My name is KOA KARHU “Koa Bear” and am the lead supervisor and creative influence behind The Cosmo Cottage™. I work with our baby flowers making sure our sunshine button is on every morning and and off at night. I was prematurely promoted to “Misting Operator” and had my privileges revoked after spraying the family cats among other things. My background in soil testing has proven extremely helpful in our new town and I must say, the dirt is delicious here!

I have been gardening since I began crawling through the blueberry patches at our old home. My love for “baby fow-ursch” -both growing and gifting- has been the highlight of my 6 years on this planet.

My favorite flowers are often chosen by smell and size but to know where the best flowers are growing, I follow the bees! I have zero boundaries with bumble bees and have been blessed that the local fuzzies pollinating our sunflowers let me pet them.

Know that if you order flowers from our family, I have smell tested them all for quality assurance and talk to them daily to keep them happy and bright. You may have seen me buzzing around Huntsville as a giant bumble bee delivering flowers with my mama in a project we call “Mehilänen Mail”. It is our way of giving love back to our town that has supported our small business!

All the silly words on our website? My mama’s grandpa is from a place on the other side of the world called Finland. So while I am learning how to be a small human, and to read, and gardening, I am also learning the Finnish language (opiskelen suomea)… and unless I am shy, I can’t wait to tell you all about it. So tervetuloa ja nauttia kosmo mökki!

MEET YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER, VARIS LAURILA ROCKHOLT- FIRST OF HER NAME. FLORAL DESIGNER, SET DESIGNER, FLOWER FARMER, THE SUN BURT - MOTHER OF KOA KARHU, BREAKER OF SMALL TALK, DEFENDER OF THE LOCAL BEES, QUEEN OF THE NERDS.

My name is VARIS LAURILA ROCKHOLT and I am a licensed hair dresser and makeup artist who turned my sculpting abilities and years behind the chair as a cosmo-therapist into a new career in world beautification.

Now, a self-taught florist- I also work as the lead grower on site at The Cosmo Cottage™ and am busy behind the scenes in graphic design, photography, product development, event design | styling | and construction. I spend my days in the grow room talking down unruly sprouts and feeding them sunshine. I have handled a lot of grown-out roots in my day and now, I am a baby plant therapist.

I am an internationally published, mixed media artist that has always been drawn back into special events and out-of-the-box marketing campaigns. My background in high-end wedding expos and theatrical fashion productions has allowed me to build a wide variety of experiences for creative minds alike.

My career in design began in 2005 traveling with NASCAR, the NHRA, and The Denver Grand Prix working in fashion marketing, print work, and hosting media segments for the SPEED Channel and Speed Central on Altitude Network. I have styled photoshoots for several New York Times best selling books and worked along side FX body painters featured on the Netflix series Skin Wars for artistic collaborations over time. From working in print and as a segment producer and designer for fashion events, I was recruited by The Eclectic Wedding And Event Showcase in Denver as the Event Manager. I was fortunate enough to style bridal shoots in Russia and Estonia in 2015 and cruised the Baltic working as a lifestyle blogger for another Denver artist.

Getting off the ship, I felt like a natural-born pirate and took my work to the West Coast styling models in LA. Almost dumping my entire makeup kit off the side of a client’s yacht loading my tools on location, I ventured to find work that fed my soul again… and a bigger ship to sail on.

In 2017, I was called to work on board the USS Iowa Battleship Museum in San Pedro, California. Showing my love for our military community, my days in Events and Volunteer Services offered me an opportunity of a lifetime to work hands on history doing what I love with some of the greatest people I have ever met. My first ever flower arrangement sat on the memorial that year to honor the 47 lives lost in the turret 2 explosion of 1989.

Shortly after, I took a minute off work to introduce my tiny human into the world. I focused all my bizarre skills I picked up over the years back into our home to build a beautiful environment for our little Koa to grow. The little muffin inspired me to create this business around love that we share of flowers and finding immeasurable beauty in the most unlikely of places.

Thank you for supporting local artists.