pixie hollow

for the better part of the last six months my girls have been obsessed with one thing when they play outside.  my girls are obsessed with fairies.  i don't really know why.  it just sort of happened in the late fall, was embraced when grandma visited in december, and has continued well into the spring.  

it was getting out of control.  the kids were making traps all over the back yard.  i would look out the kitchen window and see piles of sticks under the walnut tree, rock stacks next to a basket (stairs so that the fairy could make it into the bed) in the middle of the lawn.  leaf collections...  what have you.  and it was getting a little bit out of control.  and we wanted to beautify the back yard a little.  and fairy houses nature piles just don't quite work with my gardening layout.  

and so in an effort to prepare the yard for the makeover that it was about to receive, we had the girls clean up the fairy houses.  they were good sports about it and understood that in order to lay sod we would need the basket collection to be relocated.  we designated a spot for where they could continue to set their traps and then went about the business of beautifying.  it was a lot of work, but a few weekends later, we had reached the desired goal- an inexpensive partial backyard makeover to at least cover the pile of dirt that it was when we bought the house.  

during this process of planting, i found myself at a local nursery looking at plants.  on our way out of the nursery, the girls and i discovered a collection of fairy gardens.  the gardener at the nursery had taken some broken pots, added some vegetation to them, furniture, cute little signs (like "fairies welcome" and "please come in tinkerbell") and turned them into fairy houses.

adorable.

i stopped dead in my tracks and we gushed over them for a few moments.  i had never seen anything like it and was found them to be lovely.

after a few minutes of taking them in, we hoped in the car.  on the ride home i asked the girls what they might enjoy doing over spring break (which was the following week).  all three of them yelled out in unison, "we want to make fairy houses!".

and so we did.  we are waiting for a cute little fairy swing, willow framed bed and table to arrive from a garden store in ohio, but aside from that, they are done.  each girl designed their own and they now sit awaiting fairies beneath our apple tree.  

and while this was certainly not the motivation, i haven't seen traces of stone stacks or stick piles anywhere.  

i'll also let you in on a little secret if you promise not to tell.  according to e, she has caught a fairy and he is living in the pot with the freesia.