fruity bouquet

Thanks to Andrea and a site she references, I had an awesome idea when I was asked to bring fruit to a going-away party for a friend on Saturday. You may know you can buy fruit bouquets, but they are awfully expensive. I looked into it for a friend of mine who was in the hospital but is now out of the hospital and ridiculously bored and stuck at home. But instead of paying $25 for the teeniest bouquet, why not do some myself??

So, the tools:


The fruit spread:


I melon-balled the watermelon. I crinkle-cut the honeydew (thanks Pampered Chef!). I sliced -- then cookie cut -- the pineapple.


I created skewers using ideas from Andrea's page, the baby shower page, the Edible Arrangements page. I thought I should "design" my bouquet all at once, so I layed the finished skewers out until I was ready.


Inside the vase was some colorful tissue paper and at the top was a thick thick wad of homemade playdough. I already had a ball of it that was thick, and then I made some more but didn't do as good of a job. If I do this again I may just get floral foam or I'll have to work really hard to perfect a playdough recipe. And, in fact, I actually had a skinny glass vase that I put inside the vase upside down and rested the playdough on top of, so it stuck in the neck of the vase solidly. Pretty clever huh? Shane told me I was clever.

The finished product??


You can see the playdough, right? I put romaine lettuce on top to cover it some. The Web sites suggest parsley. In a perfect world my playdough woulda been farther inside the vase and the parsley could kinda peek up out of the vase, but whatever. Looked good to me. Then I tied a ribbon around the vase to cover the white...


One friend at the party said she thought it was totally bought at a store!! And another friend is getting married in July and has already requested I make one for her wedding!! I'm being requested!

It was fun to make. By far the hardest part was transporting it from my house to the party location. Imagine, I drove myself -- stick shift -- to this party. So I held the vase in the passenger seat with my right hand and shifted with my left, all the way there. Talk about "distracted driving." I drove slow, too. Maybe in the future I'll take all the skewers on a cookie sheet and "arrange" when I get there. Or make Shane drive me.

If you're doing to do it, some of Andrea's suggestions were to:

• make the skewers shorter (I did)
• chill the playdough (I halfway did)
• make the pineapple slices thick (I did)
  

I'd add to the list to:

• arrange when you get there (so it doesn't all fall in the car)
• or make thick thick playdough so the weight of the skewers doesn't sink the arrangement
  
• take note that the pineapple slices get brown the next day (I made a teeny one for my aforementioned gimpy friend and her pineapple sunshine cutout looked kind of sad, just the next day! And to add insult to injury I forgot to take a picture!)

Yay for doing it yourself! I'm feeling adventurous and fruity. That's a good thing, right?