Welcome to My Blog!

Welcome to Confessions of a Local Florist Blog! This is an exciting new venture for me and my Floral Shop. I hope to be able to share my journey through the flower business, my creative passion and hopefully inspire others along the way.


Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower." Hans Christian Andersen

Friday, December 12, 2008

What the Grinch Stole Christmas In...

What do you do when you have 50 Grinch sleighs? Make them into the cutest holiday centerpieces imaginable! For this holiday season we have decided to stray away from the standard arrangements you can find at every flower shop and make some centerpieces with some extra character. Dare we say a character that will steal the holiday. Ok, corny reference but you get the point!

We not only are featuring this cute centerpiece with the holiday greens and a festive pillar candle, but you can also get the Grinch sleigh with many of our junk food tower items in it as well.


For all you traditionalists out there, we also came up with our very own, larger centerpiece in a variety of traditional holiday color combinations. We have the red and silver, red and gold and also some lime green arrangements. There is also cute butterflies and sparkly snowflakes.

I personally enjoy this one, it says "Christmas" in a homely fashion. And it will last well through the holiday season.







Ever see the movie "Elf"? I don't know what it is about that movie, but every time I see something with the elf shoe it makes me think of Will Ferrell.

This elf shoe, however, I think is simply adorable! Its slender-sure to fit every where-and has these tall curly accent twigs that give it great height. Throw in some christmas ornaments that can be later used on the tree and some beautiful roses and there you have my rendition of a holiday elf shoe.

If you are interested in purchasing any of these centerpieces for your holiday table, just click on the images and you will be directed to my website at AbbottFlorist.com. I hope you enjoy the arrangements : )

Saturday, November 29, 2008

It's That Time of the Year

Well it is that time of the year already. It seems like only yesterday we were getting together our fall arrangements and now the time has come to bring in all the holiday flowers and decorations.

We have had much fun putting together our store window. I think they came out very well. I think as a professional it is our job to make our creations perfect and seem effortless...if you only knew how long it takes a perfectionist to get things done :) This is our one window.


The other window came out pretty good as well, unfortunately the pictures did not. Maybe we should take up photography as a hobby...



We have also recently received shipment of our handpicked holiday arrangement containers. I just love the box. This is going to truly be a great floral gift this season with the collectible container. Hopefully everyone enjoys this one as much as we do at Abbott.

In the coming days we plan to post some Poinsettia Care tips-these are tips everyone should know if they hope to have their poinsettia survive the holidays. We will also be posting a link to our December newsletter that has a $5 Gift Certificate in it. Email me if you are interested in joining our newsletter mailing list at abbottflorist@aol.com

Check back in with us in a couple of days to get some helpful tips and see how we are making out this holiday season.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Holiday Arrangements


One of our favorite times of the year is rapidly approaching and with that we have selected some arrangements that we are certain everyone will love as much as we do. Just as soon as we finished our halloween arrangements we, like most retail businesses, moved right into the seasonal decor. Now, as much as I love the greens and reds and golds and silvers, I somehow feel like Thanksgiving is overshadowed. I look forward to doing some Thanksgiving type arrangements such as cornucopias and incorporating more of the fall colors before the cold winter is upon us!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Keeping Everyone in the Loop

In an effort to keep our clients in the loop about what is going on in the shop we have decided to create a monthly newsletter. We were actually so very exicted to get this up on our website, but our original goal was to distribute this to all of our clients via email. Keeping up with technology and trying to accomplish our objectives have made the 1st month of the newsletters release a bit more involved. Isn't it enough just to have an idea of what you want and then making it happen. LOL. At first we were going to have Teleflora help us get this distributed, but as it turns out we are on our own to figure this one out. Luckily we are still using good "old fashion" methods of newsletter distribution--printing them out on paper. Hopefully with a little more research we will have that newsletter out via email soon. In the meantime, time to prep the store for the Holiday season. Pictures of our store fronts to come soon. We have spent much time trying to get the window displays just right! It's been very exciting and putting everyone in the holiday spirit.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

A little more about me.

I wanted to let everyone know a little more about my journey into flowers and how I have come to where I am today.
I started my first florist together with my husband Peter Sklikas in 1991, this was in Cherry Hill New Jersey. I always had a natural attraction to flowers, maybe because I am Dutch it seemed to be a logical profession to explore. I do believe it was fate that I had a talent for arranging flowers, some might say a gift from god. After 5 years we decided to sell our business, I had a baby girl, Sam, and we moved back to Europe where we started a Flower shop in Athens Greece. My husband is from Greece. Flower shops and flower arrangements are a lot different in Europe, we really enjoyed the our time there but after 5 years did decide to move back to the USA. It was then that we bought Abbott Florist in 2001 already-7 years ago, in this lovely community called Washington Township. 2 years ago we bought our own building on 138 Fries Mill Road, Turners ville, New Jersey. I have currently have 8 associates working in our shop in the areas of design, sales and delivery. It is great to be creative every day.