Bloom San Juan

10/25/2024

07/13/2024

We’re back! 😍🌼🪻🧡🧢

06/12/2024

Happy 8 year anniversary . I love you with a thousand hearts! ❤️ What a fun day that was, and now we will barely stay awake past 8:30, pray our kids fall asleep before us and feel the cool summer breeze blow through the house as we clean up the little kid art messes and dried up ramen pieces on the floor. Oh and now Sawyer is running laps around the house because “I’m too excited for field day at school tomorrow!”. Life is good!

04/29/2024

Millie looking good! Of course right now she is full of recycling, storage and a pile of goodwill stuff. Oh and cat food for the ferals. 🫣 I have a date with her soon to get her spiffy and ready for wedding season. Brady is trying to talk me into expanding the Salt side of things into her. What do y’all think? 😂

I love this space so much and crank weddings out of it in the summer months. The salt stuff happens down at the salt farm (Brady’s folks place), and Millie is at our house. It’s good news that the salt business is doing well and busting at the seams, and I can see Millie being the perfect additional space for Salt. But I also just want her for myself and flowers 😂. Bottom line is that we are lucky to have this space for whatever use!

In the meantime, I am redesigning the Salt farm office next week and can’t wait for it to get some fresh vibes. I love redesigning/creating spaces and could do it all day every day. It feels so good for me creatively!

Anyway, lots happening around these parts as always, but all good things. Loving the salt shop, Millie and everything in between.

04/10/2024

38 today and I’m feeling great! So happy for this life and all the fun and adventure that comes with it. My goal this year is to enjoy all the little things, stress way less, focus on having fun and saying yes to life! And laugh a lot, of course. Plus maybe get better at Pilates 😂 Today is my first day running since knee surgery in December (and actually since July when I got hurt). No better way to start another lap around the sun than with a run in the sun and a reminder that my body is strong and that I’ve put in the work to get better. I’m looking forward to a healthy and happy filled with so much goodness! 🥂

04/04/2024

My people ❤️❤️❤️ Happy longer days to everyone ☀️

03/19/2024

Another baking season has begun at for me! 🍪

01/19/2024

Brady brought me coffee in bed this morning, but we were out of milk so he mixed it with hot chocolate. It is much better than the time he ordered me an Americano “with cream” off island and he brought be back a coffee with melted whipped cream in it. 😂😅 But the man brings me so many coffees it’s incredible. He’ll be up early and I’ll get a text that says just let me know when you’re up and I’ll bring you coffee. What a sweetie. Grateful for him and how much he cares for me, especially lately when I’m a grump on crutches and he has to do all the things. Marriage has been the greatest adventure. We’re getting out of omg I’m so tired phase of parenthood, represented in a lot of these photos 😂. And it’s just nice to have someone always on your team. ❤️

01/18/2024

Brady and I have evolved from days of working together as farm interns into business owners ourselves. I remember hauling greenhouse materials up to the island in the back of our old GMC pickup. We named it Christian Bill after a nice Christian man named Bill agreed to sell it to us for $1500. We split time between a small apartment in Seattle and a spare room at Ryan Farm (thanks Cal and MK!). The first salt greenhouse was built, and so was a tiny home which we lived in at the farm for 2 years. The first greenhouse blew away during a storm but it was quickly rebuilt. We’d sleep with big STIHL headphones on in the tiny home during the nights the wind would rip through the valley off of False Bay. Somehow it eased our anxiety knowing we wouldn’t hear plastic from the greenhouses flapping wildly in the wind in the middle of the night. We looked like a couple of idiots, but man we slept well.

1 salt greenhouse turned into 4 thanks to many helping hands, then came a small flower field and wedding flowers, 3 more greenhouses, and now a total of 14. There’s a salt barn and a flower barn, 2 kids, a very well loved home we live in that’s been the Ryan’s since the 80s, and a little Salt shop in town. There is the best salt and flower crew ever making it all happen, and great friends like who capture so much of our life so beautifully.

So as much as my life here looks very flower filled, it’s really the Salt that has rooted us here on the island. And it’s pretty appropriate because I identify much more as a salty individual sometimes than a florist, but the balance is good for me 😂🤫.

01/15/2024

I asked June (age 4) where she thinks she was before she was born. She said, California.

And ya know, she’s probably right. 😂

I am enjoying the winter downtime with the kids where they just come sit with me on my big cozy bed as I nurse my busted knee back to normalcy. June does makeup with me which involves me pretending to curl her eyelashes and she brushes her eyebrows with a toothbrush. She looks in the mirror and says AMAZING as her dimples and little freckles melt my heart.

My kids also fight like hell one minute then I catch them being the kindest of humans to one another and I just think man this whole having kids close in age thing is worth it.

Sawyer has an even deeper love of baking which has now evolved into independent baking where there are no rules, and extra joy is added in. This also results in a similar outcome to that one Friends episode where Rachel messes up the trifle and Ross cries out, “it tastes like feet!” as she leaves the room. But we’re trying to build confidence here and it might be time to learn how to read recipes.

If you’re feeling lost lately and you don’t know how to find your joy, I recommend writing down all of the things you’re potentially looking forward to that day as soon as you wake up. Then keep doing it until one idea makes your heart sing and do that thing. It will help.

01/15/2024

Hey it’s me, Leah, the owner of Bloom San Juan and face behind this account. Did you know that the first wedding I ever did I charged $500 for? And that included 2 ferry rides and borrowing a family car to make the trip because the pickup truck we drove just wouldn’t cut it.

It’s amazing that I’ve been a florist for 10 years because I’m an aries who loves change, spontaneity and honestly I get sick of most things after 3 weeks. Churn and burn baby.

I’ve been making cookies on most Fridays since I was a recent college graduate and was too broke to afford any kind of mixer so learned how to mix cookie dough with my own private school student loan debt hands. They tasted just as good then too. This year I made over 10,000 cookies at our shop and plan to keep cruising along.

I was a nanny for 8 years in Seattle which did not prepare me for having my own kids. I love my kiddos but they thought June was twins at my first ultrasound for about 30 minutes and I’ve never seen a man (Brady) experience so many emotions at once. He finally said “it’ll be ok we have a spare bedroom” while being the palest I’ve ever seen him. She was in fact, just one baby. We sleep in the tiny spare bedroom we call the troll hole and leave the big master bedroom as a guest room so that we can be close to our kids’ rooms. I wonder when we’ll change that.

I saw a food network video clip on some guy making salt in greenhouses and told Brady about it. Fast forward to now and well, we make salt and live on the island. So don’t sleep on the food network, it could change your life.

❤️

01/06/2024

Basically the colors of the 2023 season in one shot. 🍑🧼🌅🧢🍃🌙🩰

It’s so good to be able to take a break from flowers and baking. Something I honestly never really thought I’d add to my resume. 😂 But I am so happy that I got to bake for our business this year. I’ve taken on about half of the weddings I usually wood for 2024 so that I can have a better balance. This year was a bit nuts. But also so rewarding. I was so worn out that I would tell Brady I could sleep for a week. Well, I did that post knee surgery, now I’m bored as s**t and I am ready to go again.

I am so looking forward to all of the good things ahead, but also grateful for this down time with some forced rest and some sunny weather to stare at through the window. I was peacefully gazing outside when a giant bird flew straight out the window and basically made me levitate off the bed.

Anyway, hope you all are enjoying your New Year! I know we’re all going through cookie withdrawals together but I will be back and ready to go in March!

01/05/2024

This GORGEOUS wedding from this past summer was so much fun. It was HOT out and that arch took quite the team to make happen. I’ll also take one of each bridesmaids dresses for my closet please, along with the sweet brides glow. 🔥

What an incredible team of people to make this happen and thanks to K+R for having such a beautiful vision!! A day to remember for sure.

Photo:
Planning & Design:
Florals:
HMU:
Dress:
Venue:

01/03/2024

Dreamy pieces at this summer. What a fun place to be married! The views, the space and the accommodations are swoon worthy. Owners Andrew and Merriss have created such a beautiful space for people to be married! ❤️

01/03/2024

My little wildflower heart loves this bouquet! Dainty wispy cosmos, plus so much texture and freshness.
🍃

01/03/2024

Forever a favorite at captured by .

I love creating pieces like these!

12/18/2023

Happy birthday to the love of my life 💜💜💜

11/20/2023

Team decorate for Christmas before or after Thanksgiving? Ive got pumpkins and poinsettias out 😂🍂🍁🌲🎄

11/09/2023

This fireplace install at was a dreammmm. captured it perfectly!

Can you imagine covering this entire fireplace with greenery and flowers?!

10/11/2023

I’ve been welcoming new couples to my 2024 wedding flower calendar this month, and I am so grateful for such a wonderful crew coming through! There are lots of connections between new and past couples too, so thanks for all your kind words out there! Good to know that you didn’t think I was too much of a hot mess at your wedding sweating my ass off hanging things from the ceiling/branch/tree/human. 😂

The islands are a magical place to get married, and I think it’s fair to say the people that choose to get married here are my kind of people. The ocean, sunshine, evergreens, gardens, sailboats, Madronas, whales, wildlife and the salt 😉 are just a few of the draws.

So cheers to the newbies, the oldies and the ones on their way 💍💕

10/04/2023

And now we start to rest 🍂🍁

All caught up on the last 4 months of posts 😂 let’s just break all the damn rules shall we?

09/17/2023

My new happy place salt shop, baking and feeling little to no stress.

I love wedding work 🪻🌸🌼 but they can be stressful. If you know, you know 😅. Just think about how many people you might know the *used* to work in the wedding industry 😂🤪 So getting to just emerge myself in a calming new space has been quite eye opening and fun.

07/25/2023

Millie is like a flower Airbnb. The flowers come in, enjoy the view for 2-3 days and then their off onto the next great adventure. 🏝️

06/28/2023

Back in action and prepping for a full weekend ahead at the shop. I baked over 1000 cookies in June alone and we’re just getting started 😅. Come see us this weekend at the shop 10-4 and we’ll also be open July 3rd and 4th!

06/18/2023

Happy father’s day to my daddy-yo. He certainly is the best of them. And in my eyes, there isn’t anything he can’t do 🥰. Love you pop pop!