I finally got an invite to Pinterest, the virtual pin-board website where people can make lists of everything from exercise tips to dream cars. I have always been the kind of person who makes lists, so being able to make an extremely graphic representation of things I want, need or like is just really fun and addicting.
My most-perused (by me) board is the one named "New House Wishlist." We moved in January to a new house, a three-bedroom, 1-story house with a carport. The house is contract for deed, which means we'll eventually own it. We've done a lot of painting and ripping out carpet, but we're nowhere near done.
The point is Pinterest has a lot of fun, crafty ideas. One of the ones I wanted to do was this, pictured at left. I love to have little plants in the windows, and I thought this was a neat presentation.
One of the biggest events in Mt. Vernon every year is the Midwestern Herb and Garden Show, and it's this weekend. Today Dan and I went and got fudge, cookies, tea... and some plants, too. I got a "hen and chick," the small rosette-shaped succulent; some Greek oregano; basil; catnip; and lemon balm. I then took Dan on an impromptu supplies-gathering journey that began at the Dollar Tree. The DT had some bud vases in the style of these vases, but nothing in that size, so I headed to my favorite place to hate, Wal-Mart. I found some inexpensive vases in kind of a hurricane shade shape and decided I didn't want to dash all over town, and they'd do.
I had a package of "bowl decorations" my aunt- and uncle-in-law sent us in advance of our wedding I decided (at length - not that they weren't lovely, just I had it in my head I needed to do exactly what was in the picture) that could stand in for the rocks seen in the bottom of these little vases.
And so the lady with the black thumb got to work.
I put the different decorations in the bottom of each vase, and then some kind of raffia-type material as a potting soil buffer. I put a little bit of potting soil in the vases, and then jammed the soil down with the end of a serving spoon. Finally, I potted, or "vased" the herbs, and tried to gently smoosh them down. I had too much of everything in the first one, so the plant is kind of overflowing.
This is me smooshing potting soil. This is also the first time I have tried to take pictures of myself doing something for the express purpose of blogging it, so there's that also.Anyway, the original photo shows the vases with interesting paper wrapped around them, with the name of the plant on the paper. I got some vellum and wrote the name of the plant on the vellum, but with the curve of the vase, I wasn't sure how it would look. I decided to hot-glue the vellum to the vase so it wouldn't slide all over the place.
I took some pictures of the first one, and tried to tie some yarn around it, but it was kind of like a curvaceous woman wearing a shapeless dress. It looked blah, and if I tried to cinch the yarn at all, it crumpled, so I decided to forgo the paper altogether. That's what the little tags are for.
Here's what I ended up with:
I think they're pretty. Hopefully I can keep the dang things alive.
