Disclaimer: This post has LOADS of pictures.. and you will love seeing them..( I hope so!).

So this week, during our casual evening walk down at the Pearl.. we passed by this shop called Tendances.. It looked beautiful.. so beautiful.. I almost thought that these plant arrangements can’t be for real and would also be ridiculously priced.. but we still stepped in(couldn’t resist the beautiful plant/ flower arrangements). I asked the guy if these plants were real ( it would be quite a challenge to water a vertical wall garden… ), but to my surprise, he told us that they were real and preserved.(I never knew they could do that!) So there is absolutely no maintenance needed! (How COOL is that!!??).

 

Basically, natural plants and flowers are harvested in their prime to capture their most vibrant look, and then preserved by replacing their sap with a glycerin-based stabilizing solution. Preserved plants and flowers retain their original color, form and softness for many years. The sales guy told me we say that it would stay good for three years but they stay good for longer in reality. These are:

• Maintenance FREE
• Light FREE
• Water FREE
• Soil FREE

And then I thought, since it is too good to be true,  it must cost a fortune.. but got the shock of my life that the prices are just a bit higher than the real plants.If you live in Doha, you know how crazy the real plant prices are here.. and its such a challenge to keep them healthy and alive in the desert heat! So this is PERFECT for us!They also had Air plants! (I never knew there were such things! They just need air.. I CAN give them that!!!). They had the most adorable arrangements with preserved roses, moss and air plants.. Just look at these and the BEST part…NO MAINTENANCE!

One of the rose arrangements caught my husband’s attention and he was adamant we buy it.. it reminded him of “The Enchanted Rose” in the Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Movie..

I then remembered, I had an empty Candle Jar (which I had washed and kept safely after the candle had finished, because the jar was too pretty to throw and I knew I would do something with it..one day) and this would be a perfect way to use it! So I ran back upstairs to our apartment and got that jar. We kept the moss and a red rose in it. The moss and rose even felt like the fresh ones!

Now lets talk about the prices.. the rose prices started from QAR 20 -QAR 60 (depending on the size of the rose – that’s not bad at all for Doha, considering we pay around 10-15 riyal for a real rose which hardly lasts 3 days.. and this will stay like this for at least 3 years!!). The price for the size of rose we got was QAR 30 and we paid QAR 30 for the moss. So the total bill for this arrangement was QAR 60. (Not bad at all -right?). The air plants started from 20 QAR onwards.. You think that’s my enchanted rose.. NOT quite . read on..

I then added the fairy lights(which I had ordered from Amazon earlier) into the jar and there it is…. The Enchanted Rose… the most beautiful piece on my bookshelf!

I just can’t get enough of this.. it looks sooooo pretty! I am totally in LOVE with this!! Beauty and the Beast has been a childhood favorite.. have watched it a million times. We already had a piece from the movie on my bookshelf (which my husband had given me earlier)… with the enchanted rose there.. I just re-created the magic on my bookshelf!!

 

Let me know what you think!  Would make such a cool gift as well…Your thoughts?