I misspoke (typed) the other day. It has not slowed down. Which we're glad for!

Dropping in real fast to remind you today is the last until after Christmas for you to pick up your free bouquets with the certificate!

Okay! Back to centerpieces!

Catching Up with Christmas

Whew! We know it's been awhile since we've posted. That's because well, Thanksgiving happened and then the grave blankets came in and then we were overwhelmed with daily orders...wow. What a crazy few weeks!

In the meantime, Pam had a beautiful wedding:


Soft pink hydrangeas, with white roses, pink spray roses and pink hypericum berries and touches of silver wire wrapped throughout the flowers and around the stems. Gorgeous.

Are you guys ready for Christmas? We can't wait! Our poinsettias are quickly leaving the shop and the days are dwindling down. We're featuring three Teleflora bouquets this year: the Candy Cane Present,
Have a Ball & their way too cute Mixing Bowl Bouquet embellished with gingerbread men.

The first part of Christmas is part of our busiest season, so the blog should be back more frequently now. Now I've got to get back to designing!

Open House: The Winners

Hey guys! You made our open house awesome. Thanks for coming out! Were you one of our lucky winners? I hope so!

Check out the list!

Our winners of...
The Fresh Arrangements:
LaDonna Boatman, Janell Cullison & Nancy Wingo

The Silk Arrangements:
Janie Hall (Thanksgiving silk centerpiece)
Vesta Morton (Christmas silk)

The Poinsettias:
Tammy Baird, Naomi Compton, Ruth Walker, Karen Bauman, Debbie Bourbonnais, Brenda Leister, Aline Smith, Diane Willis, Audrey McRorey, Mamie Aber, Lysa Walkingstick.

And as for those grand prizes...

Tammy Gonzalez! (Gary Allan autographed Guitar)
Rita Buford! (Arrangement Every Month for a Year)
Charles Gorman! (One Night Stay for 2 at the Renaissance Hotel)



Congratulations to all our winners! We had a great time and hope we got you all revved up for the Christmas season!

Open House: The Morning Setup

Opening pictures from this morning, before everything got started...

Oo...our home setup in beautiful brick reds & chocolates. Yum.





Next up is our Platinum & Gold tree, complete with the natural elements of pinecones and maple leaves.





And everyone is raving about our autographed guitar! Signed by Gary Allan, singer of "Watching Airplanes," "Nothing On But the Radio" and "Life Ain't Always Beautiful." Check it out:

Open House

Whew! It's our Christmas Open House today and we've spent our morning greeting guests and giving away lots of prizes! So far we've already had several poinsettias go out as well as some fresh & silk arrangements-- and it's only 11:30!

We're looking forward to giving away our grand prizes later today. I'll be posting pictures soon!

Be sure to drop by and mention you saw this on our blog for an additional 10% off already storewide discounts.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow!

This is it! Our Christmas Open House is tomorrow!

We've got hourly prizes, we've got discounts, we've got beautiful fresh cut flowers, we've got it all! Come see us for a 10% storewide discount, not to mention an EXTRA 10% if you mention you saw the ad on our blog. That's a potential 20% on top of already marked down items.

Awesome.

Be sure to be here at 8:00 to register and have chances all day to win, but if you can't make it then, stop by anytime! We'd love to see you!

It's the most wonderful time....

It's Open House time!

This Friday, November 13th, be sure to be here as we give away fantastic hourly prizes, share Chicago St. Deli cookies & some peppermint punch & rock out the beginning of our Christmas. Discounts galore: 10% off all in-store purchases all day and an ADDITIONAL 10% off if you mention you saw this on our blog or website!

But we know what you're really thinking: Did you say....prizes?

Hourly prizes including beautiful fresh arrangements, lovely silk arrangements & some Oklahoma-grown poinsettias. And we haven't even mentioned the autographed guitar by one of the bands featured at the ZooAmp this past summer!

Wait...an autographed guitar? (...Alan Jackson? Montgomery Gentry??)

And then there's the Grand Prizes (drumroll please):

The First: A fresh floral bouquet from us to you every month for a year!

The Second: A one night stay for two at the Renaissance Hotel in OKC!


How can you afford to miss it? We'll also have a live radio remote by Pure Country 105.9 hanging out with us all day. We'll be open our regular hours, from 8 to 5 and you can drop by anytime.

We can't wait to see your faces!

"This is Halloween, Halloween..."

We're swamped this week! Whew! Thanks for all the work you guys! But we'll still be happy to take your last minute Halloween bouquets. We love making fresh arrangements in fresh pumpkins!

Have a (safe) and happy halloweeeeeeeen from all of us at Graves! Let's do the Monster Mash!

Weddings: Blue Hydrangeas

This past week we had a small, yet lovely, wedding. The bride wanted it to be very simple with cornflower blues and pure yellows (and a little white to accent).





She decided to go with blue hydrangeas & yellow & white roses to create a very simplistic yet full effect. The bridesmaids were smaller versions, except with yellow spray roses in place of the regular size roses. And the bouquet was gathered together with a matching blue ribbon and a soft yellow bow to tie it off. Gorgeous!

Happy Fall to all! We've let the season get to us and the proof is in the design! Check out our hair-raising spider arrangement, guaranteed to spook your loved ones or give your table top that creepy, Halloween feel! We can style it how you like, big or small so come in and pick one up today. You'll be amazed at how long this little guy will last, too...

A Taste of Christmas

Christmas has started arriving and the elves of Graves are working. Come in and get some sneak peeks of our Christmas open house!

Gift Certificates

We have a hot new promotion going on right now -- we have gift certificates on sale for $20.00, which enables you all year long to receive free wrapped flowers!

We've had a lot of questions on how this works, so here's how it goes. Every month your card is labeled with the special arrangement for that month. We'll have it ready for you to pickup whenever you like in that time-frame. Just be sure you bring your certificate with you to the shop!

If you would like your arrangement upgraded into a vase with more flowers, we would be happy to arrange them for you and the cost would be discounted. These upgrades can be delivered for the delivery fee, while the wraps cannot.

The only time the certificates are not valid for pickup is six days before Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving & Christmas.

These make fantastic gifts for others! Who wouldn't love to receive free fresh flowers for a year? They are also available through the Shawnee High School tennis team as a fundraiser!

Fall has arrived....

...and we have beautiful fall flowers in. Ranging from fall mums to cattails to hypericum berries, we have it all. Be sure to spruce up your home with all these brilliant colors!

We've started re-arranging and sprucing up our front! It's time to tear down all the summer and bring in fall and (psst...dare we say it?) Christmas! Our pretty Christmas silks will be sneaking their way up soon!

Non-Traditional Easel Designs

We're bored. It's rainy.

So we were looking through our files and decided to share some of our more unique easel forms!






Forgive the fact that the floor's showing--it's not that great a picture. But this is one of my favorite sympathy arrangements we've made. Check out the blend of those dahlias & stargazers! I love its unusual form.









It's hard to go wrong when you're working with stargazers, roses & calla lilies (not to mention all-white is always incredibly elegant). Hopefully your eye follows through the pretty flow in the design-- ours does!






This one (left) is actually a Teleflora design, made in our shop, but being fall I thought the sunflowers were appropriate. You can just make out the stems showing through at the bottom of the design, as if it had just been picked. That curly willow is showing off too!






While we enjoy a lot of styles & areas of design, one of our biggest focuses is customized sympathy work. We will work with you on whatever your loved one would want- whether it be traditional, non-traditional, OU (or OSU!), just greenery, only flowers, etc... We'll keep showing some of our favorites to give you an idea. This is where our heart is at.

In other news, we've discovered this neat little project called 3/50 that focuses on ensuring our small businesses for the future. Be on the lookout for more info on that in the coming days!

"All I want to do oo oo oo oo......."

Now that we have that song circling your head... :)

We had a fantastic opportunity this week to design for the band Sugarland! Our own Jill Smith created this arrangement (see right) for the duo, who are the mainstage act tonight at the OKC Zoo Amphitheater. We hope they have a great show!

Princess Day

Last week we had a special visitor to our shop! Our customer Wendy and her niece Hannah came to play with us one day. After planning a princess day with all of Hannah's friends (complete with afternoon tea party) they wanted some beautiful flowers to give that finishing touch for the occasion. Hannah braved the cooler temps of our refrigerators and thoroughly enjoyed picking out her very own flowers.

We checked afterward and Hannah had a wonderful time at her tea party! We're glad we could help her celebrate her very own princess day!

Labor Day

Hey, we're back in full swing! We've been pretty busy today after our nice long weekend, but we were ready & prepared for the onslaught. All of us enjoyed a variety of activities: grandkid watching, tubing at the lake, shopping... whew! Bobby even started teaching his grandson how to ride! :)

So we're taking a survey. What kind of fresh flowers would YOU like to see in the shop? Come by & tell us or let us know in the comments! Oh , and just so you know, we've got a wide variety of plants in this week. Check 'em out!

Closing for the Weekend

We've had a wonderful crazy week here! All sorts of beautiful tropicals came in, our special calla lilies & gerbers, a wedding of gorgeous blue hydrangeas...

Just a reminder: we'll be closed on Saturday (the 5th) and Monday (the 7th) for Labor Day weekend. Enjoy your holiday! We'll see you on Tuesday!

Flowers of the Week

Hello! Everyone got their Monday out of the way?

This week we're featuring calla lilies and, since they went so well last week, gerber daisies again! Calla lilies are gorgeous flowers (see right) that come in all colors. We often have requests for them, so don't miss out!

In case you haven't met the gerber daisy, let's introduce you (see left). One of the friendliest flowers, the gerber is sure to lift your day. In all their pretty bright color, how can you go wrong? Call today!

The Redecorating Bug....

While the buildings have stood still for 100 years, we can't. We're constantly working to keep up with the trends and latest floral and design ideas to keep ourselves fresh.
That's why we've decided to start redecorating. The changes will start small at first-- mostly behind the scenes work to ensure our efficiency. But as that dust clears the changes will go forward and be more visible. Come in and check out our progress! We hope to have a lot done by the open house in November, so that would be a perfect time to stop in and visit. Have any ideas or anything you would like to see? Tell us in the comments! And keep an eye out here for continued updates on our latest endeavor.

Our special on dahlias & gerber daisies is over for now, but stay tuned for what exciting things we have in store next week.

Preparations

We all have our thinking caps on for our (drumroll please) annual Open House! We've already started preparations, so you should plan on being here in November. We'll leak out further details as we go along...

Wow, those gerbers & dahlias are going fast this week! Get in on the fun, stop by soon!

Changes!

Welcome to our new blog! This is a great way for us to keep in touch with you, our customer, and give you the latest updates! Keep an eye out here for fun facts about our staff, flower tips and best of all behind the scenes glimpses into the shop.

Be sure to ask about our flowers of the week: this time we're focusing on dahlias and gerber daisies! Both are knockouts! Hope to hear from you soon!