In the beginning...

Hello, I'm Jhess (Jess with a silent H). I'll refer to my mum who decided on the spelling of my name - she says it's because I have a twin sister named Christina that she wanted us to have our second letter in common - any further questions about this, please refer to Maria. 

Some facts about me:

• My twin sister is my best friend, and with my two older brothers we make up our mum's "Fantastic Four"

• I'm obsessed with flowers (obviously)

• I'm engaged to the sweetest guy ever and he also happens to be my unpaid house cleaner and business assistant (I know, I'm so lucky)

• I'm a self-confessed crazy dog lady and have a female sausage dog named Reggie (I welcome photos of your dog and/or dog memes at any time)

• I grew up in Sydney then lived in Melbourne for 7 years before returning back home

• I have two university degrees in Business Administration and Media, Culture & Communications 

• I've spent most of my career to-date in marketing event management in the Financial Services Industry...

...until now. 

When I started working in events, I immediately fell in love with the florists we worked with, and the flowers they created. My favourite part of event planning was briefing in the florals and I would dream about working with flowers. It took me six years before I actually did anything about it though.

Reasons for procrastinating revolved around believing I wasn't creative enough, it wasn't the right time, I couldn't afford to "start again" and I wasn't sure if I liked it enough to make it a career. Change is scary, couple that with limited self confidence to back yourself and before you know it, six years go by. So after one job redundancy, one pandemic, one long term relationship breakdown and many corporate jobs that led to a constant lack of fulfillment (more on that later), I decided to move back home to Sydney.

I ended up moving into an apartment close to the Sydney Flower Markets and decided to take myself there one day. It was so overwhelming and I had no idea what I was doing or what any of the flowers were called. I hated that I couldn't create flowers as nice as the florists then had a cry to my sister about it and she said "just enrol in a course already!".

So that's how I decided to take the first step towards a career change (thanks sis) - which was researching study options for floristry. I had no idea if it was actually going to lead anywhere but I told myself I was never going to stop wondering what my life could be like with flowers if I didn't try. I told myself it was my version of a Master's degree - some people pursue further academic study, I decided to pursue creative study. All I knew at that point was that I had to start somewhere....

Thanks for reading so far!  How am I doing?
Kindest,
JT xo