[BODEGA FLOWERS] Hot Pink Carnations
Friday, May 7, 2010 at 07:28AM | by Erica 
Twice a month, I'll take you on a journey...a journey to your bodega. We will buy flowers there. These flowers will cost less than $20 smackers. I will arrange them for you, (all by my damn self) and hopefully, they won't look ghey. Maybe you'll join me one day. If not, whatevs. On tap this week: Hot pink carnations!
Ok, so everyone usually hates the shit out of carnations, and I mostly get it. When you compare a carnation to a peony, it looks like a homeless person. BUT, here's the thing: 1. carnations are cheap as shit AND 2. carnations are hearty. Those fuckers could practically survive a nuclear winter. So for realz: if you don't have a lot of benjis to spend, they're sometimes just what the doctor ordered.
Ok, so I went a little cray and I bought 3 bunches of carnies today ($4.99 each, suckaz). The key here, IMHO, is that you MUST get all your carnations in the same color. Personally, I think they start looking ghetto fabulous if you go all rainbow brite, mixin weird colors of these things together (follow up: don't buy weirdly dyed carnations. i.e. there is no such thing as a blue fucking carnation, come on ppl).
You can try going with the same shades too (i.e. if you wanna go for pinks, you can do a lighter pink with a darker pink), but honestly that's more of a pro tip. So look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself the following question: SELF: do you know WTF you are doing when it comes to arranging flowers? If your answer is anything that starts with an "uhm...." just stick to the same fucking color.
Some flowers look great when you keep the arrangment tall, however, I happen to think carnations look better in a bubble bowl (i.e. short-n-fat). So I decided to cut all these bitches up. I'm guessing you guys already know you wanna cut shit on an angle with flowers (thereby increasing the area that the stem can suck in the water from), but just in case you don't: NOW YOU DO.
Anyway, carnations are so feisty, it doesn't matter *that* much, but since you're standing there with a pair of scissors, you may as well do it right. Also just get into that habit, cause really its one of the easiest ways to prolong the life of your flowers in general. Also, note in the pic above I have my pretty gold scissors from Zara Home, but up in this bitch above I have the real pro shears. You DEF don't *need* these (especially for a flower like this), but for anything with a thicker stem (i.e. lilacs) it is nice to have the real deal (sidenote: these fuckers are sharp and could slice off your fingers in a heartbeat, so watch it).
So yeah, this is pretty much how we ended up. I had a crap load of carnations left and actually did ANOTHER arrangement b/c the vase i chose was too small. I could have easily just bought two bunches and left it at that, but I always over do it, so that happened again.
Anyway. Yeah...so carnations: they aren't my go to FAVE, but I also don't think they deserve the title of world's worst flower either.
Bodega Flowers!
bodega flowers | 2 Comments 
Reader Comments (2)
I'm sorry, but I LOVE carnations. I know they're cheap, but their spicy fragrance gets to me. And no, my love has nothing to do with stupid carrie on stupid sex and the city. They can look really cute. I like what you did. I also like when you chop the stems short, put them in a wide, shallow vase and wrap it with some sort of leafy thang. Do I sound defensive? Probably.
LOVE IT. I never thought about bodega flowers in this way (you know, in a "actually-gonna-put-this-shit-in-my-apartment way"), but that's mostly because I'm so fucking narrow-minded. And you just inspired me to go get this bitches! Back in a bit. I'll twitpic!