones than this.
- Well, I think that that's great.
- Something I'm noticing is that I cut way too short.
And is it good for beginners to maybe start slow on where they're cutting their stems?
- Sure, take a look at it, absolutely.
But I mean, at the same time, look at this guy.
I just want that little piece of foliage off the bottom there.
But see, look at how crowding these guys in here are all gonna be fine, look at that.
- That is true.
- When you do it, it looks so much easier.
- Okay, so that's the thing.
We have to get comfortable with it.
And so when you're getting comfortable with it, I want you to take time to enjoy it.
Because there's health and wellness benefits that go with arranging flowers.
And so one of the things that's really important is that we are taking time to experience those flowers.
Now as we do this and what we're gonna do and create with this, we're gonna be able to put these all around the house so we can put one in the bathroom, we can put one in the bedroom, we have all sorts of different opportunities to do that.
So see, look at how those two little guys can go in there to together.
- That is beautiful.
And I love that you're kind of getting the most out of your flower investment with this.
- Absolutely, because if we've got 'em all around the house, it's the perfect way to do it, it's a perfect way to be living in bloom.
- Absolutely.
- With your flowers.
- I love what you did there, putting the petal to the metal and living in bloom.
- You're the best.
- I'm not dandelion about that, you can tell I came very prepared for this today.
- Yes, you did, you're awesome.
Well, thank you very much, thanks for letting me show you the breakaway centerpiece.
- Absolutely, thank you.
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Clip: S1 | 4m 18s | J Schwanke and Kylie Ambu create centerpieces using random containers found around the house! (4m 18s)
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