Photos by Mandy Sue Glaser, Wild WILD light Photography
Jayme Floyd wears a lot of hats. Sometimes she’s an interior designer. Sometimes she’s a floral designer. Every day she’s a downtown Henderson business owner (J’Petals will celebrate 20 years in April).
And then there’s the hat she wears that makes people happy in the last part of the year.
With that hat she’s the “Christmas fairy.”
She’s the one who unravels your Christmas lights and makes sure they all illuminate, finds the perfect spot for the Santa Claus collection, works the puzzle that gets ornaments on the Christmas tree so each precious object can be a visible part of holiday dazzle.
Floyd decorates for Christmas.
A lot.
That aspect of her booming business revs up right after October fall break. Then she starts on the first of the approximately 50 homes and the seven or eight corporate settings she will sprinkle with twinkle and holiday magic. This year the list includes five new clients.
She’ll decorate approximately 200 trees, with some homes tucking them into every nook and cranny.
“It’s a lot early on in the season,” Floyd said, especially since she’s also “flipping” the merchandise in her First Street boutique and floral studio with the holiday merchandise she purchased at market the previous January and started receiving in June. That means she’s looked at Christmas decor for most of the year. “It’s like a whirlwind.”
During that timeframe she’s also preparing for downtown open houses and tending to the everyday parts of her business, such as floral arrangements for special occasions and funerals.
There might even be a few fall and holiday weddings mixed in, which is a whole other dynamic of her work.
But she said she loves the holiday decorating part of her business.
“People have collections of things that I get to work with,” she said, mentioning a previous client’s stunning collection of Christopher Radko blown-glass ornaments as having been a particular favorite to work with. Their fragility definitely required handling with care.
“Some of the houses are not huge,” Floyd said, “but even smaller houses have a ton of stuff. Figuring out how to use it is the challenge I love.”
Treasured pieces, such as a beloved Nativity set, grandmother’s crocheted items or antique boot-shaped wine decanter with matching shot glasses need to have the right showcase for the season.
Along the way there have been some decorating mishaps.
One that jumps to her mind was the time she was working at a home when the owners were absent. She was high on a ladder, trying to connect a stubborn treetop section and she couldn’t get it to stay put. Floyd, the ladder and the tree parts came crashing down and ended up on the floor.
“I was in the Christmas tree,” she recalls. But she extricated herself, went to the store, bought a new tree to replace the broken one and carried on with the job.
“I think I took a little bit of a loss on that job,” she said, including her dignity.
She prefers pre-lit trees, which saves time, but she does have one client with a fresh-cut tree.
“I love it but I don’t like to decorate it,” Floyd said, explaining that heavy ornaments have to be tied on to get them to look right. “It’s a lot more work.”
As for exterior lighting, plenty of time is spent dealing with lights. She loves the client that has all of his lights unwound and checked and all the possible technical issues addressed.
Around the first of December things on the decorating side start winding down so it’s time to reboot and grab the spirit of the season for herself.
She loves it when Main Street gets all decked out with the cross-street garlands and lights and the shop windows come alive with paint and displays.
She has fun decorating the street-level window gallery at Stock Yards Bank. People walk by and knock on the window to express their happiness to see the scene and wish her a “Merry Christmas.”
Someone will invariably decide to have a last-minute Christmas party that needs her help, and there will be orders for fresh florals for the holiday dinner table.
But she doesn’t find the spirit by putting up a Christmas tree at her own home, though she does assist with the tree at her parents’ home (Kenny and Linda Floyd). Her house is tree-less.
She gets spirit from knowing that the homes she’s made ready for Christmas are available as sanctuaries of peacefulness when people come home from a too-busy or difficult day.
“I hope they get an instant feeling of warmth and joy when they come home, sit back and relax with lights and music, look at something that takes them back and slow down from the hustle and bustle,” Floyd said.
She also gets it by looking around the community she calls home.
“I love the warmth and coziness of our downtown,” Floyd said, calling it a “Hallmark town” at holiday time.
She has childhood memories that shape the way she feels, such as the annual Turkey Trot race that kicks things off at Thanksgiving, the magic of Christmas in the Park, the downtown Christmas parade and — her favorite of all — Christmas Eve candlelight service at church.
She remembers going to shop at places like Bernstein’s, Bohns, Forte’s and others. “And now I’m kind of the ‘Old Guard,’” she said, noting all of the boutiques and other small businesses that have opened in the past few years.
She thinks that helps create a great feeling for a community.
“There’s nostalgia in people still knowing each other and seeing the sense of community that Henderson brings. The slower pace,” she said. “Our downtown has so much charm.”
There was a time in her life that she didn’t think she would live in Henderson as an adult, but now she can’t imagine living anywhere else, especially a big city.
And she said she’s watched people who’ve come to town to work temporarily get hooked by that same feeling.
She eased into being a business owner by honing her skills steadily. She worked for two different florists in Lexington when she went away from Henderson, then came home to work at Sugar Baker’s, both at the Henderson location and in Evansville.
Gradually through the reputation of her work, people in her network started asking her for help at their home for parties, holidays, general decorating consulting or with a wedding. People kept asking her if she’d ever thought about starting her own place.
“Seeing what I do was the best (recommendation),” Floyd said. She finally decided to dip her toe into business ownership 20 years ago.
If the holiday season has its opportunity for creativity and problem-solving, weddings can bring even more.
Today, weddings take place any day of the week and there are many, many types of venues, some located in the middle of nowhere with not a Dollar General or Walmart nearby, which means she needs to remember to pack all of the basic supplies it takes to assemble the pieces of the decor.
“I don’t know where (brides-to-be) find some of these destinations,” Floyd said.
Logistics become very, very important. She’s worked on weddings at a zoo, in a botanical garden, at beach destinations, at a distillery. Traditional church weddings are less common at the present.
In addition to many celebrations in Henderson, Evansville and the region, she’s traveled to Nashville, St. Louis, Florida, Georgia, Hilton Head and other places, including Lexington and Louisville “a bunch.”
If it’s an outdoor wedding, there’s the weather forecast to consider.
“But I love a challenge, thinking out of the box, getting things going,” Floyd said. “I love that part of it.”
She has to work closely with other wedding vendors, including the caterer. Sometimes she’ll even need to travel to an upcoming venue to take photos of what her team will be dealing with.
Flowers, which are a huge part of the wedding experience, can be tricky especially if the bride has her heart set on something unusual that needs to be acquired from an exotic location.
“Flowers come in from all over the world. Tulips from Holland, tropicals through Miami,” Floyd said.
Just like people, they can get stuck on flights or in customs, and “you can’t control the weather.”
She recalls one wedding when the lime-green anthurium she’d ordered got stuck in transit and arrived as a rich brown instead. But she worked a little floral magic with it and used it, and the client declared it to be stunning.
Floyd deals with all of the moving parts of her business with some advice in mind.
“I’ve always been told to give it your all and try your best,” she said. “Crazy ideas are OK. Dream big and see what comes of it.
“And you can’t please everyone,” she added. “All you can do is try, keep your head up and keep on moving.”
Calling all Hendersonians!