Fairy Houses

We have a new obsession. We read about making fairy houses in the October issue of Family Fun. This is, hands down, my very favorite magazine! (Go here for directions on how to make one yourself.)

On Friday I suggested to Katie and our neighbor Sammi that we should make a fairy house. Once I explained it to them and discussed what sort of things you could use to build a house and put inside it, they were off and running with ideas. I had to explain to them that you can only use items you find on the ground, and you can't pull things off trees. Fairies can tell what smells more like the ground instead of a tree, and they won't use a house that's been made of things pulled off their trees. So the girls set to work building a little hut for the fairies. Here's what they built.

You can see they found someone's trash floating down the street, and used a dryer sheet to support the roof leaf shingles (recycling at its finest). I also took a photo of the girls by their architectural masterpiece.

When Katie woke Saturday morning, she immediately started asking if she could go check the fairy house to see if any fairies stayed in it overnight. (You can tell if a fairy stayed in it because things will be out of place or the berries might have been eaten.) We finally checked it that afternoon, and everything was still in place. Bummer! So Katie set about making a new fairy house, and Sammi joined her again later. This time they used shovels to dig holes in the ground. I'm not sure why, but it made sense to them.

Today, Katie is outside supervising Dan's lawn mowing and also building yet another fairy house. I'm thrilled that her imagination is growing with this new obsession!