Glowing Fairy Gardens: Our Spring Break Project

 So this is how our Spring Break began...  waiting on the grass while my car was getting an oil change.  I was texting on my phone and looked up and saw two of my girls on their electronic devices and then saw a happy little Pip picking tiny baby flowers and singing to herself.  She looked up at me and smiled and handed me the little fairy bouquet.  I got the message... she was living in a more real world than we were.  I knew we needed to "be together" this week and not spend it all on electronics.  I knew this week was going to be tough because the beautiful home that we've been renting the past two years was going on the market.  The owners need to sell.  I knew this week would be filled with stress and tears as we learn to deal with people walking through the house all the time and keeping it perfectly clean.  I decided that our Spring Break was going to go a much different way than it was beginning.

As soon as my car's oil had been changed I took us to a craft store to pick up some supplies. Pip has had an indoor fairy house all winter and for a month or two she has been saying that the fairies would be moving outside in the spring and that we needed to find a good spot for an outdoor fairy house.  I knew we would find the supplies we needed at the craft store.  We did!  There were little $1 bird houses, shiny tiles, balsa-wood for creating things, and boxes to put the homes in (Michael's Crafts).  We stopped at a local nursery to buy some flowers and dirt.  We wanted these spring fairy homes to be transportable for when we move when we find our new home (it also came in handy to bring inside last night when it got a little too cold for the flowers).

We got home and got right to work, painting, cutting, gluing, creating.  :)  We pushed the little strings into the bird houses and took them out so they would look more like homes than bird houses.  Then we cut archway doors out of the holes for windows by cutting straight down from the sides of the circles leaving the arch on top.  We painted them and then hot glue gunned whatever we wanted onto them. Most of Tuesday was spent this way too.   It just wouldn't be a painting kind of day without Kenz painting something on herself. (She also found some silver hair spray in the art supplies- lol)

 In the end we ended up with two little villages for our garden fairies.  This first village has two homes, a school house, flowers, painted pink rocks, stepping stones and a glassy brook with a Troll Bridge going over it.  This bridge was with Pip's indoor fairy house- one morning I overheard her making a wish for a bridge to connect two plates in the dining room fairy house and by the time she came home from school it was there!  Such a lucky kid!

 I love that little toadstool house Pip painted with the door ajar.  :)

This basket of garden fairies are more of a "city folk" kind.  

 This next basket we made were the "country folk" kind.  There homes seem to be built more from nature than from little bird houses being covered in moss and wooden shingles (strips of balsa wood painted in various shades of brown and orange, cut into rectangles and glued on the roof in layers going from the bottom of the roof up to the top of the blue chimney).  They have flowers in their garden too, but they are also growing strawberries right there in front. 

 They have a glassy pond, a wishing well, glass mail box to hold letters and jewels, and a fairy ring.  At first the fairy ring was just a few stones, but when we came back to check on them we could see tiny red toad stools all over both gardens that the fairies had left- some of the toadstools forming a real fairy ring.  :)  Pip was thrilled!

One of my favorite ideas was the little battery operated led lights strung throughout (Christmas Tree Shop for $10).  We built a bottom layer of glass tiles under the houses and cut a hole in the bottom of them so we could stuff lights through and line the baskets like this...

 The results are MAGICAL!  The lights are on a timer and come on every night at 6pm.

 I love how the glass bottom portion of each house lights up along with the windows and doorways!  Here's a close up of the fairy signs. 

 Here's the cute details of the Wishing Well and "Surprised French Man" fairy house that Makenzie made.

 So here's our front porch.  You know what I love best?  That the day this lock box was placed on our door the girls barely noticed.  They were too busy looking at their fairy gardens, adding to them, and thinking up new creations that a fairy could need.  :) 

Another great thing about this is that it is something that keeps bringing fun.  Yesterday the fairies were so grateful for their new houses that they left a little note in the glass jar mailbox telling the girls that and left a beautiful necklace that holds powers for the person wearing it and a huge pink diamond ring just for Pip right in the middle of the fairy ring.  She had wanted one at the store a few days back and her mean ol' mommy said, "not today," like she does so often.  :)  Those fairies just knew it would be perfect for her.  She's been asking for a pink diamond ring for a few years now.  What luck!

 

This morning Pip left a surprise for me!  She created a fairy ring out of golf balls in the front yard right next to her basket with the toadstool fairy ring.  What a cutie. Let me know if you make your own fairy garden or if you need "how to" details on anything we did.