Flowers for Mom

The kids chipped in together, and bought their Mom two beautiful poinsettia plants...

So I know everyone is wondering where I got the tiny poinsettia plants. 
​I made them. Or more accurately, I shrunk some.
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I started with two small poinsettia plants that I picked up at the dollar store before Christmas. I figured I would cut down the flowers to a smaller size, but the other day when I finally got to work on them, I decided that I didn't much care for the velvet flowers and glittered stamens after all. Plus, when I unwrapped the bases, I discovered they were made of some unidentifyable, crumbly, mortar-like substance. Well, I've read enough warnings about the health hazards of many of the Chinese-made items that Dollar stores carry, so decided not to use them. Jan smashed the pots - outside where there's good ventilation - and then he made two new pots out of wooden discs.

I traded the velvet flowers for some similar-sized fabric ones that were laying around loose in the decoration boxes. There were the regular red ones, a darker red, and some pink ones. I pulled the flowers apart, and proceeded to cut the petal sections down to about half. I also cut off some of the outer stamens to reduce the size of the centers. Then I put the flowers  back together again.

Then I hot glued the original plants into the wooden pots, trimmed the ends of the wires, and glued the flowers back onto the ends of the stems. Added the original foil wrapping, and made a bow.

​Voila! Tiny poinsettia plants!