Our Fairy Garden

I've posted about our fairy garden on Facebook and Instagram, but since the plan is to make this blog for my classroom and mommy friends... I'm gonna post about it one more time :)

I had seen some beautiful outdoor fairy gardens and a super cute post about a greenhouse place across the country that specializes in selling miniature plants just for these miniature gardens! (I started following @laurakellydesigns on Instagram after following Mayhem and @2sisters_angie for a while now - both are very creative moms with fun and artsy ideas for kiddos! LauraKelly had just posted about the greenhouse...) So, I did a search on Pinterest for some indoor fairy garden ideas - most still called for real plants, which would have been an open invitation for our cat to play with the fairies... not a good plan... but I did see one with stuff planted in an old birdcage! That got me thinking about the birdcage I had sitting in my basement for the last five years. It was the card holder at our outdoor wedding in June of 2009 and hasn't been touched since:

 

Then I took my little girl to Joann Fabrics to gather some no-dirt-required plants and other ideas for little things we could add. We found a perfect little birdhouse, fence, stone pathway, moss, and flowers with a little help with Grandma and Papa! When we got home, I showed peanut some ideas for how we could put our stuff inside the birdcage so that fairies would enjoy the garden...

 Next steps: letting peanut paint the house while I figure out how to attach the birdcage to a stool so it would be at her height. I had to have some help from the hubby to screw the bottom of the cage to a block and attach those to the stool. When that was finally done and the tiny birdhouse became a fairy house, we started adding our pieces and creating the fairy oasis!

 Caylee's favorite part was adding the stone path and, even though I had to help with the hot glue, I think it turned out pretty great. When she went to bed, I explained to her that some fairies might see the house and decide to move in that night... no "Elf on the Shelf" mystery, just a fun little imagination game... and mommy stayed up for a couple hours adding little details and "planting" the fairies' plants - I definitely used an ENTIRE pack of glue gun sticks, but I had SOO much fun with this part of the project and couldn't wait for her to wake up and see if any fairies had moved in ;)

 Final touches before she saw it the next morning - a ribbon table skirt, birdies back to visit, and a sign on the door.

Since that first day, Caylee has decided to add two seashells that she painted at daycare and she told me that the stones were sleeping (like the trolls from Frozen). So, we picked up a couple bigger rocks to paint like trolls and add later :) We will continue to add things and change things around as the princess wishes, but I love that it is really all about boosting creativity and imagination! Such a fun, cheap, and easy mommy-daughter project!