Decoupage Vases

A good time was had by all!! I can enthusiastically say that about our horticultural therapy session today. Today was one of the few times we had at least one volunteer to work with each of the medical care residents. There was lots of laughter and lots of interaction as the residents and volunteers chose tissue paper colors, and embellishments for their decoupage vases. The volunteers had brought lilacs, ferns, lily of the valley, honeysuckle, and money plants to make bouquets. Once the vases were completed, the residents chose the flowers they wanted to fill their creations. The flower filled vases were so unique and so beautiful many of the nurses came in to take a look and exclaim, "wow".

GRASS HEADS

Next week the project our Master Gardener Horticultural Therapy group will help the residents of a local nursing home create is a "grass head". We did this project last year and the results were pretty funny. The main materials needed are socks, potting soil, and grass seed. Last year we used socks that had grey toes (grey area looks like hair). We used a permanent marker to draw faces on the socks. The residents had fun deciding on the characteristics of their characters. The next step was to put a handful of grass seed in the toe of the sock. We then filled the socks with moist potting soil and tied them off with rubber bands. The really really fun part was adding embellishments like button eyes, earrings, necklaces, hair bows, etc. The residents had to make sure the heads were kept moist so the grass seeds would germinate. (As you can see from the pictures the permanent marker didn't stand up to the water treatments.).

Right now I'm working on a grass head to use as a model for next week's activity. I'm trying something a little different. I inserted an empty water bottle into the sock to make the head stand up better. Also I cut off the elastic part of the sock and used that to cover a pint jar that I inserted the sock head in. I'm crossing my fingers in hopes of having some grass growth by Thursday.