I am totally wiped out.  I’ve been up really late the past couple of nights and worked very hard both days.  The first night I stayed awake because I was struggling to write.  The second night I stayed awake because the words were flowing so well that I didn’t want to stop!  It’s funny how that works.  Yesterday I moved my room at Lucketts and did some shopping and today I did the photo shoot for the cover of my book.  You wouldn’t think that would be too involved, but I assure you it was an all day process.  I had to clean, rearrange furniture and accessories, set a table, make floral arrangements, fix lighting, snap pictures, change lenses, edit the photos, e-mail them for feedback, tweak the styling, take more pictures change lenses again, edit the photos…and on like that all day.  I am doing all of the photography for the book, which I was a little nervous about at first, but I felt totally comfortable during the shoot today.  I enjoyed it and was super excited when I would get a great shot with perfect lighting.

Tomorrow I need to work on some HGTV projects and just spend some time playing with my boys.

Tonight, I get to talk a little about holiday decor.  Oh, I can’t wait to decorate for Christmas, so this was a little teaser for me.

A couple of days ago, four gorgeous poinsettias arrived at my door.  I haven’t had many fresh poinsettias in my house before, mainly because I am not very good at keeping green things alive, but also because we always had cats in our home and I thought they were poisonous.  Apparently that’s a myth!  Who knew?  Well, now that I have a taste of having these live beauties in my house, it may become an annual thing.  I’ve been busy with holiday freelance jobs and getting started on my book, so I haven’t put up my Christmas decorations, yet. I thought it would look amazing, though, to clip off some white blooms and tuck them into a live tree.  Unfortunately, my tree isn’t up, so I had to think of other things.

I grabbed a large antique basket and filled it with two white poinsettias (these are my favorite) and added one of my glitter banners to the front.   It’s simple, but so beautiful.

I love decorating with things that are naturally beautiful, so there’s no effort needed.  Plunk them in a basket, add a banner, done.  Beautiful.

I also received a more traditional red poinsettia, so I clipped that one and added it to a large dough bowl filled with greenery and mercury glass spheres.

The nice thing about these seasonal flowers is the variety.  You can get red, burgundy, white, pink, spotted, etc.  It’s nice to be able to break out of the traditional red and green color scheme, but still have traditional elements in your decor.

You can find fresh poinsettias at garden centers, home improvement stores and I’ve even seen them in the grocery store.

Show off your holiday decorating with fresh poinsettias on the Greenhouse Diaries and you could win a $50 gift certificate to Olive Garden (which happens to be my favorite restaurant.)  The Great Poinsettia Decorating Challenge ends December 15, 2011.

I was compensated for sharing this post about fresh poinsettias, but all opinions are my own.