A school of fish: Flower arrangements in a pumpkin

When I took a Floral Design class at BYU, one of my favorite assignments was when we had to create a flower arrangement in a pumpkin. I don't know why I liked it so much—it just seemed so interesting and fun! So I decided to try doing it with the kids during our Flower Unit. We just got floral foam, cut it into squares, and carved out the pumpkins to fit the foam inside! Then we went to Smith's and got several types of fall-colored flowers (I find Smith's always has the best selection if you want to create your own arrangement. A lot of other floral departments don't have greenery or filler flowers except in the arrangements they create) and after teaching them a few design principles, I just let the kids create!

There's a bit of mess and chaos to start with (we actually hollowed out the pumpkins on a different day so it wouldn't be so much all at once) but I loved the arrangements they came up with! We took them around to give to neighbors when we were done, and we enjoyed it so much, I think we might do it next year too! We ended up doing something similar around Valentine's Day (but without the pumpkins!).

The great thing about flower arranging, as my teacher always told us at BYU, is that you can't really go wrong! Everything looks pretty! That makes it very fulfilling because though you can improve and make MORE pleasing arrangements with practice, even your first clumsy attempts don't feel wasted.