Terrarium.

I fancy myself to be a pretty fantastic gift-giver, if I do say so myself.  Sometimes I am uninspired, which is never a reflection on the person that I am giving the gift to, but some people are hard to choose great presents for.  Tim, my very-soon-to-be-husband, is probably the person I most consistently buy awesome presents for, at least I like to think so.  As our three year anniversary is this coming Tuesday, and we're getting married at the end of next month, this is our last anniversary as an unmarried couple, so I wanted to get something special for him.

I was speaking to some friends just recently, and they were talking about a store in Vancouver called "Walrus", located at 18th and Cambie.  They were talking about these cool living walls that the store sold and also about some of the other interesting sustainable items.  One thing that was mentioned, which I immediately knew I had to get for Tim for our anniversary, were terrariums (most likely it should actually be "terraria", but that just looks wrong and I don't think anyone uses that word).  Tim loves plants.  Plants arranged in cool self-sustaining containers: even better.

So this morning after my shopping, I headed over to Walrus for a look around.  There were only three terrariums remaining from their most recent batch.  The woman who makes them apparently lives nearby and if anything happens to one of them, is happy to take it back and fix it.  There are two types: lidded and open-air.  Here is a link with some great pictures of the various types that were available.  I was pretty sure that Tim wouldn't be interested in any with figurines or fake toadstools in them, but the one I got him had a couple geodes and is really pretty.  It is at the back, left of the first picture in the link.  I brought it home and gave it to him right away because we're not big on ceremony and it also would have been hard to hide.  Here it is (I hope you can get an idea of how it looks, I took this picture with my iPhone and it isn't great quality):

I also purchased the cutting board today that the terrarium is sitting on, for two reasons: 1) we actually need a cutting board and it is a pretty green option, and 2) I couldn't stop laughing once I saw it and imagined bringing it home because it's just such a tree-hugger thing to get.  Really, it's bordering on being pretentious, but in a good way.  Anyhow, Tim loved the terrarium, he keeps going over and looking at it, and he also thought the cutting board was practical but also funny.  Success!