Making Terrariums!

Still following up on my thirty before 30 list, I vowed to "get and keep alive more plants." I had been wanting to make a terrarium for awhile, so I picked up a cute glass container thanks to the Hobby Lobby card I won from my good friend Danavee. I began scheming what to put in the terrarium, but realized that although bloggers put succulents in closed terrariums, they will not stay alive in that environment.

(Can we talk real quick about how fake blog photoshoots can be? Sure, succulents look really cute in closed terrariums but everything I read said they will die with that kind of moisture.)

I visited our local nursery and asked what plants would work in a closed terrarium and they only suggested moss and ferns. I wasn't loving that idea, so I kept researching. I discovered that "baby tears" (pilea) worked well. I found TerrariumHouse on Etsy, a shop that had both really cute moss AND baby tears in her shop. I ordered one of each!

They arrived the following week in really great shape. I hoped to fit them both in my small glass jar but I definitely underestimated their size! Only the baby tears would fit in my glass jar so I went hunting for another container. In January, I tried making my own laundry detergent and bought a big "fancy" jar (from Wal-mart) to hold it. When I ran out, I decided I didn't really want to continue making my own (plus, we got Lucy and I didn't really feel like the homemade stuff was getting dog-ness out of our laundry) so I then put her treats in the jar. That wasn't actually efficient, so the jar went upstairs to my "craft" room to await its next purpose.... It is now a terrarium!

Because I was slightly obsessed with making terrariums, I had been collecting both terrarium accessories (deer, toadstool, etc) and terrarium tutorials on Pinterest.

I layered pebbles/gravel, then activated charcoal, then potting soil. I spritzed them with water then put the lid on. They developed condensation on the glass, so I removed the lids for a little while and then put them back on. I think they are so fun!

The bigger one (with the cupcake moss and the deer) lives on our stairs. I think sometime in the 90s whoever owned this house finished the attic and built a staircase in front of the living room window. Strange, right? The stairs partially block the window... but the stairs also make a great plant stand and the window gets great light. The smaller terrarium lives on my "new" shelf that I will post about soon! Gotta get all my 30 updates in!

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