Majority of you received flowers for Valentine’s Day, but what do you do after a few days have past?  Do you watch it die?  Do you forget about it?  Do you just throw it away?

I don’t know about you, but my answer is none of the above!  My husband goes all out with my floral arrangements that I know that it costs money.  As much as I love receiving these beautiful flowers, he knows, that I know that he spent a chunk of change on creating this piece for me.

My husband does not just call the florist up and ask them to make a bouquet of pink flowers, nor does he just stop in at the local grocery store to buy the already-made arrangements.  He goes above and beyond by explaining exactly how he wants it designed, and what kind of flowers too! It is not only a surprise when I receive flowers from him, but it is a surprise in itself to see what he has created.

He has always done this from the first day we met.  He is extremely created and loves to add extras to bling it out for me.  This year was a challenge for him.  This floral arrangement is beautiful but I knew that it was not exactly the way he wanted it to be.  He mentioned that he had a hard time due to the language barrier.

Living in a different country has it perks but also has it’s downside.  The local florist here in Japan could not understand what he was asking for.  Regardless how it came out, I loved it just as much as all the others.

Being that he puts so much thought into my gift, I hate knowing that it will eventually die and I will have to throw them out.  Yes, sometimes I try to tell him not to waste the money on such an expensive gift that I will not be able to keep forever, but I can’t change his mind because of how much he loves doing it for me.

I love my flowers so much that sometimes I will carry them from room to room just so that I can see them.  Ha! Ha!  Yes, I’m extreme like that! As you can see in the pictures below, I actually do move them from room to room!

My little area of the house

My work area of the house

Our family room

The kitchen

After a couple days, when I start to see the pedals fall and some of the flowers start to droop over the vase, that’s usually the sign that I need to start giving them extra love.  Extra love you might ask? Well, because I have a black thumb verses a green thumb, extra love from me, means extra work.   Ha! Ha! But this type of extra work, I don’t mind.

I gather up some of the vases that I kept from my other arrangements, and continue to separate my bouquet of flowers and spread them out evenly.  To make my flowers last longer, in each vase, I add a quart (liter) of warm water, then dissolve three tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of white vinegar. I cut the stems at an angle and make sure they are covered by three to four inches of the water.

I then place them into the different vases, shown in the photo above. I do this so that I can spread it out all over the house.  The one beautiful bouquet arrangement that I had to carry from room to room, is now three little arrangements that I can have in every room.

One in my area

Another on my work desk

And the last, in the kitchen

So tell me, how creative do you get with your bouquet of flowers?  What do you do with the flowers that you receive?  Write to me in the comments below because I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope that I was able to help give you an idea of what to do with your flowers and how to make them last longer.