Blooms & Bliss: A Brief Valentine's Day Special

Episode 216: 
We know our Cliquers are bustling as they work tirelessly to spread love and joy on this special day. In this short episode, join Lori as she recounts a heartwarming Valentine's encounter that left a lasting impression. Meanwhile, Vonda adds a touch of intrigue with little-known facts about Valentine's Day, from its mysterious origins to surprising trivia about the first valentine and the evolution of candy traditions. Tune in for a burst of romance and fascinating insights in this bite-sized Valentine's Day special!

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Do you know how brave little baby drawers had to be to do that?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

And Lori Wilson, and we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kinda like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hey Lori, welcome back from Mountaintop.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Yes. We survived and no one was injured. Well, we walked away with all our limbs. Mark got injured, but other than that, he we had one little mishap. Usually I always beat him down the mountains and he lectures me every time we go, like, wait for me, wait for me. So this particular day he was feeling pretty sassy and cocky, and I was not. And so he was going a little faster than me. And he said, even at the time, he was like, I'm in the groove. I'm feeling pretty good. You know, you get in the swing of things. And he was going down the mountain, and I was still pretty far up. I had stopped. I can't remember why. Anyway, I fell. And it wasn't like hard fall. My left ski had been acting a little weird. Anyway, I tipped, I fell over, wasn't hurt. Well, I laid there a second and I looked up and I couldn't find my ski. And I'm like, I'm looking up up at the top of the mountain because I slid down a little bit and I'm looking at the top because you know, your ski, it has these little brakes on it that stop it. And so I'm looking, I'm looking everywhere for my ski. I cannot find it. People are skiing all over the mountain. I mean, I'm on this huge mountain. And I look at it and I look down and I see Mark at the bottom of the mountain, and he's standing there. And right when I look at him, I see him fall. And I'm like, well, what the heck? He fell. He just literally fell all the way down. And he's clear at the bottom. And I was like, well, that's weird. How come he fell? What a loser. Like, how did he just randomly fall? And I'm still looking for my ski. And then I see these people down there helping him. And I was like, why does he need help? Nobody's helping me. And so this goes on for I don't know, five minutes. And I'm still looking for my ski. Like, where the hell is my ski? It couldn't just disappear. Yell down at him, and I'm like, hey, do you see my ski?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

And he's like, Yes, it hit me.

unknown 2:58

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

And I'm like, what? And he goes, it freaking hit me. And I'm like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

So you fell, the ski went and went down at me.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

It fell, it popped off of me, bypassed me, like I didn't even see it, shoots straight down the mountain. I don't know how. He was right in my line of fire. The it's a million to one shot hits him and wipes him out, like literally wipes him out. He thought an entire body wiped him out. He thought a person hit him. And he said he was laying on the ground thinking that another human hit him. These two guys come skiing up next to him and they go, dude, are you okay? And he because I mean Mark's a big guy. So when he falls, he really falls. And he's like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

And the other guy goes, he goes, dude, how are you skiing with three skis? Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Oh no, Lori.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

And so anyway, I laughed.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

I mean, he could have had two broken legs and I would have not stopped laughing because I couldn't stop laughing all the way walking down that side of the mountain.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

And he was like hitting me, hitting me on the arm. I was laughing so hard. Like I did it on purpose. Like I'm like, hey, go knock him down. That'd be the game.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

I mean, I could anyway, and that's when the end of that day he goes, you know, maybe we're getting too old for this. Maybe he has this huge, like softball-sized black bruise where people but anyway, that was that was our only injury, but it was it was fun. At least it made you laugh. The injury that made you laugh instead of sent you to the hospital. Yeah. What were the chances? Like he had to be in the exact line of fire for that to happen. I've never had a ski run away from me like that. So anyway, it was all good. All good. Good. Well, well, welcome back.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

We're glad you're back for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Yes, I came back to the Valentine chaos.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, for sure. And when the clickers are going to be listening to this, they're going to be in the middle of Valentine's Day. So I'm like, well, are they even going to listen? Or is it something they're going to put on to have a distraction? You know, it could be either way.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit of either way. So you thought it would be fun to do what? Some Valentine's trivia?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah, kind of trivia. Really little known facts about Valentine's Day because you know, everybody knows about Cupid and Romeo and Juliet, those kind of things, and how it's all about love and emotions. Really Valentine's Day history. Okay, there we go. Little history. So you're you're the one that did all the research on this, not me. They're called little known facts about Valentine's Day. And many of you might already know this, but if you don't, you know, it's not going to take long. We thought it just a quick podcast about Valentine's Day to keep you motivated.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Do you remember your first Valentine's Day, like with a boyfriend?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Um, you know, I can't really remember my first, but let me tell you the one that I do remember. Okay. I was married and I had a baby and I I've been working Valentine's Day since I was 14 years old. So this was nothing new. Valentine's Day. I skipped school. I worked Valentine's Day, got married, then I'm here at the flower shop. I come home Valentine's evening, probably seven o'clock. Who knows what time it was? And I hand my then husband a box of candy and a card. And you know what he said? What? Today's Valentine's. Oh no. That's my most memorable one.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

You got your right bottom going, you know what? I don't know if this marriage is gonna last.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

So anyway, that was the my memorable my first memory.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

You worked your rear end off, and it's your industry. And he didn't even I know, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

How about you, Lori? You weren't in the industry, so it probably wasn't related to that. Oh, no, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

I was thinking about this, and my memory of one of my first, like, besides like elementary school, you know, making the boxes and hoping that Mitchell, the class hottie, puts uh Valentine in the box. I remember that being a big deal. But so I was in sixth grade, and I liked this boy named Drew. I won't say his last name on here because he might be listening and he's probably listening, but you know what's funny? I will tell you, I am still friends with Drew right now. He lives in Austin. Everything's good. We've worked it out, we've gone on and married other people, we are friends, it's all fine. Our older siblings were dating his brother, my sister, they were in high school, so you can imagine they were in sixth graders. Yes, they were way older, and we were little punky. So it was Valentine's Day evening. It was like on a school night. I'll never forget this. And again, this is back in the late 70s, early 80s, and kids were different back then, right? Sixth graders, we were true sixth graders. We were still in elementary school, sixth grade makeup little girls, very naive, very anyway. I remember there was a doorbell rang, and I was down in the basement watching TV, and they called me upstairs, and it was my mom and my dad were there, my great aunt Ola was there, like a bunch of people in the living room. My sister was there, and she was acting goofy, and I'm like, Oh, what is going on? And at the door was little Drew. His mama called him drawers because she was from the south and she called them little baby drawers. He was the youngest of four, so you can imagine. And drawers was about a head shorter than me. Oh my gosh, blonde hair. I had blonde hair, and my eyes got huge because we were going steady, but we did not look each other in the eye. We did not talk. Oh my goodness. His brother was standing there with him, who was dating my sister, and he was like six feet tall. And he was like, Drew, what do you have for her? What do you have for Lori? And he had a bag of Hershey's kisses. Oh, and do you remember the Hallmark bags that were like that red plaid? It was a red and black and white plaid paper bags. Well, I don't know. Hallmark seemed from Kansas City, and I was in Obama, so it was all over the place. Sure. It was this real pretty, like red and black plaid. So his sisters had taken a Hallmark sack and cut out a heart, and so put it on there and opened it up. And here's where it got raunchy Wonda. Inside, the card said, Dear Lori, here are some kisses for you. Now, here's what I know. I know his sisters wrote it, he did not, because my sister read it out loud. Because I stopped when I saw the word, because I wasn't gonna read that word out loud. And Drew's eyes got real big when he heard what the card said.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

I don't think he knew, and he started running, and I panicked and I ran to my room. Oh no. Oh, we were traumatized. Traumatized, and I do remember everyone in the house laughing, and it was just just awful. It was awful.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

I don't know, I don't know whatever happened. But I'm sure you must have broken because he was so traumatized.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

He was traumatized, and the thing is, the old siblings are trying to push together because they were like, Drew, give her a kiss on the cheek. Drew, give her a hut. And he was like, No, leave me alone. Anyway, it wasn't meant to be, but that was my first Valentine's that I will always remember. That card made out of a heart. Oh, well, how sweet. You know, somebody helped me.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

But do you know how brave little baby drawers had to be to do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Oh, sorry, I'm just laughing. I'm just laughing.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

I know it.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Oh well, speaking of Hershey kisses, yes, that is one of the facts that maybe some people know, but there are more than 80 million chocolate kisses created daily.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Daily. Hershey makes more than 80 million chocolate kisses every day. That isn't that crazy. Year round or just year round, yeah. That's not just Valentine's Day. So, but you were saying kisses. So I thought that was really the right time to give you that number. Good one. You know, they're often head to head with MMs who does top selling candies, but the third ranking. So first is ki candy kisses, second MM's, and third is Reese's peanut butter cups, of course. Ooh, they're my fave. Okay. So there we go. He didn't know so many years ago how he was ahead of it with his Herschel kisses. He didn't.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

That's didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Okay, so let's just fire off a few of these. Okay. Oh, well. Okay. When did Valentine's Day become a holiday? I don't know. St. Valentine's Day was started around 500 AD, and some historians point it to a third century Roman priest who secretly married couples in defiance of the Roman emperor. Wow. And at one point, one was thrown into jail for attempting to assist Christians in the Roman prisons. So I'm sure there's a whole lot of other stories on that. The oldest known Valentine was written from prison. Yeah. The very first line read My Very Gentle Valentine. And it's considered to be by many the very first recorded Valentine from the most unromantic place. Yeah, how sad. I know. Charles, the Duke of Orleans, was imprisoned in the Tower of London when he was only 21 years old. And he wrote this letter to his wife with a poem, use the term Valentine to refer to her. Oh man, that's depressing. Well, it was important back then for him to write, and I guess for the first time it was used. You know how they often take Saint Days, which this is St. Valentine's Day, and they take those saint days and they make them more popular because they're replacing pagan holidays. Like, you know, Christmas was a pagan holiday, you know, so they're trying to replace pagan holidays with Christian celebrations. And that was pretty much the same here because it was initially a Roman fertility festival. And one of the articles said they're not going to share all the gory details, but they were having a pagan fertility festival back in the sixth century BC, and where the Roman priests would sacrifice goats and dogs, and then they would use that to sprinkle on the streets, and it was a fertility blessing. So legend had it that women would put their names in an urn and be selected to be prepared with a man for the year. Well, you fast forward a little bit further in a different time. Smithsonian actually wrote that men then would draw out those names and write the names on their arms. And so that's where this saying, wearing your heart on your sleeve comes from, because the men would have their women's name on their arm, which is a sleeve, and use that for for a year.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

So that was kind of crazy how all of that came about and so strange.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah, right. Strange, yeah. Years ago they would tattoo think of that. I mean, when they were in the army, my my uncle has the name of his first girlfriend on his arm. And it's like, okay, now what? Yeah, exactly. That's true. That was four wives ago, though. So yeah, yeah, yeah. This one was just interesting, and that was that every year, thousands of romantic people, well, those romantics, they send letters to Verona, Italy, to Juliet, obviously, from Romeo and Juliet. The city marks the location of the Shakespearean tale, and the letters that reach the city are dutifully answered by a team of volunteers from the Juliet Club. Wow. Isn't that nice though? Gosh. Wow. So if you want to get a letter back from Juliet, no idea about that. So then what about conversation hearts? You know those candy hearts that some people like, some people don't. Yeah. Yes. That have the little sayings on them. They're calling them iconic chalky heart-shaped candies. Also the ones they usually have in school. They started out as lozenges, like for your little cold do you have going on, right? Yeah, yeah. I could use them right now. Yeah. So Oliver Chase created a machine that would quickly create lozenges before switching to use the machine to create candy, later known as Neko wafers, N E C C O. Mm-hmm. And they still sell those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Yeah. Yep. They're a candy. They're like a wafer. They're like the candy hearts, except they're super, super thin. And you can buy them. They almost come in like a lifesaver pack. But they're a wafer.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Yeah. I'll have to look those up. Yeah. Well, Chase's brother came up with the idea to print messages on them. And the candies got their harp shape in 1901, appealing specifically for those Valentine's Day sweethearts. Been making those a long time. This is one I think Floris probably knew years ago, and some people really do know it about lace. Lace has been around on Valentine's Day from ribbons and gift boxes for a long time. But the word itself has an origin benefiting the holiday because the English word lace comes from Latin for snare. So you ensnare someone's heart. So you put that lace on a Valentine's Day card. Love it. I think we just kind of get into statistics. Approximately 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are sold each year. Laurie, that is a lot. 36 million heart shapes. So those are just heart shapes. Those aren't just the regular square ones that would put bows on from my Abdallah chocolate. That is insane. That's so much chocolate. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Yeah. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

145 million Valentine's cards are given each year. Halmart tells us that Valentine's Day cards are second most popular to Christmas being the first. Most people send Christmas cards. Yeah. Yeah, that would be true. Because you buy it. That would make sense for Christmas, I guess. True. Yeah, you do. You would dry it. But as far as candy, the conversation hearts, which we talked about, really take it says take the cake, but I would say it's the number of production of conversation hearts. Daily, approximately a hundred thousand pounds of conversation hearts are produced. That's about eight billion conversation hearts per year. And nearly all of those are sold during a brief six-week period between January 1st and Valentine's Day. They've reduced them all year long so that they can sell them for a six-week period of time. That's insane. That is insane.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

That company can keep people full-time employed that really only sell for six weeks out of the year.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah. Well, the good thing about candy in a general, and especially those, because you can you could store it up for years, probably.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Yeah. Flife on those things.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

With flowers being a perishable. I wish we would had a whole year to get them ready. Yeah, exactly. Store and everything. But you know, those are just produced in such a small window of opportunity that have to be fresh and sold. And yeah, it's makes the challenge. This last one that we're going to share today is one that you already knew and I didn't know. And that's the beginning of Galantine's Day.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Parks and Wreck!

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yeah. Yeah, it's because I loved that show. Yeah. Galantine's Day, or at least from my knowledge, it came from the TV show, Parks and Wreck. Leslie Nope from the TV show. They celebrated Galantine's Day on there. And that's the first time I had ever heard it. And then I just kind of took on a life of its own. And now you see it everywhere.

unknown 21:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

It said since 2010. It's a friendly and expensive practically tripled to 1.6 billion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

I love it though, because we needed Galantine's Day. I think our world needed Galantine's Day because I think it really does. It a lot of women, and I mean there can be Guy Tines Day if they want to get together with a group of guys too. But it's just that friend to friend spending is great. Get together with your girlfriends. If you don't have a boyfriend, that's fine. Or if you have a boyfriend, get the day before you get together with your girlfriend to celebrate your friendship.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. So that's all I really want to spend the time on today is hey, these are just a few fun little facts. And we just wish everybody has a really great holiday. What were you going to say? I said I just feel a little smarter. Feel like I took a little mini history class. So everyone out there, have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Or if you're hearing this afterwards, I hope you are able to put your feet up and get a little bit of rest. And we'll see you back here again next week.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flat briefing on Alexa.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

So please come back and join us and discover how much changing your mind to take you to new levels in your life and business.