indoor blooms: sprouting bulbs inside

Last year, the husband and I picked up a 4-pack of bulbs at Costco, complete with vases and little plastic stand things. After the bulbs had sprouted and were past their prime, I clipped the shoots and dried the bulbs, and put them into a paper bag in our laundry room. And promptly forgot about them.

This year, after seeing this blog post from the Centsational Girl (whose blog rocks and you should add to your Google Reader immediately), I decided to get out the bulbs and see if they would grow. And to my surprise, two of the little bulbs had sprouted! A good sign, indeed.

I rinsed of the bulbs and got out the vases, and stuck them in the plastic things, and put them on our mantle. Note that I didn't store them in the cold or anything like you're supposed to... and it still worked. They started to sprout and grow! Nature always amazes me that way. Here are the growing bulbs in our house. The cabinet is the Faulkner Library Cabinet from C&B if you're curious.
And here is the progress so far...

They are growing more and more every day - and the best part - they're effectively free because I just reused everything from last year. Quite a deal!