As my regular blog followers will know, I’ve been on holiday, well a ‘staycation’ actually, but I actually managed to stay away from the shop for the most part of 4 DAYS!!!

It’s not that I don’t trust my florists to hold the fort while I’m not there, more that I don’t want to feel like I’m not an integral part of the business; a part that without, everything would grind to a halt.

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like that at all and I skipped back into work on Friday feeling fresh and invigorated (go to our Facebook page for proof on how how invigorated I felt).

So, how did I spend my 4 days of freedom?

On day one, John and I were woken at 7am by a wholesaler knocking on my front door. For some reason they arrived at the shop earlier than scheduled, not surprisingly it was all locked up and for some crazy reason I’d previously told the driver where we lived.

The rest of the week involved lunching, brunching, dining, drinking and SHOPPING!

One of the reasons John bought the Flower Shop for me in the first place was to STOP me shopping. Taking a career break was not an issue, but spending my spare time project planning and shopping was proving some-what expensive.

It certainly worked, I now rarely have any time to go shopping and any money I make from the Flower Shop quickly gets eaten up, mainly in Gin supplies…by the way I discovered a great new gin this week, an orange infused gin, from Hennings (where else).

As a result, I haven’t been out shopping for clothes for ages. Put it this way, when I last went out to an actual shop to try on clothes, I was a size 10….yes THAT long ago!!

When you’re young, you tend to go for clothes that cling to your assets, clothes that accentuate your best bits, clothes that get you noticed.

If you’ve read my previous blog you’ll know that my lack of stature often leaves me feeling ignored BUT  these days I have nothing that needs accentuating and I’m struggling to find any ‘best bits’.

My tone deaf sister-in-law (I’ve mentioned her before) says body dysmorphia is a bit like being tone deaf… In her head she thinks she sounds like Celine Dion, whereas I can confirm the noise heard by everyone else is closer to nails being scraped down a blackboard.

When you get to middle age and body parts have naturally moved southward and expanded outward… in your head (well in my head) it’s easy to keep thinking you look like a long legged nymph, with pert little breasts and a tiny little bum.

So can you imagine the disappointment when I tried to squeeze into a slinky pair of hot pants!!!!!!! 😀

 

I’ve realised that all the florists I’ve employed are either tall or slim or both. From now on I should really make a point of employing fatter people, if only to make myself look slimmer, but we’re already having trouble with space in the shop. When we have a big wedding on or a funeral and a wedding on at the same time, it can get a bit cosy in the shop.

This weekend we had THREE weddings to do, so something had to be done to expand the space we had to work with and quickly. Not wanting to take work home with me, I finally persuaded John that we could turn part of our garage into a floral workshop. Amazingly it only took one of my 4 days holiday to transform a corner of the garage into a fabulous floral workshop.

 

To find out how the team and I got on creating flowers for three weddings (no funerals) in my next blog…COMING SHORTLY!