Put a wreath on it, Las Vegas Review Journal, November 17, 2018

Garden-style holiday wreaths By Lisa Ferguson Special to Your Home November 20, 2018 During the half-dozen years that she served as the chief floral designer at the White House during the Obama administration, Laura Dowling and her staff crafted countless wreaths. “I created wreaths for holiday decor, to commemorate presidential birthdays and to honor fallen heroes. … In my White House work, I saw how the simple wreath form conveyed tradition, meaning and metaphor, representing so much more than a simple decorative placement,” she wrote in her book “Wreaths: With How-to Tutorials” (Stichting Kunstboak, $35), due out Nov. 30. During the holiday season, dozens of wreaths adorn the White House grounds. They hang on perimeter gates, the north and south porticos and the Truman balcony. Wreaths also play a festive role indoors at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “I always felt like it was important to draw people in and use wreaths on the windows,” Dowling said. “Each year, we would do something fun and unique. It was kind of like an art gallery. “One year, we used fruits and vegetables … to create these oversized, geometric wreaths — diamond-shaped, squares, round, oval — made out of gourds and dried (seed) pods and things that were very colorful but also very striking. I think each wreath had about 800 individual elements that were wired into it.” Prior to landing the White House job in 2009, Dowling, who holds degrees in political science and public policy, worked for The Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Virginia-based environmental nonprofit organization that protects land and water around the globe. She went on to study the floral arts at L’Ecole des Fleurs in Paris. Following her 2015 departure from the White House, she penned a pair of books, “Floral Diplomacy: At the White House” and “A White House Christmas: Including Floral Design Tutorials,” which were published last year. “It seemed kind of a natural progression to go from ‘A White House Christmas’ … to something that kind of delves more deeply into wreaths and the design of it,” she said. Brimming with colorful photos, her latest tome features detailed instructions for making elegant wreaths largely from fresh flowers, produce and other organic materials, as well as various “unexpected” items including folded paper and even marshmallows. “You can use simple materials,” she said. “I’m really trying to encourage people to be creative and innovative and use things that are on hand.” The finished products can adorn not only doors and windows but also chair backs, gates, walls and other spaces year-round. Dowling resides in the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, where colonial history and traditions are alive and well, she said, and “making natural wreaths is still very much en vogue.” She calls wreaths “the jewelry on the door. It’s really almost the most important thing, I think, for holiday decorating. Even if you don’t have time … to (decorate) an entire house, it’s usually pretty accessible to put a wreath on the front door.” During the fall and winter holidays, “people traditionally view them as a static thing,” Dowling said. “You buy a wreath, you keep it up maybe for a month or two. … I think when you’re using fresh materials, it’s important to kind of look at them as a temporary thing.” In the introduction of “Wreaths,” she wrote, “Of all the floral art forms in the language of flowers, the wreath is arguably the most powerfully symbolic. With no beginning and no end to its circular form, the wreath represents eternity and immortality — and, according to some, is the ultimate symbol of achievement and success.” Despite that inherent symbolism, Dowling contends that wreaths are in need of “a major overhaul and upgrade.” Viewing examples online and at craft stores, “you kind of see the same old thing,” she said. “To me, the ready-made, commercial wreaths are a little bit flat, one-dimensional, maybe using expected materials.” With the wreath form, “there’s such an opportunity to introduce a personal style and create a theme, maybe even add a little bit of whimsy to the work.” In the book, Dowling compares the wreath-making process to “telling a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. It requires a compelling plot (theme), a mix of interesting characters (design elements) and a strong narrative (technique) that builds up with a crescendo and flourish to a dramatic ending (finishing touches).” Swan Lake, a wintery wreath included in a chapter titled “From the Woods,” features bunches of silver-painted eucalyptus pods and ruscus stems, white tree branches, feathers, silver wrapping paper and medium-sized marshmallows. “For this classic winter-wonderland idea, I wanted to use white-on-white with a lot of different textures and layers,” Dowling explained. A holiday-wreath staple, pine cones are the basis for several projects highlighted in the book. “I think using them natural is great, but if you want to add some color or style,” Dowling suggests gilding them with silver or gold spray paint. Rose hips, berried green ivy and stems of bright orange “pumpkin trees” are the components of a wreath dubbed Pumpkin Patch. “You can get those at the grocery store,” she said of the pint-sized fruits, which are actually a variety of ornamental eggplant that grows on stalks. With craft wire and wooden picks, she affixed them to an 18-inch grapevine wreath form and created a fanciful fall display. Connie Jo Harris is a fan of incorporating fresh materials with “permanent botanicals” (more commonly known as silk plants) in wreaths. A longtime instructor with the College of Southern Nevada’s floral design technology program, Harris is an accredited member of the American Institute of Floral Designers. She noted that even during the cooler fall and winter months, the Southern Nevada sun “is going to beat down on the fruits” and vegetables. “Something with a harder skin, like an orange or a pomegranate,” may be suitable for an outdoor wreath, she said. “You can get some really nice dried quince. That looks really beautiful.” Harris, a certified floral designer, also suggests adding succulents to designs. “They are really big in the floral industry right now. … If you can get some really good-looking faux succulents, put them in there along with some fruit.” When designing and decorating with wreaths, she said, “pick a theme and stick with it throughout your house, because (it is displayed on) the entrance to your home.

Send Me On Vacation helping breast cancer survivors heal, Las Vegas Review Journal, Oct. 3`, 2018

Great escape helps women heal By Lisa Ferguson Special to Las Vegas Review-Journal October 31, 2018 - 8:00 am Cathy Backus has never been diagnosed with breast cancer, but she knows well the physical and emotional toll that the disease often takes on those who have. “When you’re hit with breast cancer out of the blue … you’re completely shell-shocked and you go into this fight-or-flight mode and you just (try to) survive. You’re just trying to get to the next step of the process,” she said. Backus, a longtime Summerlin resident and travel industry executive, founded Send Me on Vacation in 2012. The nonprofit organization, based in Las Vegas, organizes, funds, awards and leads trips to exotic locales around the globe that are designed to help breast cancer survivors “rejuvenate and heal their minds, bodies and spirits” following treatment for the disease. According to research published in a 2016 issue of the medical journal Psycho-Oncology, 82 percent of women with early-stage breast cancer exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after being diagnosed and before beginning treatment. Backus, 64, witnessed firsthand the positive impact that a vacation can have when she traveled in 2006 to a Mexican beach resort with her best friend, Pam Horwitz, a two-time breast cancer survivor. “(Horwitz) came back renewed, revitalized,” said Backus. “She said, ‘I feel like the waves took all of the anxiety and fear and stress out to sea with them, and as I was sitting in sun, it felt like I was baking goodness and warmth back into me after all of the cold chemo.’” Backus returned from that trip determined to help other breast cancer survivors enjoy similar experiences. She and her husband, Las Vegas attorney Leland “Gene” Backus, went to work establishing Send Me on Vacation. (Horwitz now serves on the organization’s board and chairs its survivor committee.) While hospitals and cancer care centers typically offer “wonderful programs” for breast cancer patients, Cathy Backus said, resources for survivors can be scant. Patients often suffer from dramatic physical transformations that can result from breast cancer surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. “It’s a terrible cycle,” she said. “At the end, they’re left so destroyed.” However, when survivors “change their lives, they change the lives of everyone” around them, Backus said. In the past six years, Send Me on Vacation has sent about 500 women on getaways. Backus attends and personally oversees each trip, which usually includes 20 survivors. Using her travel industry connections, she has gotten hotel accommodations, cruise ship staterooms and airfares donated for the trips, which cost about $1,000 per person. Most of the funds are raised through events that Send Me on Vacation hosts in eight countries around the world. Beginning next year, Backus said, it will rely more on private and corporate donations to raise the majority of the $100,000 required yearly to cover the costs of its five annual trips. The organization is affiliated with hospitals, cancer care centers and international nonprofit organizations, which refer survivors to it. Vacation recipients are selected via an application process (accessible at www.sendmeonvacation.org) that has women pen an essay about why they believe such a trip will help them heal. Survivors were previously required to have experienced financial hardship as well. However, that requirement was dropped last year to make the program accessible to more women. “We’ve never turned down anyone who qualified (for a trip),” Backus said. Three years ago, Send Me on Vacation began offering its signature getaway, called A Mermaid’s Journey, that features a multiday, guided meditation workshop and concludes with a “phototherapy shoot,” which has participants styled from head to toe as a mermaid. “They release all of that pent-up anger and fear” via meditation, Backus explained. “And then they use the archetype of a mermaid to find their inner beauty, strength and grace.” A former Las Vegas resident, Heidi Lamprecht and her family relocated to Washington state in 2013. Two years later, at age 34, the mother of two was diagnosed with stage 2 invasive ductal carcinoma. She underwent a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and 30 rounds of radiation treatments and also battled PTSD. Lamprecht, who learned about Send Me on Vacation while researching online for survivor support systems, participated in A Mermaid’s Journey when she traveled with the organization in 2016 to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The weeklong trip “was fantastic,” said Lamprecht, who especially enjoyed meeting fellow survivors. “I never had to explain myself,” she said. “We were all there and we all knew we needed something, so we had that as a sort of camaraderie.” Earlier this year, she traveled to Cancun, Mexico, through Send Me on Vacation’s Mermaids and Angels empowerment and mentoring program, which pairs new vacation recipients with past participants. “I realized just how much of a tribe I needed to create in order for me to keep moving forward and healing,” Lamprecht said. “Being able to go on vacations and help other women do the same thing is what helps me get up in the morning.”