we have two weddings this weekend got one on saturday and sunday so we're just doing a little centerpieces for the writing of the subways the fun part putting things together it's just it's an unspoken magic i guess you know someone receives flowers they just automatically take up to go with take a breath and go oh they're so lovely just make somebody feel really special so there are so many different reasons why you can give people flowers you know could be as simple as hey i'm thinking about you or i really wish you well you know here's something to brighten up your day and it's i guess it gives me so much pleasure when we do send them out and when we do hear our customers coming back and saying oh my gosh that really made her so happy and she felt so loved and it just makes our day your aunt who would be going to well we've had the shop for about three years now but the idea started way back when we were living in england because we were just surrounded by this gorgeous flowers all year around so i would help out friends with their weddings and some other events and things so the passion really got started there and then we moved over here and we kind of noticed that there was a bit of a i don't know there's a bit of a need for that local flower shop and i  grandma and i would make daisy chains to sweet sweet memories like that running through sunflower fields i remember that vividly because this is the stuff in my mind and i always had an affinity towards flowers that always made me feel safe and comfortable setting personal touch and taste really makes a difference to they know it's there and i think this might have been her grandmother's right so really in the shop we really do do it all so it was always important to me from the start when we opened up that we cater to everyone because you never know one person coming in to buy a single platter one day they might need to throw a big lavish party the next and so it's important to establish that relationship we like to know people by their first names and we love seeing people come back and hear about their event how it went so yeah we do the everyday small orders a little blood base here a little order there and then we also do the grand events huge wedding big corporate events a gala you name it there are so many things to take into account so many different factors that we think about we think about whether someone's style is more modern or traditional  when you factor in the occasion with something happy then we try to you know like a birthday or a get well we try to brighten it up to fit the occasion or something romantic then we do more like monotone or all whites  of ideas off pinterest but then what we do is we kind of take the bright ideas the pinterest ideas and we come up with our own so the new trends now is just kind of going away from that compact really tight arrangement and just letting it speak for itself letting each flower kind of be highlighted so it's a little bit more loose a little area and whimsical so that's the current obviously it's very important to start to know what that vision is and we take you know take a lot of time and effort and our planning and design ideas and the concepts to make sure everyone's on the same page so we how often have the bride coming in several times we do examples of what she's to expect for her or her day and then we tweak it until it's just right but there's a lot that goes into weddings oh yes a lot of just right then we go ahead and order flowers and that's always tricky as well it's knowing exactly how much to order so it's always best to get more than not enough and then they have to be right that something's not up to par in our quality then it goes back there's nothing sadder than a wedding day and the flowers being mediocre they've got to be perfect the downtown is the best it is great being down here we feel like such a part of the community there's all these different events going on we're friends with so many other local businesses around here everyone knows each other which is wonderful so we all support each other it's very important for us to feel part of the community and i'm i'm very much a family person i remember just visiting the ukraine few years ago and  saw my grandma's hydrangeas and just the connection was there a felt good to do something that you love and it feels good to know that you're meant to do this and i had a for a while like you know i wasn't sure what it is that really what i was meant to do and then it just everything fell into place and it feels so right trust in the florist because they know it and get some more often you know it doesn't have to be just for birthdays anniversary or valentine's day think outside the box get it on a random day during the week but i had to move to sarasota and two thousand and nine early two thousand and nine and at that time there was a wonderful bookstore on the corner here downtown sarasota and about a year later that closed everybody missed it tremendously and so did i so i thought well i wish somebody would open a bookstore so i could go to a wonderful bookstore well your past and nobody did so i said i'll just do it myself oh it's been great fun yet i can't imagine many other businesses that would be more fun than this one well of course i love books i've always loved books but that's just a bit of it i mean i can always get books but meeting authors i really love authors you know prose writers i love poets the customers who come in to this store to probably to most independent bookstores but particularly in this community in sarasota the customers are terrific they are wonderful people when people walk through the store the stores door they're smiling and they're happy to be here because they're coming to look for something they really want and really enjoy sell it back to this experience community still an independent bookstore it's like saying you're going to close down your library has it made you know it doesn't make sense in the long term you need that i have a good independent bookstore is one of the things that make a really livable fantastic city i've spent my whole life in america half of the big in bookstores in allies have francisco and new york and that most of those gone most of the independent bookstores have gone so number one that was my first thought is i believe this is important to the community in which i live and i know that book stores all the good bookstores i've known in my life provide something that can't be provided  online a lot of things that can't be provided on line we are really lucky to have one here in sarasota we come and look around not just come in for a specific purpose between good ideas here you can just look at everything else look at just be stimulated by what's around you i'm really really lucky it's here to be supported we'll have customers who come in here literally this will happen about once a day somebody will come in and say you know i saw this book written up in the newspaper and it had a blue cover and i think it had a flower on the back and maybe it was written by a woman and interestingly enough nine chances out of ten somebody on our staff will say oh yeah i know what you mean try asking that of an online service it's a completely different experience to be i mean online yet we need it it's great it's an enhancement but it's not a substitute for really be in a bookstore with other people getting ideas by pretty much everything we expect of a bookstore i mean we have good sections in general fiction and biography in history we have mystery we have romance we have a wonderful classics section we have a wonderful poetry section and a great kids section and our manager has done a great job with the kids section in that she has done something that other bookstores don't do other bookstores for work i tell my kids they'll just plop books on the shelves and call it why a young adult our manager has broken it down by age ranges so if you walk into this bookstore you'll see a shelf of books for kids from let's say ages six to eight and then you know nine to twelve and then you know twelve and above and fourteen about so if you're if you're a grandparent and you're wondering oh what book is appropriate for my granddaughter my grandson who happens to be nine and a half years old that's a good clue he would walk right to that shelf and at least get some direction and i have never seen another bookstore do that and i think that's been very very helpful we sell books obviously magazines newspapers cards gift wrap gifts but we're mainly books so you know we love to see people come in and just browse our selection and come on and then meet us and this morning you walked in and you said something about the smell of the books are you be surprised at how many people say that they walk in and they just breath