Treat for My Cat

Having helped mom pick out the items for our second Mystery Box challenge, I had an idea of what I wanted to do from the start. I played with a couple ideas before settling on this one: a small planter, which I seeded with catnip for my kitty.

I actually finished making this in June, but because of the plants, I've had to wait a few months to post it.

I bought a medium-sized planter tray drainage plate at the store to use as my base. I needed something fairly large, but didn't want a full-sized pot for this.

First, I cut the felt to size and hot-glued it to the edge of my pot, then added the ribbon on top. I glued the mirror to the styrofoam circle, and hot-glued it to the center of the pot. 

My pack of sequins had two shades of blue. After I decorated the pot, I sewed the sequins to some extra pieces of felt in flower shapes, then cut them out to use as decorations.































The candle is just sitting on top, and the flowers are attached with tape, so they're all easy to remove if needed.


I dropped in some dirt and seeds in, and put the butterflies in as guardians.

Then I waited.

It actually turned out to be quite the little adventure, growing catnip in such a shallow pan. My first attempt didn't go so well. They started to sprout, but when the temperatures hit over 100 F, the planter dried out too fast because it's so shallow, and all my seedlings died of dehydration.

My second batch went much better, after I remembered to water it every day. They were looking just about right to call it good when I forgot to water over a weekend, and half the plants died again. Sigh. 

Eventually, I decided to just call it good enough, and took pictures of my final product.

Some of the little plants are actually full-grown, I believe. I've tried showing it to my cat, but she's not quite sure what to make of it.





























I've dropped a few leaves for her, but she doesn't seem interested in them, either. Oh well.

I'm still proud of myself that I was able to grow the catnip, despite the challenges of excessive heat and shallow soil.