The blur is selective focus, done by opening the aperture and reducing effective sharpness to a few elements in the photo. In her case, she used an Olympus E-410, and set it so that the auto feature would go for a faster shutter and a larger aperture. The Gerber Daisies, for example appear that much sharper, because selective focus threw the background out of focus.
These are hand-held, and yes, there is a digital image stabilization mode in the E-410, unlike the mechanical one used in my K20. But it seems to do pretty well. Nikon had a bit of trouble with that, and opted to put image stabilization in selected lenses, meaning legacy lenses have no stabilization at all. On the other hand, I can use a 40-year old Pentax lens on my K20 and image stabilization works fine.
Which is a big deal to me, because much of the old glass was better, and most of it was a lot faster than today's lenses. A 1.8 85mm Takumar gives me an amazing 1.8 128mm equivalent, which is perfect for a lot of indoor sporting events. If I need even more speed, Mrs. Barbarian's E-410 can mount, via adapter, a 55mm f1.2 Nikkor, which is the equivalent of a 110mm f1.2.
And all image stabilized, which means slower shutter speeds work, allowing more control over depth of field.