...to make an underwater terrarium

...Huh?

What is that?  I actually didn't really know either until I thought of the idea for one.

Every since Meghan brought me this, full of little bits of West Point, I have loved terrariums.

Little bits of stuff.  Little pieces of memories.

My idea for an underwater aquarium came from

these:

Petoskey stones

and this:

an old lantern

Both are treasures from our trip to Michigan.

Isabella retrieved the lantern from my Grandma Viele's basement and Aunt Jean gave the kids each some special Petoskey stones that she had found along the beach up in Petoskey, Michigan (of course).  

In case you were wondering, and want the cliff-note-version, Petoskey stones are fossils (of coral) from a super long time ago; say 350 million years ago.  AND you can only really see the fossils if the stones are wet (like in the photo above) or polished.

I wanted to keep these stones in their original state but I wanted to display how pretty they are.  They needed to remain in water.

This is where I got my idea for some type of underwater terrarium.

Isabella really loved the little lantern she found for me as well.  And I decided I wanted to incorporate the two.  

I was much happier with it after a coat of spray paint...

All that was missing was some type of moss or plant.  After a little bit of searching on the internet the lowest maintenance requiring type of plant life I found is called Marimo moss.  I ordered two large balls of this moss for less than $15 total from a vendor on Etsy.  

Marimo moss

Now fast forward to our trip to VT this weekend.  And we found several more special treasures to add to our project:

several pieces of sea glass and a very small bottle

The result is a collage of many of our little memories from this summer.

sea glass-little pieces of color

The kids enjoy looking at this...and #4, our future geologist, is especially impressed that 'her' rock-collection has a such a special place in our home.