Someone once asked me “Are you giving your children a magical childhood?” I couldn’t really answer at the time, because I hadn’t really thought about it before. What they meant was “what are you doing to make your kids childhood memorable?” In a day to day setting, that isn’t very easy to do.
Nothing is necessarily “magical” really. I mean, we have special cookie cutters just for the boring peanut butter and jelly sandwich they might eat everyday. Occasionally we cook our dinner over a bonfire. We have a canoe for days that would normally just be spent fishing off a dock, they turn into a day spent fishing from a canoe.
We make a lot of things that most people just run out to the store and purchase premade. (don’t get me wrong…not everything is homemade!!) We wanted froghouses for the many frogs that live in our backyard. Squeaky and I went and bought some terracotta pots, and she painted them and we assembled them to be a frog house. It was fun, entertaining and cost effective too!
You get the idea.
This summer however I am determined to get my fairy garden started. I love the idea of fairies in the woods and garden. I have been slowly collecting ideas of little items that fairies may need in order to live in our backyard. Small table and chairs, a tea set, maybe a bridge…these were the first items to come to mind.
Then the other night, my niece was spending the night. The kids had had a fun filled day of doing chores and cleaning up messes (this was the 2nd night of a sleepover) so after dinner I thought we needed some fun. I gave the kids a few rules : Only natural materials, no distrubing animal habitats, a safe area (for kids and fairies) and be creative.
I showed the kids where I wanted my fairy garden to go, and I explained how if we wanted to attract fairies to my garden the fairies would need to know they had more than one safe spot. So the kids went about the woods collecting sticks, bark, rocks, wood chips, leaves, moss and even some little trinkets they collected. (I agreed that as long as they were not adding more trinkets to the forest floor, they could use what they found)
They worked together first deciding on a location, then started working together on the perfect fairy house in the woods. They even made a bed of moss for the baby fairies, found acorn tops for cups and a white feather to show they were peaceful fairies!
After finishing their fairy house in the woods, I surprised them with “Barbies Thumbelina” on DVD. They got ready for bed, as it was almost 9pm by this time and I put in the movie. It was the perfect ending for our magical fairy evening.
