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Renovation & Design

Staying home for the holidays

Comfort and joy ideas guaranteed to inspire you

Decorate your home for the holidays with a breathtaking garden-inspired floral arrangement.

Bubbles and Bash’s holiday boxes feature a curated selection of local items.

Photos by Bubbles and Bash

This holiday season make your table merry and bright.

Can you feel the magic? Try simmering homemade potpourri made with dried oranges for a delicious holiday aroma.

This mouthwatering holiday charcuterie board is made with local items and DIY dried orange slices and candied nuts.

This December, the ghost of Christmases past will loom large in our collective consciousness. Is it really Christmas when you can’t celebrate like it’s 2019? You better believe it is.

If you find yourself lowering your expectations these days or are feeling a little short on creativity, Sarah Southern and Amanda Plamondon have plenty of inspiration to offer. Southern owns Bubbles and Bash, an event and party planning service. Plamondon is a Winnipeg floral designer. Friends, they enjoy dreaming up uniquely different ways to celebrate. Together they have collaborated on gorgeous photoshoots at different locations around town (pre-pandemic of course) that feature numerous small business owners, florists, bakers, and makers who create lavish tablescapes and showcase innovative ways to decorate and entertain.

Lockdown has put the kibosh on in-person networking events, corporate parties or large private gatherings, says Southern, but it is also driving a desire and determination to create and celebrate.

Nothing snuffs out creative imagination faster than anxiety-feeding doom scrolling, says Southern, or watching the terrible awful no good news in a continuous loop. "Decompress by channeling your energy into creating something beautiful," she says. Southern and Plamondon are brimming with ideas for bringing holiday sparkle and joy into your home this season.

Southern is creating holiday boxes filled with a curated selection of items which she has sourced from local vendors. Each box will include a Weck glass canning jar with all the ingredients for making homemade holiday potpourri along with hand rolled salted caramels from Sugar & Salt Bake Shoppe (formerly Laugh Love Cakes), hot chocolate mix from Black Market Provisions, a hot chocolate bomb from Treats by T, sugar cookies by Sweets + Sprinkles, and a pure soy candle from Farmer’s Son Co. There is also a handcrafted ornament from Etched Out Laser Engraving & Cutting made especially for this limited edition holiday box.

To make the holiday potpourri, Southern combined mulling spices– a blend of orange peel, star anise, cinnamon sticks, cardamom, and cloves – with Cara Cara navel orange slices that she dried and added fresh rosemary, cedar tree tips, juniper berries, and cranberries. The ingredients are ready to pour into a simmering pan. Simply add some water and simmer over low heat on your stovetop. Southern loves to shop for spices at Spice World, 137 Marion Street.

If you haven’t tried a hot chocolate bomb before, warm up some milk and gently drop in the bomb, stirring slowly until it melts. Enjoy this delicious cup of hot chocolate with a Christmas tree sugar cookie.

The attractive holiday boxes are made from recyclable cardboard and can double as a photo box. The items in the box have an aesthetically pleasing colour palette of rich green, navy blue, white, silver, and wood or wood-like elements. Each box comes with a fresh greenery wreath and a holiday greenery bundle made by Plamondon. Each box will include a card with a list of all the vendors. There are two price points: $109 and $149. The items are the same however the higher price point provides a larger candle and larger greenery bundle. The boxes can be ordered starting today by emailing bubblesandbash@gmail.com. Deadline for orders is Sunday, December 19. Details for non-contact pickup will be provided at time of purchase.

Southern says that the items inside the box can be used for creating a holiday tablescape. Start by untying the flower bundle and recutting the stems. Strip any leaves or needles from the ends of stems that are being placed into a vase filled with fresh water. "For optimum vase life, change the water daily and recut the ends," says Plamondon. Try cutting the stems at varying heights for a more balanced look, she says. "If you are creating a centrepiece, use the greens to drape over the edge of your vessel and remember to keep turning the arrangement so that all sides are even." Plamondon suggests adding fresh fruit from the grocery store such as pears, apples, or pomegranates by inserting a skewer into the bottom of the fruit to anchor it into your vase or centrepiece.

You could also use the greenery as a garland for your table although it won’t last as long as it would in water. If you want to try making a garland, says Plamondon, combine the greenery with magnolia or any other fresh materials of your choice and use wire to bind the greens together. Start at one end, wiring the pieces together until you’ve made a rope for the centre of your table.

Another option, says Southern, is to break up the greenery bundle into smaller pieces and create eclectic arrangements by your kitchen sink, in your bathroom, or on your windowsill or kitchen island. Combine with décor items such as small, all white ornamental houses which are popular this year. Bottle brush trees are all the rage, says Southern. She sprayed bottle brush trees to match her décor and combined them with candles, mercury glass decorative accents, and greenery to create a tablescape.

Southern loves to make charcuterie boards whenever she is entertaining and tailors it to the occasion. Her Christmas wreath charcuterie board is made with cheeses, hand rolled salted caramels, dried orange slices and candied nuts. Southern will be taking a limited number of orders for holiday charcuterie boards.

A stunning flower arrangement is a great way to bring festive beauty to your home. Plamondon who has been a floral designer for 20-plus years says that ordering flowers from local florists this holiday season would be a boon to the local floral industry.

Greenery is on trend like never before. Plamondon says that popular items include pampas grass and bleached and preserved fern leaves. There continues to be strong demand for eryngium (sea holly), says Plamondon, but ranunculus is one of the most popular flowers in the cut flower industry today. You might choose a winter white and blue colour palette for your arrangement but jewel tones are also trending, she says.

Plamondon created a breathtaking garden-inspired arrangement with blue eryngium (sea holly), white Moonstone roses, lisianthus, and stock flowers which she combined with peach and green hypericum berries, skimmia, and peach seeded Pieris japonica. For greenery, Plamondon used cedar, pine, Douglas fir, Carolina Sapphire and variegated Leyland cypress, and eucalyptus including seeded, Baby Blue, and Silver-Dollar varieties. She added elements with unique texture: magnolia leaves, a mix of white preserved accents such as plumosa fern and dried lagarus (Bunny Tail grass) along with some snow-tipped pine cones.

By making the holiday season beautiful for the people you love, you will be spreading comfort and joy, says Southern. For more holiday decorating ideas, visit bubblesandbash on Instagram.

colleenizacharias@gmail.com

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