Succulent Terrarium

 

This succulent terrarium is easy to make and even easier to take care of. The hardest part was finding succulents in the middle of the winter (thank you Lowe's!). I also purchased sand from Lowe's. The small-medium river rocks, dirt, moss, and vase were reused from a previous project. Goodwill is a great source for cute little details, like my bicycle. It came in a container of other doll-house toys for only a dollar.

The terrarium is pretty easy to make and only takes about 15 minutes. Find a tall vase, jar, or glass container with a wide opening. First, place a layer of sand about 1 inch deep. This cushions the rocks and hides any "nasties" that seep through. Note that all layering amounts depend on how tall your vase is. Then, place a 2-3 inch layer of small to medium sized river rock followed by a 5 inch layer of good soil.

Succulents are next. The succulents should be spaced enough that there is room to grow. They don't need too much room though (see above). The succulents also don't have a very deep root system, so they are pretty easy to plant. Once planted, place moss and additional river rock around the base to hide the dirt and add more color. The bicycle is a cute accent and can be easily switched out- maybe a doll-house Christmas tree, sled, ghost, flag, gnome, etc based on the season.

I only water the terrarium once every few weeks, and you could go even longer if the terrarium has a lid. If you are lucky, try to find a container with an air tight lid, water it well when planting, and you may not need to water it more than once every few years. Enclosed terrariums make their own mini ecosystem and self regulate the water. I store ours on a side table that gets indirect sunlight everyday.

Cute, cheap, living, and easy to take care of. Almost like a Jax! Speaking of, check out how cute he is:

Rolling Pin with Silverware Hooks

 

This one is pretty neat! I intended on making curtain hold backs out of silverware to use in our kitchen, but since we don't have a window there that requires curtains, I had a bag of old silverware sitting around, just waiting for a project. I had seen some photos of bent silverware hangers attached to boards floating around Etsy and decided to attempt my own. After creating, my dear husband nailed them to an antique rolling pin, which we mounted to the wall as an apron hanger. Yay!

Each type of silverware required a different process to bend into the right shape. The spoon was the easiest, simply banging flat with a hammer, hooking into a table mounted vise, hooking the handle into a hand-held vise grip and pulling up on the handle to create a hook.

The knife was also pretty easy, but the blade was pretty thick towards the handle, making it hard to control what angle the blade bent at to form the hook. It was also squeezed into the table vise when bending with the hand-held vise grip, but bending the blade, not handle as was done with the spoon.

The fork was definitely the most work. I started by trying to simply bend the tines with a pliers while the fork was hooked into the table vise grip, which was ridiculous. So, Mike taught we how to use a blowtorch- yes, I used blow torch! Each fork tine was heated until red hot and then bent into a curve using pliers. It probably took 6 or so heating sessions to get everything in place. Then, we hit the fork with a hammer until the tines were flat and even with the others, instead of some sticking out and looking silly. The handle was bent into a hook using the same process as the other utensils. 

Mike then drilled a hole into each utensil (careful not to overheat your bit!) and nailed the pieces onto the rolling pin. The silver wall mounted hooks were purchased at Lowe's, for the pin to sit on. We screwed in the Lowe's hooks, set the pin on top and voila!- a vintage, kitchen themed hanger for my aprons!

Some tips if you try this at home- make sure your silverware is all silver, not just silver plated. This will make it easier to bend and have a prettier finish. We scraped off some silver coating when bending the fork, leaving an ugly black finish behind. I colored over it with a silver sharpie to try to hide it! :) Also, we bent the utensils over the curve of the table vise "grabber" area so the hooks had the same size and shape. Make sure to bend the handles backwards, to show off the pretty pattern on the front. (When completed, you see the back of the eating area and the front of the hooks.) Once hung, the rolling pin kept spinning so the hooks were touching the wall due to the weight. This was fixed with a dab of hot glue on both wall hooks to secure the handles and a dab on the inner handle area to secure the large middle rolling part.

What do you think? Worth an hour and $15?

Fabric Christmas Trees

Look how cute these are! I was wanting a few tall Christmas trees to set on the fireplace mantle and couldn't find any that I liked in the stores. They were all too short or too shiny. So, I made my own.

Supplies needed:

• 2 small tomato cages (like this)
• At least 3 poster board sheets (thick paper sheets in the largest size you can get, like this)
• Masking tape
• Hot glue
• Fabric of your choice (I used 2 feet of green fleece, about 1 foot of cream flannel, and 1 foot of textured cream upholstery fabric.)

First, flip the cages upside down so the largest ring is on the bottom. Decide how tall you want the trees. I cut off the bottom ring of one cage to make it shorter that the other. Tape where the wires are connected to the ring; this is to keep the sharp wire edges from scratching wherever you set the trees. Then, tape the three ends together to make a big cone, like this:

Lay the tomato cages down on the poster paper, long side down. Tape down the long wires as you roll the cage across the paper. The paper wrapped better by putting it at an angle, which left some corners hanging off the bottom. Just cut those off and save the trimmings.

Once completely wrapped and taped on the inside, seal the seam by taping along the edge. Use the paper trimmings to patch any gaps left by the paper not being big enough. This is what the inside and outside should look like.

Cut a long strip of fabric (long enough to wrap around the bottom of the tree) and glue the strip to the outside bottom of the tree to hide the paper bottom. Then, start a movie and cut out hundreds of fabric petals. :) I made them about 1 inch wide and 2 inches long. It will go faster if you fold the fabric before cutting, so you can get multiple petals in one swipe.

Once cut out, start hot gluing petals in rows all the way around the tree. I made one tree mostly green with a few cream petals and one mostly cream with a few green petals. The picture below shows the bottom fabric strip, and beginning of gluing. You can also see where I used magazine sheets to fill in tree holes when I ran out of poster board. (I only used two sheets instead of three.)

Keep gluing petals on until the whole tree is filled. Overlap a little bit to hide the straight tops of the petals and hide the paper. Once you get to the top, fold a petal around the tip and glue to make a nice cone top.

This is what you end up with. (The cute trees, not the cute dog.)

This project cost less than $15 total to make two trees, especially since I used discounted fabric from the remnants bin at Walmart and cheap tomato cages, because no one buys tomato cages in November.

Here are the trees on the mantle, next to TJ Maxx reindeer. So cute!

 This, my friends, is a My Neighbor's House original. Yes, I came up with this idea all on my own... and it actually worked! Haha!