Date Night at Home: Build a Terrarium

Hubby and I had fallen into a nighttime rut. It consisted of putting Emmie to bed and then going to our respective electronic devices to play games, read blogs, and browse the internet.  With baby #2 on the way we both felt we needed to spend more quality time together, sans electronic devices, but we didn’t have the energy, or money, to hire a sitter every weekend for your average “date night.” We looked into subscribing to a “date in a box” type service but being the crafty DIYers that we are, decided that we could come up with our own versions of date nights that could be done at home after the kids are in bed. And so, our At Home Date Night series was born.

I rounded up some ideas, wrote them on some big Popsicle sticks and placed them in a jar. Each Monday we pick out a Popsicle stick so that we have the week to prepare anything needed for an “at home date night.”  Our first date night in this series was “build a terrarium.” Building a terrarium was something both my husband and I had wanted to do for a long time. It was the perfect date night for the long weekend. We spent Friday evening rounding up our supplies. On Saturday we tucked Emerson into bed, put on some music, poured some wine (well, juice for me) and built our terrariums.  We had such a blast and it felt great to be doing something with each other rather than spending the evening zoning out in front of the TV or computer.

Here’s how you can create your own DIY terrarium date night!

Gather your supplies:

Terrarium Container: Glass jars, vases or bowls work well for terrarium containers. You can decide if you want your terrarium to be an open container or a closed container; both work well.

Plants: Gather plants that have the same needs. You shouldn’t mix plants that require different levels of water or light. Succulents do well in open terrariums, but look for other plants if you’re aiming for a closed terrarium. Grab a bag of sheet moss for covering up the open spaces between plants, which helps the plants retain the right level of moisture.

Rocks: You’ll need some type of rock so that you’ll have a nice drainage layer. We chose some river rocks as our big drainage layer, and then layered some aquarium pebbles on-top of that.

Activated Charcoal: Activated charcoal can be found in pet stores with the fish supplies. This helps filter your terrarium to keep it clean and your plants healthy & happy.

Dirt: Choose a high quality potting soil.

   Build your terrarium:

Step 1: Set up your draining layer, aiming for the biggest rocks on the very bottom and smaller rocks on top, about 1″ total. Add a layer of activated charcoal about 0.5″ deep to finish it off.

Step 2: Put in roughly 1-2″ of potting soil

Step 3: Arrange plants in your terrarium container, filling in spaces with more soil as you go

Step 4: Add moss on top of any open dirt, surrounding the plants

Step 5: Add enough water to moisten the soil, then admire your new terrarium!

Keep following along so that you’ll never miss a new At Home Date Night.