My daughter, my wonderful Ella, was turning one and I was going to throw her the most magically perfect enchanted forest-themed birthday party imaginable...that is until life stepped in and complicated things. After some pretty time consuming crafting hours were logged and I agonized over all the details I never got to complete, the party needed to be postponed. Ella came down with a pretty high fever the day before the long-awaited day, so we decided to move the gathering to two weeks later.
I had planned to give all the kids their own little terrarium as a thank-you gift for coming to the party. I gathered the glass sauce containers from our recycling, cleaned them, spray painted the lids red, and glued little paper whole punch circles on top so they would look like toadstools. I filled the jars with small stones, a mix of charcoal and soil, laid moss on top, and stuck in little plants (ok...weeds that I pulled from between the bricks on the patio). After I laid out and printed cards explaining how to care for them (haha), I tied them to the jars with twine. I had ten terrariums ready to go when the scheduled party date came and went. Unfortunately, by the time the new party date arrived they had become cute little decorated jars of mush!
At the risk of being cliché…I have a black thumb; I am just not good with plants. I love to admire them but can’t seem to give them the right thing to keep them from turning brown, white, soggy, or crispy. In my defense, we have a small home and no optimal way to store ten jars of living plants requiring a certain amount of sunlight (it was still too cold to have them outside). Of course, accidentally covering them up with a tablecloth is not a good way to store them. So on the day of the party, all I could do was hang my head in shame as I watched each guest walk out the door without a terrarium. : (
Determined to make it right (granted, over two months later) I've cleaned out the mushy jars and I'm ready to give it another try. Wish me luck!
