Nook Update: Plants Plus A Craft

Nook Update

This is an update on my bedroom nook which just continues to get better and better. Our bedroom is huge so there’s plenty of room for a space like this. So I’m glad we created it. The living room has always kinda been my spot since husband hangs out in his office all the time. So before I had my office, we made the nook when my inlaws were coming for a visit and I was stressed about not having a private space.

We had bought new couches in 2019 so our old mismatched couches were in the garage. This one is actually my first piece of “real” furniture. Not that I’ve bought much real furniture still. It’s an Ashley couch I bought for my old apartment. When I got rid of the monkey couch and finally got something I liked! It’s like 15 years old so not the best shape, but still comfortable. And It sacrificed its back cushions to be pillows for the downstairs couches, but that just means that now it has actual bed pillows. Mom and I picked up the two (now one because the other is in my office) foot stools on clearance from Ollies, I think.

When the floor was being redone downstairs after The Washing Machine incident, I moved the guest room TV in here “temporarily.” I hate TVs in bedrooms and I just can’t sleep with one on. So I’m generally against them. However, this TV is in the nook and you can’t even watch it from the bed. So I have made an exception. This is because I hung the closet rod my husband very much dislikes for hanging plants. And now that those plants are taking off, I really enjoy sitting in my nook. On work nights, I retire to my nook to watch very chill relaxing TV before bed. (Right now it’s The Repair Shop, and I’m going to die when I run out of episodes so they are exclusively for nook watching).

Look how cozy and nice my nook is!

Getting Crafty for a TV Tray

So that brings me to my latest craft project. I like to have a drink AT ALL TIMES. So I take my water up there. I have my legs out on the couch so I would like to use the foot stool to set my drink on. However, the footstool is padded and my drink falls over. So I grabbed the nearest small flat thing and have been using it as a tiny drink tray. My “Stand By Me” frame/word-art/thing. I bought a fuck ton of these musical word-art things from Hobby Lobby on clearance for less than a dollar each ages ago. Before Covid. The before-times. I’ve done stained glass mosaics on five (including the Mario Kart items in the bathroom). I’ve still got a few in the garage. I chose to keep one of the “Stand By Me” ones because I love that some. Specifically, the Ben E King version. Great song.

So it worked great, but looked like shit and I was abusing my Stand By Me art that was in my nook cause I like it. Well, I finally got around to redoing one of the others. Meet my new drink tray:

Isn’t it adorable? I think this one said “Rock and Roll.” I painted it gloss black but the inside and “front” (now bottom) needed covering due to damage to the paper. So I modpodged some contact paper in there. Then, I thought, I could add handles! But the only handles I had were oil rubbed bronze so that didn’t work. However, remember when I did the downstairs hall and added handles and knobs? And then I had extra knobs so I replaced the cheap silver knobs on the bathroom vanity with oil rubbed bronze ones to match everything else? Well, look where those silver knobs are now!

My drink, remote, and snack tray is so cute!

String of Bananas Update

One of my nook plants is my String of Bananas (Curio Radicans). I’ve mentioned it before. It was a little 2-inch guy that I bought for the dining room tables terrarium. It outgrew that so I stuck it in a hanging pot (picture 1). Then it outgrew that pot so I had to put it in a bigger one. I had to untangle it (picture 2) and I trimmed it into 2-foot sections for rooting back into the pot (picture 3). That’s where I left off last.

Well, the plant was healthy as fuck and well over 90% of the cuttings took and started growing like crazy. But these “Sting-Of” plants look so “limp.” I want to say lifeless because they just hang there like they’re dying. Of course they are not. Its thriving. There’s just no volume. I have no desire to plant a second plant in the pot though. So I had been thinking of ways to beef up the top. A Styrofoam ball? A plant frog? I even asked at the plant nursery for suggestions. I looked into metal topiary forms but those are expensive. Then I saw the really ugly ass cheap Chinese plastic topiary balls that are far from expensive. In fact, I could get a mixed set of 4 sizes for under 10 bucks from Walmart. Hello Walmart+ membership. Yes, please.

So I used half a “ball.” I just plopped it right on top of the string of bananas and brought up the “strings” and gave them a few wraps to hide the ugly ass form and draped them back down (picture 4). This pleased me greatly. Today it’s looking like picture 5. I actually like this thing now. I hated it for so long. I fixed it!

When it gets too long, I’ll trim it again and reroot the cutting back at the top. Rinse and repeat. I mean, I don’t want to jinx it, but I don’t think I can kill this thing. It just really wants to live. After all the cutting and rerooting it’s so much thicker than that rat tail in picture 2, Now it’s got a bit of volume thanks to the topiary ball. There’s even new shoots growing out of the ball and it’s curling all around the bottom with new growth.

Look at my Air Plant

I got this air plant at the craft show (Christmas 2024 NEACA) and I have been kicking myself for not buying more since that evening. He had an ungodly amount of air plants. Like that’s this guys specialty. Loose ones mainly but also terrariums and various hanging ones like this. Also some cool art pieces that were on lava rock or drift wood. And they were CHEAP. He had a huge bush one that was like 15 years old for $75 — he pointed out that if he cut off all the pups and sold them at $5 a piece, it would net him a much bigger profit. And he had crazy exotic ones I’ve never seen before.

The hanging ones were all the standard air plant you see everywhere. So I looked through his collection (all with their scientific names and pictures of them in full bloom). I asked if he could put one of these on a hanging loop. He said for an extra $2. So yeah, I got this cool plant for $7! That boutique plant store on Governors charges like $25 for just the big pups! He told me all about caring for it and tips and tricks and sends everyone home with a sheet detailing how to water and fertilize them and get them to bloom.

I can’t believe I only bought one! Dammit. He had at least 20 varieties and some were even in bloom. I chose the crazy wobbly alien one, of course.