Terrariums

I love making Christmas gifts and I always try to make at least a little something for my sister.  This year my project for a couple of people were moss terrariums.  I had been wanting to make one for quite a while, and then I went to visit my friend Caylie and someone had made one for her.  So, the next week, I went hunting for jars to house my terrarium in. These were easily acquired at my favourites store, Value Village.  Yes, I am an addict.  Next stop was the pet store to buy some activated charcoal.  Coincidentally, this also caused me to have a lapse in judgment wherein I decided that I wanted a chihuahua.  The urge has mostly passed, but I can't get over the enticing idea of owning a mini dog.

Here is the list of my terrarium ingredients and a picture of them spread out in my kitchen:

Glass jars
Rocks or gravel (Dollar store)
Potting soil
Activated Charcoal (pet store)
Moss (garden centre)
Water spritzer
Magic modelling clay (Toys R' Us)
Paperclips

 It's pretty straightforward to make.  You just put some rocks in a jar.

Then you mix potting soil with some activated charcoal, which keeps things fresh.

Next, you get to place your moss.  The hardest part for me was getting my supermoss embedded in the soil so that it was standing up straight with the bottom portion all the way down in the soil.  I ended up using tongs to place it.

After all my moss was placed and my kitchen was cleaned up, the jars looked like this...

Next, it was time to cute-ify (kitsch-ify) them by making tiny mushrooms out of modelling clay.  I made each mushroom with a paperclip sticking out of the bottom of it so that the paperclip could be jammed into the soil to help it stand up straight.

 

 

 

Then the mushroom went in the jar!

In the meantime, I had spray painted the jar's lid cream, and covered the rest of the lid with red checked gingham.  And that's the end.

Spa-father

Before the holidays, a few of my girlfriends and I got together to watch the wonder that is "Little Women".  It was perfection, right up until I suggested we follow it up with "Ghost".  NEVER watch Ghost if you haven't seen it already.  It's super lame and not worth it.  Ugh.  Anyways, after the movies, we got to discussing "The Godfather".  I had purchased the trilogy on VHS at Goodwill because I wanted to someday watch it.

My external reasoning was that it was a classic that everyone should see.  My internal reasoning probably had something to do with all of the lines that Tom Hanks quotes to Meg Ryan in "You've got mail".   "Go to the mattresses", "Leave the gun, take the Cannoli", you know...

Anyways, that started things rolling and we decided to have a Godfather watching party in the new year.  But all of us weren't actually sure we would enjoy the movie, so we decided instead to have a "SPAfather" night.  A girls night with soaking, scrubbing, nailpolishing and lotioning.  You know.  At least that would make things bearable if the movie was terrible.  And oh boy, the movie was terrible.  We hardly watched it until the last 1/2 hour or so.  And by that time, nothing in the epic plotline made sense to us because all we had done for the first 2 hours was paint our nails and talk over the movie.

It was pretty much a blast...

The spread: cotton balls, nail polish, files, buffers, cuticle trimmers, bath bombs, lotions, vaseline, epsom salts

The feet soaking tubs for all

The hot, steamy towels, delivered with tongs

Biore strips galore, with Joel saying "Shhhh, don't put this photo on the internet"

Cucumbers for the eyes (also effective for blocking out disturbing scenes of domestic violence)

Gross lotion feet and feet soaking in the background

Nail stickers for french tips, with a tiny glimpse of "The Godfather" in the background.  Yep, that's pretty much as close as we got to watching it.  Actually, I think this photo was taken during a completely ridiculous scene that led to a discussion about anatomy that I won't go into detail about here, because I don't want to come up on any raunchy google searches.  But for all of you who left early, you missed out on a fascinating scene.

Belated Resolutions

My 2010 resolutions include:

• Reading all of the unread books on my bookshelf, even if it means not using my library card very often.  By my count there are exactly 20 books, but a couple of them are doozies.  Les Miserables and The Brothers Karamazov are both on the shelf.  I can do it, though, and I believe I will be better for it.  This resolution is brought to you by Kerry, who resolved it first, and who is my inspriation.
• Finding a better way to deal with coffee beans at home.  Most of my coffee is consumed out, so whenever I buy a bag of beans, it inevitably goes stale on the counter or ends up smelling like my freezer.  Ew.  I am considering buying tiny amounts in bulk.  Another option is stealing small amounts from my parents when I am over there.  They always have nice fair trade coffee and I'm sure they wouldn't mind sharing a wee bit with their youngest darling daughter.  Secondary coffee resolution: go back to ordering tall drinks at starbucks.  I snuck over to the grande side in 2009 for no particular reason.
• Not buying clothes unless I LOVE them.  I have too many clothes and work too close to the mall.  I don't have any lunch buddies at work, so I end up shopping way more than I need to.  I don't want to squash the fun, but I do want to evaluate my purchases a little more.  Secondary reslution: make a lunch buddy at work?  Ha.
• And lastly, "Love much.  Earth has enough of bitter in it" - Ella Wheeler-Wilcox.
  

Bell Jars on Design*Sponge!

This is surely old news to my handful of regular readers, but too fun not to post here anyways!  I submitted the bell jars of the previous post to my most favourite blog, Design*Sponge, and she posted them on her weekly "Before & After" round up yesterday.  It was so fun to see my little bell jars up there.  If you want to take a look, go check out the post on D*S right here.

It's worth checking out the rest of the blog, because it is completely and utterly delightful if you are at all interested in design, decor, creativity, or anything of the sort.

Thanks for the 15 minutes of pseudo-fame, D*S!

Love,

Bethany

Old people clocks...transformed!

The Clock Transformation is complete!

If you recall from a few weeks ago, I went thrifting on Saturday with Megan and Trixie.  My biggest score of the day was three hideous glass dome clocks.  I left the picture below for speculation, but as you can see above, they are fully transformed.  The backstory is that I'd had my eye on bell jars online for months, and saw one recently at a sweet store in Edmonton called "The Artworks", but it was 450 freaking dollars and was more modern than I would have liked anyways.  I'm sorry, but for $450 it had better come with a free lifetime supply of milkshakes or some other such incentive.  It didn't, so I was left to my own devices.

1. The first step was to take the dome off and assess the situation.

 

2. Second step was to unscrew the clock mechanism from the base of each one.  This wasn't too hard, except that the plastic columns were actually part of the base on the smallest of the three clocks, and being impatient to get this project rolling, I opted for ripping them off with pliers instead of tracking down a hacksaw or something that might have made a smoother cut.  I was planning to cover the base anyways, so I wasn't too worried.

3. Next, I spray painted the bases of the clocks with white spray paint, to remove all trace of and likeness to the old people clocks.

4. Once the paint was dry, I traced circles of paper to affix to the bases, both for extra cuteness points and to cover up the screw holes in the bases.

5. Cut out the paper circles with an exacto knife and scissors.  I had to cut an extra hole in the paper for a stubborn protrusion on one of the bases.

6. Base covered in paper.

7. Completed domes from above!  The figurines in order are a bear, a bird cage, and a birch tree with paper flags in it.  I later removed the flags because even thought I liked them they somehow looked awkward on the little tree and competed with its cuteness.  We'll see.

 

The clocks were $1.99, 4.99, and 6.99, respectively, and the paper and spray paint I had on hand.  I purchased the little birch tree from Rona's Christmas village decorations for $8, so all in all it cost me just over $20 for all three bell jars.  Instead of $450.  Also it was way more satisfying and entertaining.  Hey-O!