How To Make a Fairy Garden

Here’s a new idea for you to try with your kiddos this summer.  Make them a fairy garden! It only takes a few little trinkets and a little imagination to give your children a magical garden full of exciting mini surprises.

This is our version of a Fairy Garden.

Here’s what you need:

1. A container for your garden. Maybe an old chipped pot, a cool ceramic bowl. Some kind of metal dish or plate, a giant coffee canister or birdseed container. We used an old cookie devoid of it’s matching lid, sitting useless on our shelf for the past few years. There are quite a few clearance garden containers out for end of summer sales right now too. Look around and see what you can find.

2. Soil. If you plan on actually planting greenery in your pot (like I do) make sure you get a good potting soil. I found a big bag at our local hardware store for $4.00 so this certainly won’t break the bank.

3. Decorations and landscaping! Scour the floral department at the craft store nearest you to find special things for your garden. Pebbles or glass stones make a great walkway, white picket fencing looks cute as a border, mossy rocks, etc. etc. No rules here- if you find something cute, use it!

4. A fairy house. You could use a tiny birdhouse, or cut a door and holes in an old can (please tape those edges!) or make one, like I did, out of oven dry clay like Fimo or Sculpey. I’m not entirely happy with our garden’s house, but Lilly loves it so it will do for now.

5. Garden inhabitants. I ordered a green fairy from Wee Trees online shop, and a little red Gnome that Lilly hasn’t seen yet. I also added a watering can, birds nest and some blue eggs.

6. Plants! We’re not ready for plants yet but I want to add few tiny succulents or a tiny little bit of grass. We’ll see. You can definitely plant real plants here though- things that are hearty and easy to grow though as your child will most likely be playing in the dirt!

And that’s all! Make sure you add the dirt first, then arrange all your garden elements however you want.

I created our fairy garden during nap time and placed it out on the deck for Lilly to casually find when she woke up. Her eyes almost popped out of her head when she saw the little set up. It was empty- no fairy, gnome, or eggs. But I told her it was a Fairy Garden and she immediately said, “A Fairy’s gonna fly down from the sky Momma?” Oh, gosh. I knew then that this was going to be so much fun!

During dinner time I snuck the green fairy into the garden and waited for Lilly to notice. She let out a little squeal when she saw the fairy and came running in to get me to come look. She sat showing the fairy everything in the garden for quite some time. Brandon distracted her again so I could sneak in the eggs and that just flipped Lill over the edge. She’s convinced that the eggs are going to hatch- not sure how we’ll handle that one yet. Baby chicks, anyone?

Maybe Mr. Gnome will make an appearance today, or a few clay lady bugs. We’ll see. But Lilly is convinced of Fairy Mary’s existence and loves to check on her (she comes and goes quite regularly).

I’ve seen this done directly in the ground but I knew my daughter would want to move it around (and bring it in at bedtime) hence the need for a container. Do what suits you best!

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In other news, we’ve finally gotten to that happy place where we, as parents, can count on good girl hours- the times of day that we know, for sure, the girls will be happy and behave. This frees up our weekends to do fun things again instead of waiting around the house for nap times to be over and bad moods to evaporate.

We’ve also reached that happy place where Grace is old enough to be front packed facing forward (hallelujah!) so Brandon’s been toting her all over the place. It was hard to front pack her facing toward our bodies because she was so tiny and still so fragile. We would worry about her face being so covered in this heat. Now that she can face out she is happy as a clam, looking around, taking in the sights. It’s really cute.

Sunday was the perfect day to take Lilly on the Incline up Mt. Washington. She’s been at the top and at the bottom, but she (like I) have never ridden up. It was kinda nice actually to ride it for the first time with my little family. The view was beautiful and Lilly was very impressed.

Out like a light. We have strikingly identical pictures of Lilly doing the exact same thing at that age.

Of course the real fun started when we got back down to Station Square and Lilly was able to let her dance moves out.

I can’t get enough of this little girls expressions.

Happy Monday!