Creative Mission - Part 2

Now that I had my vases for the terrarium project, it was time to collect the rest of the items on my list.  I headed out to a large garden shop, my 4 yr old in tow.  (She loves plants and shopping so it wasn't going to be an issue.)  Since I don't often shop at these types of places it took me a while to find what I was looking for.  You also have to keep in mind I found my project in English online, and I'm standing in a Dutch store.  Some of the plants I remembered from pictures I had seen, some I had to refer to their scientific names - luckily I had a list.  We bought a big variety of plants, ranging from a Coral Cactus to a Spider Plant.

With the plants picked out I now needed to find moss.  Hmm, I had walked through the entire store multiple times and hadn't seen it anywhere.  We headed to the outside department in the rain, and still couldn't find it.  Once we were back inside I stopped to think for a minute, when I looked down there was a crate full of moss!  Apparently I had to buy it by the crate, it made sense.  The next item was going to be more difficult, activated charcoal (carbon).  Maybe in The States this is easy to get a hold of or a reasonable price, but not here.  The teenager behind the counter couldn't comprehend what I was looking for and was little help.  I of course referred to my phone and Googled suggestions, I quickly realized I was going to have to look in the aquarium department, because that's the only time the Dutch use it (to filter the water.)  By this point my daughter was tired of being there and wanted to head off to the next store. 

After pricing the stones & pebbles at the garden shop, I knew I could get them cheaper at a DIY store, so off we went.  (At the DIY store I bought 2 bags of stones for what I would have paid for 1 bag at the garden shop.)  The interesting thing about this DIY store is the stones are located in a self-service drive-thru.  Usually I have my husband with me to do the heavy lifting but this time it was up to me.  In the rain I loaded the SUV up with 2 huge bags of stones (1 weighed around 55 lbs & the other 1 weighed around 88 lbs, but I managed - would like to see the store security footage though, ha-ha!)  Inevitably I had them for the right price, but I was dirty, not my favorite thing.  Wanting to price the activated carbon we headed inside the store.  They wanted €15 for a box, and it wasn't exactly in the form I needed.  Forget it, I was going to have to come up with another idea.

Once back home, I hopped on the computer and looked up alternatives for activated charcoal.  Apparently there aren't so many.  One tutorial showed how to make it myself, yeah, wasn't really planning on that.  So I went back to a variety of DIY terrarium sites and they said the activated charcoal is used in closed terrariums to help with mold and to filter the air.  But if you are building an open top terrarium the activated charcoal was not needed.  Yes!

So, now that all the items are collected I just need to find time to finally starting making the terrariums.  I need an undisturbed block of time and preferably no rain so I can work outside, this is yet to come.  Crossing my fingers for this afternoon, but between school and play dates I'm not really sure if that time will come today.  Meanwhile, everything is stacked in the corner of my living room, don't want to kill the succulent plants by storing them outside in the cold!

Bye! Dag! Adios! Namaste!

:) Danica