Nearly Natural Veranda Garden Silk Flower Arrangement

I was really happy to find this attractive casual silk arrangement of wildflowers, and at a very reasonable price! I had been looking for something like this (rather than the more elaborate arrangements that are usually available) and I ordered two, one for myself and one for my mother. When I took one of the arrangements to my folks' place I was surprised when both my mother and my sister at first mistakenly thought the arrangement was REAL, not silk! Obviously, it's convincing! The only drawback is that the vases in which the arrangements are held were very cloudy and soiled when they came out of the boxes in which they were carefully packed. This is my first order from this vendor so I don't know if all of their arrangements in glass vases suffer from the same problem. There were no instructions in the box. I wasn't sure at first how to clean them, but I decided to try by spraying the vases very well, both inside and out, with glass cleaner. To do the inside I just pushed the stems to one side (they are fixed in permanent clear "water") and carefully sprayed all around the sides of the interior, avoiding getting spray on the blossoms. I then rolled the glass cleaner liquid around the sides of the vase, starting at the bottom and working it up towards the top of the vase. Do this holding the vase sideways and over the sink. To my pleasant surprise, that was enough to clean up whatever was making the glass cloudy. I emptied out the glass cleaner and then rinsed both inside and outside with some plain water, again holding the stems over to the side and being careful to avoid getting water on the actual blossoms. Then I just let the arrangements air dry overnight and they were ready to go the next morning. If you're in a hurry I suppose you could dry them quickly using a handheld hair drier. If the vases arrived sparkling clean this would get a five-star rating instead of four. The arrangement comes in a long, narrow box with all the flowers standing straight up. They are all on wire stems, so you just need to spread them out, bending the wires gently, to get a full, rounded arrangement like the one shown in the illustration. That doesn't take very long to do, or any special talent (I certainly don't have any) and you can always tinker with it some more if you notice that it's not completely symmetrical or well-shaped after your first try! When it's all fluffed out the arrangement is about 2 feet tall, so it's just the right size for any spot where you want the flowers to make an impression but not necessarily block a view or overwhelm the space. It works very well in my smallish apartment or on the coffee table at my folks' townhouse, which is more spacious and very high-ceilinged. It doesn't look skimpy in the least!