Little Miss Fancy P(l)ants

As I'm waiting for our blog adventure into Craftyland to gear up, I've been spending some time perusing magazines for inspiration and stumbled upon Real Simple's New Uses for Old Things.  While not exactly along the lines of our task here at Long Distance Design, it could prove a handy site for sparking imagination.  And it led me to another Real Simple idea...a terrarium!  I was super excited about making this because 1) My new apartment is in desperate need of some plant life and 2) This old Arthur Court glass dragonfly bowl is in desperate need of a purpose besides collecting dust.

Speaking of dust, I've always been kinda weirded out by terrariums.  In general, they just seem dusty and musty to me.  I think of sweaty plants inside of sweaty jars.  Yuck.  But, I dunno, something about this open air terrarium is charming, and maybe they're growing on me.  Who knows.  But the bottom line is that I tried it, and I'm very pleased with my little cacti and succulent garden so far.  Of course I'm just hours into this relationship, but I'm feeling a definite connection.

I do recommend that you watch the video (it's linked above).  I didn't and I still made the terrarium just fine, but the video would have helped me along a bit.  Also, if you can't find a soil mix for cacti, you can just mix your normal potting soil with some sand.  And here are my results!

Yes, that is a wrinkly white sheet in the background.  Hey, I'm new at this.  Could be worse.

And now time for some fun with the macro setting on my camera...

Then I spied these beauties that have been sitting around my house for about a year (they even made the cut and traveled 900 miles for the move!).

I'm seeing some cool tendrilly (a word?) ferns or teensy weensy little flowering sprigs of some kind.  Any ideas?  Please share!  Hopefully whatever I choose won't become musty dusty or sweaty--I'll keep you posted.