Hello All Blender folks and Merry Christmas!
This is something i am in the process of working on and i have animation to it but thats what is not done… once i learn a few more things than i will be on the home stretch to finish this 
I made this in blender 2.61 using compositing and a little help with the nature academy on how to make better looking grass! Hope ya’ll enjoy!!!
very nice you could try and add some birds in the background flying into the sunset
There is a problem with this image.
The lighting is all wrong, and the sun is too overblown, the colors also dont complement each-other, but this is most likely due to the lighting. The sunflower is way to bright too, and green??? change it to yellow 
Again maily work on your lighting, where is the orange light from the sun? (also why is the sun so red/pink, make it more orange. (The clouds can be pink/purple (blue environment mixed with the orange from the sun) but not the sun.)
but yeah this has potential
awesome, thank you DDD for the help and yea im still trying to figure out this whole lighting thing lol. but i will def take in what you wrote and go back and fix it. the sun i wanted to be overblown but other than that i understand everything u said and thank you for the reference images
mechman, thank you and adding some birds might be a good touch!!! 
here is the new image with the sun being orange and the sunflower back to yellow…still more to do just putting a refresher pic up
It’s a great render, I can see that Andrew Price’s NA is worth it (Although, it is pretty expensive ;))
The only thing I can really say is maybe the petal leaves? You tend to find that the inner “bud” is an orangey colour, compared to the edge of the leaves, that are a brighter yellow - I know Andrew Price teaches how to change the colour of grass from Green to Yellow-ish tip, so maybe the same can be implemented for the petals?
Other than that, I love it Brilliant! Makes a change to all the christmas Renders
Thank you so much Phoenix492 and you know i never even thought about applying the blend texture to the pedals… i might have to try that out Change is always good lol, again thank you so much for the compliment and have a great merry christmas!!
Looking better, but somehow all the objects seem disconnected from one another. Also now that you changed the color of the sun the cloud color is off and doesn’t fit anymore. pass it through the compositor or gimp/Photoshop and change the red to orange too.
The tree and grass imo have the best connection but the sunflower seems just placed there, i guess it looks “different” somehow.
Oh and maybe ad some streaks to the sun, and make it smaller i think too.
http://images.paraorkut.com/img/pics/glitters/s/sunset-9631.jpg
http://i3.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens3650112module23779132photo_1253648664Red_Sunset_Clouds.jpg
Love the idea and the general setup… but … … The sun cant be infront of the clouds unless its a sort of nebula that is hiden behind our solar system ! Sunflower needs some work on its analogies and well… they usually are tilted towards the sun (I am willing to ignore that) The centre of the flower is way too specular.
Would love to see how you progress with it!
Merry christmas
LOL thanks Artistic… can we say that this one time there was some sort of nebula hidden behind our solar system hahaha . the sunflower was put like this purposely and i know its incorrect because they usually do face the sun ( hinse the name ) but i like things different so i made it like this lol. now for the center of the flower being specular, there actually isnt any specular but how the image texture was lol. still working on prefecting textures and i agree the center def needs some a tad bit of work. Merry Christmas to you tooo
new image:
-changed center of sunflower
-rose sky up more ( might still add a slight orange colour where its closer to the sun )
Each new version looks better than the previous one. That’s a good sign
Is it only me or the trunk of the tree looks transparent?
i know right…the trunk does look transparent LOL and i am still trying to firgure out why because there is nothing with transparency added on… still scratching my head with this one. Thank you for the complement that each picture is improved from the previous!
again, adding a refreshed render. found out why the tree was acting transparent and added a nice vignette ( if i spelt that correct ) . Also turned up the DOF so further back was not as blurry. Still messing around a lot with it and wanting to add more things to come!
Getting Better!
Thank you Joshua Alger!
Here is another render with some flowers i added
new animation: http://youtu.be/l2H9Hn6ieeo
in the process of rendering a new animation and have changed a few things
nice nice, looking better with each render ^^ i like the little flowers you added
here is the new image: some new things changed…wonder if you can tell?! 
The tree has been modified and the sun size is reduced:) Two good changes in my opinion, still not quite photo realistic but it has a great feel which makes it work. The grass looks good however you might think about using weight painting or vertex groups to place the flowers more uniformly in groups as they would be in nature and note so uniformly scattered. Just my thoughts, great job…keep up the good work.
Happy Blending!