I like to try and think outside the box when choosing gifts for people.  For me the best part of any gift giving occasion is the choosing and putting together of Just The Right Thing for the recipient, followed closely by seeing their face when they open it. Since I am quite renowned for giving good gifts, I am clearly doing something right. Yay me.

gathering the ingredients

I have a beloved elderly cousin who has been bedridden for some time now. It was she who taught me about Pantheism {essentially the belief that God is to be found in the whole cosmos}, although we were specifically talking about nature at the time. Since she is stuck in a fairly dim room and can’t get out into nature, I decided to bring nature to her, in the form of a terrarium.

Cue one of my favourite activities; research. Google brought me many videos and sets of instructions and I put together a list of ingredients, some of which were surprisingly hard to find.

terrarium carnage

It took about a week, and I ended up with succulents as well as ‘normal’ {?!} plants, as I realised after buying the succulents that they need a lot of sunshine. So my brother gets the succulent terrarium, since I ended up with two.

This was the first one. My first ever attempt. It was bloody fiddly to make, nigh on impossible to clean the inside of the glass, and I have concerns about possible lack of space as well as some trauma over having to cut the plants and their roots down. Apart from that, I think it looks fantastic, and my living room smells like forests after the rain, which I rather like.

first terrarium

It really is super easy to put together, and there seems to be quite a bit of diversity in terms of what order to put your ingredients into the glass container, so I sort of cobbled together what I’d read and hoped for the best.

This is the second one, with the succulents. Much more space but I have no idea if they like soil. I’m thinking of getting some sand to make it a bit more deserty so they’ll feel more at home.

succulent terrarium

I added heart stones to both, and have Reiki-ed them up to encourage them to root in and flourish. It was a relatively quick and fun process {if you don’t count going to about 5 different places looking for small enough plants}, and I’m hoping they’re still alive at Christmas.

terrarium friends