dissolved into something: Terrariums

I was lucky enough to spend this past weekend in Hocking Hills with three of the best ladies on the planet, my best friend (Amanda), my sis (Michelle) and my sister's best friend (Helene). We rented a cabin, cooked some tasty food, drank wine, played games and, best of all, celebrated Amanda's birthday, which was this past Thursday. More on our fun trip to Hocking Hills later, for right now I want to talk about Amanda's birthday gift.

As usual, I had no idea what to get for my HLP's birthday. I tried to sweet talk her into creating an Amazon wishlist, but of course she didn't listen to me. Something about how I have a $2K camera on my wishlist, which was wildly impractical because no one would ever get that for me (including myself), so there. That pretty much summed up her argument. So, without a wishlist to go off of Antoine and I decided to hit up the antique malls in order to find something fun and interesting for my one-of-a-kind best friend. While hobbling around Ohio Valley Antique Mall (the best in the Cincinnati area, in my opinion) I spotted a booth selling terrariums. They were cute and something I thought Amanda would like, though they were either a bit too small or too big and awkward. But Antoine immeditately said, "hey, we can make her one of those ourselves!" (as he does with most things). And yeah, he had a point...this time. After a quick google search on our phones we discovered that it was definitely do-able and even had a list of what supplies we'd need. (Try these three sites for instructions, however, please note that if you are using succulents, like we did, you can not do a closed terrarium.)

So we switched gears and started looking for glass containers for said terrariums...because, I mean, we might as well make one or two for ourselves while we're making Amanda's, right?! We found a collection of vintage class jars that were pretty reasonable (though it was kind of eye-opening to see the broad range in pricing throughout the antique mall), as well as a couple miniature animals for the terrariums. Then we went to Petsmart for carbonized charcoal and moss and Lowe's for rocks and plants. We already had potting soil at home. Since the jars didn't have large openings at the top we used a small spoon and chopsticks to maneuver the plants and things around, which worked pretty well once you got the hang of it. Here's the finished product, Amanda's birthday terrarium...

We used the biggest jar for hers, which allowed us to fit in three succulents, a couple rocks and a tiny snail figurine.

Aerial/interior view of Amanda's terrarium.

I love the little glass snail we found for her terrarium. We originally wanted a little dinosaur, but couldn't find any small enough so we settled for this guy. He's pretty cute; I'm happy we found him!

Three of the four terrariums we made. We made the big one for Amanda, one for our house (not pictured), one for a certain someone as a thank you gift, and then one for Antoine to put on his desk at work.