Yeah, I was a florist. I went to floristry school.

I could quite happily run a florist or a bake shop.

I try to always have flowers in the house. I have a florist in Chinatown, and they deliver orchids every two weeks. I like living with living things.

I love jotting down ideas for my blog, so I doodle or take notes on all kinds of stuff that inspires me: the people I meet, boutiques I visit, a florist that just gave me a great idea for an interior-design project, things like that.

Take one flower that you like and get lots of them. And don't try to 'arrange' them. It's surprisingly hard to do a flower arrangement the way a florist does one. Instead, bunch them all together or put them in a series of small vases all down the table.

I have a showroom where we experiment with twelve cakes. We develop sketches and ideas for cakes for the next season. We work with the top fashion designers to see what type of lace they are using or work with the top florist for us to be able to make various sugar roses or flowers.

I went to school to learn to be a hairdresser. I worked at a wholesale florist, where I delivered to florists all over New Jersey. I'd come home and go out to work down at the Shore. The early jobs, I remember, were $5, $6 a night. And I lived in the projects right until the time I became successful.

Edible Arrangements will have to beat back some rivals, including a handful of mom-and-pop vendors and a company in Pennsylvania called Incredibly Edible Delites. And there's always the chance that a deep-pocketed national florist like FTD will decide that pretty produce is profitable and jump into the mix.

I remember when we first bought Teleflora, I made a very expensive mistake when I produced a brochure with the slogan, 'The way America sends love.' The bouquets and prices I pictured could not be duplicated by the florist - they were too expensive. I had relied on people I thought were in touch with the marketplace.

Mom and Dad were married 64 years. And if you wondered what their secret was, you could have asked the local florist - because every day Dad gave Mom a rose, which he put on her bedside table. That's how she found out what happened on the day my father died - she went looking for him because that morning, there was no rose.

I'm a married gay man, so you might think that I appreciate the government forcing a Christian baker or photographer or florist to act against their religion in order to cater, photograph, or decorate my wedding. But you'd be wrong. A government that can force Christians to violate their conscience can force me to violate mine.

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