Happy Mother's Day

Normally my mom isn't hard to buy for. She likes big jewelry, anything super old or anything shabby chic-ish. When Mother's Day came around I was trying to think of something unique I could get her. You see, my love language is gifts, which doesn't just mean I like getting gifts, but I also like putting a lot of thought into the gifts I give people. My boyfriend was talking about how him and his brother might order their mom an edible arrangement for Mother's Day. However, they decided to go with another present once they realized the company didn't deliver (not to mention most arrangements are $60+). My creative wheels started turning. I researched DIY edible arrangements and decided to give it a try. I used this website to learn the basics about the arrangements and then went from there. Here is what I used:

• 1 head of cabbage
• 1 cantaloupe
• 1 honeydew melon
• 1 bag of grapes
• 2 lbs of strawberries
• 1 pineapple
• chocolate (for melting-get whatever kind you want)
• 1 bag of kabob skewers
• Gumdrops
• Flower cookie cutter
• Ceramic flower pot (you can use whatever you want here-basket, vase, jar-just as long as you can put the head of cabbage inside of it)

I really didn't take pictures of the process, but the website I mentioned earlier has a great step-by-step process.  The first thing I did was put the head of cabbage into the pot I used. This is what holds all the skewers of fruit in place. You could also use floral foam if you wanted to. After that, just cut all the fruit up. The pineapple flowers were made by slicing the pineapple and using a flower cookie cutter to make the shape. I just stuck a grape in the middle of it after that. The gumdrops are used to keep the fruit in place-this is a major necessity! The fruit (especially melons and pineapple) will just slide right down the skewer if you don't put a gumdrop under it. I learned the hard way that it is easier to poke all the skewers in the cabbage first and THEN put the fruit on them. It gets a little tricky to reach into the bouquet to fill in the empty spaces once a lot of the fruit has already been placed. Here is how it turned out: