Itsy Bitsy Foodies

I was one of the nine selected to complete the DailyBuzz Moms 9×9 for the month of May.  April Showers Bring May Flowers is the theme and the project guidelines were to show how beautiful May flowers inspire me.

Over the years I’ve seen fruit flower arrangements and fruit bouquets from FruitFlowers and other companies.  I decided that it was the perfect time to try making my own edible arrangement because my 3 1/2-year old son loves to cut out fruits and other foods with cookie cutters.

Fruit bouquets can be as simple or as elaborate as you would like.  You {and your kids!} can make a detailed plan, brainstorming how to make different fruits look like specific flowers or you can simply jump into making an arrangement by using an assortment of fruits, cookie cutters and skewers.  While I worked on my bouquet, my son made his own flowers and he also had fun by making patterns of melon balls and fruits on the skewers.

Not only is this a fun project but the resulting flowers and bouquets make the perfect healthy snack in addition to being eye-catching centerpieces for parties, BBQ’s and picnics.  While my older son and I worked on our creation my 1-year old was perfectly content snacking on the fruit scraps.  All the little extra pieces are also nice to have on hand for quick and easy filler in smoothies.

To create a bouquet, I recommend using an assortment of skewers, toothpicks and lollipop sticks to make a fuller bouquet with flowers of varying heights.  Another option to hide spots of bare skewer and to fill out your bouquet is to garnish the bouquet with parsley or other greenery.  I opted to use only fruit and when there were large bare spots with sticks that I couldn’t cover with smaller flowers I used grapes {berries would also work} to make a sort of stem and cover up the skewers.

I used a mini watermelon cut in half as the vase.  The skewers stuck nicely into the flesh of the watermelon, however, it did become a literal balancing act as the bouquet got fuller.  The round bottom ended up not being the most stable thing {notice the kiwi fruit in my photos that helped keep it from tipping!}.  If you don’t have anything in your display to help prop it up then you could also slice the bottom off to make it flat.  Another option would be to fill a vase or container with floral foam.  I haven’t tried the floral foam but I would probably wrap the foam in plastic wrap just to make sure that the fruit doesn’t come in direct contact with the foam.

I have provided some of the things that worked for us but, of course, the options are endless.  Summer provides a bounty of fruit but you can use the different fruits of each season to make a fruit bouquet any time of year.  My kids could live off of fruit as it is, so I decided not to incorporate sweets into the mix.  If I were doing this for a dessert centerpiece, however, I could see dipping some of the strawberries {or other fruit} in chocolate or white chocolate.

*Safety note: skewers and toothpicks are sharp so if you feel that they are not appropriate for your kids, then you can buy lollipop sticks in varying heights.  Depending on your kids, you can also simply arrange the fruit flowers on a plate without any form of stick or skewer.