Fairy Garden

I used to have a wonderful wooden play kitchen in my sandbox.  my preschoolers (and my children) loved it - they would make all sorts of wonderful mud pies, and birhtday cakes - litmitless play!  Over the summer it broke and I was on the lookout at every garage sale for a new one - I never fouind one.  During the time Madison got this purple fairy house for a fairy garden for her birthday -that got me thinking... maybe I should put a fairy garden in my sandbox.

Turns out they are quite expensive.  Since it was mainly for my preschoolers I counted it as a preschool expense - so I could justify the money.  But I could only afford one piece at a time (plus at one piece a time I could use a 40% off coupon).  Since it was taking several weeks to build as i got each pice i just stuck it in my garden.  But then I realized... it looked adorable in my garden!!  My rocks, slpoe, and ground cover make a perfect fairy garden.  It never did make it to my sand box.

wow - that grass could use some help though.  You will see I greened it up quite nicely in pictures below - the sprinkler head just needed to be adjusted.

It took forever to find good fairies - I just wanted some generic ones - but they are harder to find than you would think.  We also got a treasure box with some "jewels" in it and other things fairy gardens need.

Megan and Madison would spend literally hours out here everyday. 

  Obviously all the neighborhood girls loved it too and since it was in my front yard I had an "open garden" policy.  Some days I would look out my window to find random girls just playing in the garden - I loved it.  I LOVE having children play at my house.  It makes my heart swell with joy.

One day we had a school vacation and all the moms and neighborhood kids went out to play in the neighborhood at 10:30 in the morning.  These girls played with the fairy houses from 10:30 am until 5:00 that evening!  Seriously.  They moved them over to the side of my house and made this whole community throughout the whole yard.  It was fantastic.