We just can't help ourselves when it comes to flowers. Every time the girls and I go for a walk, we inevitably find wildflowers to pick. Seeing Evangeline point out the daintiest flowers or the most vibrant colored ones is just the best. Living in an urban environment has proven to be no challenge for my nature loving girl. In fact, when we're closest to the grass and dirt and lost in a world of bugs, flowers, and imagination, we don't notice cars whizzing by on the street or the distant sounds of sirens and buses. We just talk about our discoveries and our plans for them when we get home.

A friend gave Evangeline the cutest flower press for her birthday. It really was the perfect gift, especially since I had it in my Amazon cart for a couple of weeks leading up to her party. With all the flowers we'd been picking along with flowers from my garden, I decided to take out the press and preserve our found treasure.

But before we went straight to pressing, we created some flower art. I follow Bridget Beth Collins of Flora Forager (@flora.forager) on Instagram and recommend that you take a look at her beautifully detailed botanical art. With her inspiring work in mind, Evangeline and I made a couple of simple scenes. The best part about flower art is that when you're done, the clean up is minimal. After admiring our work and snapping some photos, we brushed aside the pictures and selected and arranged flowers for pressing with the cardboard, sheets of paper, and wax paper I cut to size. If you don't have a press, all you need are a few heavy books and some wax paper.

About a week and a half later, we checked in on our flowers out of curiosity. Sure enough, some of the flowers were not quite ready because they should ideally press for two to four weeks. So we sealed it back up for two more weeks of pressing before the final reveal.

Flower art and pressing are beautiful ways for you and your child to creatively engage in nature. Select the prettiest, brightest colored flowers without blemish or brown spotting and arrange the flowers whole or separated. Flower art is also the perfect way to study the anatomy of a flower, as pulling off petals and delicately handling the flower forces you to closely examine its form and beauty. Pressing them preserves the memory of the day the flower had to be yours.

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them." -Henri Matisse