Staff photo by Connor Cummiskey Eden Isaksson, 9, (left) delivered a bouquet to Marcella Steuber (right) Tuesday at Ridgeway on German St. Isaksson was a volunteer for the Teleflora Make Someone Smile Week organized by A to Zinnia Florals & Gifts.

NEW ULM — Volunteers wearing black aprons and friendly faces delivered bouquets in smiley-faced mugs to seniors Tuesday.

The deliveries to both Ridgeway Assisted Living and Memory Care facilities were the first of 826 bouquets to be delivered, A to Zinnia Florals & Gifts Owner Heather Hammer said.

“We spend a couple of weeks preparing I would say like 800 of these little smile mugs,” Floral Designer Josie Schieffert said. “Filling them with flowers and plants and then we take every day of this week delivering them to nursing homes, retirement homes, care centers all kinds of places like that within all of New Ulm, Sleepy Eye and we go to Gibbon too.”

Hammer organized volunteers and deliveries as part of florist networking company Teleflora’s Make Someone Smile Week.

Volunteers will be making trips to each assisted living facility in New Ulm and Sleepy Eye as well as a couple in Morgan and Gibbon until Saturday, July 22, Hammer, the president of the Teleflora unit serving Minnesota and both Dakotas, said.

“They just love it, their face lights up and it just makes peoples’ days,” Hammer said. “Not that those people necessarily get forgotten but they do not necessarily have a lot of contact with other people.”

Hammer organizes the delivery here because she has been a board member with this Teleflora unit.

The mugs for the “Be Happy Bouquets,” as Teleflora dubs them, are donated from the company. The flowers and greenery are donated by Hammer’s wholesale distributors.

Hammer and her volunteers arrange the bouquets and deliver them. Hammer gets volunteers from her customer base and local groups such as Millford Township 4-H.

This is the fourth year Hammer has delivered flowers and the 17 annual Make Someone Smile Week.

The week is virtually a continent-wide program with over 27,000 bouquets delivered in more than 140 cities and 380 facilities in the U.S. and Canada, according to a Teleflora press release.

“It just a nice week to spend some time giving back to people and making people smile,” Schieffert said.

ccummiskey@nujournal.com