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Isn't fall decorating fun? There's something about walking down the aisles at the stores, all decked out with pumpkins and spiced candles...it just seems to make life feel "cozy". Because I spend my summers growing and drying flowers and am passionate about nature, I'll admit that I get a bit bothered by many of the fall decorations on the market. Okay, they can be cute...and I know the prices are attractive...but I am increasingly drawn to materials that are more natural. More…

I am passionate about flowers...and especially wildflowers. I learn so much when I'm in my garden, or gathering "redneck roses", as they are called here in the country...because watching flowers can teach us a lot about life. So, when a new granddaughter arrived and her mama said she loved wildflowers as a nursery theme, my creative juices began to flow.

Wildflower nursery themes are popular, but when I looked at the sentiment behind a lot of the wall art, it didn't…

Dried flower pumpkins can MAKE your fall decor...and as a flower farmer and dried flower artist, I particularly love them made with fresh pumpkins. Last autumn, a customer of mine purchased a kit to make her flower pumpkin, and when I ran into her at Christmastime she mentioned that she was sad to have had to throw all those dried flowers out with her pumpkin. Yikes! Apparently she did not read my tutorial! With the method I use and teach to create dried flower pumpkins, the…

As a dried flower farmer and artist, I have a lot of favorite things...harvesting the first blooms of the season, getting my hands dirty as I weed a flower bed, or standing beneath my rows and rows of colorful blooms hanging overhead in my flower workshop. Surpassing all of those things, however, are my foraging expeditions, looking for the treasures that I didn't have to sow or water...wildflowers. I continually marvel at the beauty in the ditches that we drive by every day. I…

Our farm is located in central Missouri, in an area that used to be occupied by the Osage Nation. Treaties with European settlers in the early 1800's dramatically reduced their territory, and they were forced to move west. Local tradition says that a lone Osage man named Jake had a disagreement with his band and decided to stay put, settling on the prairie of which my home is now a part. When friends or family wanted to go up and visit him, they would say, "Let's go up to Jake's…

If you have been around Bouquet Yesterday for a bit, you will know that I am passionate about using all natural materials for crafting and home decor. When autumn is just around the corner and I am thinking about creating home decor for the season of cozy sweaters and pumpkin lattes, the stoIfres have already stocked their shelves with rows and rows of pumpkins in every shape, size, and material.  What do almost all of the artificial pumpkins have in common? Plastics and…