The Magical FAIRY and GNOME GARDEN Challenge and Giveaway!

A Fairy or Gnome Garden is such a place of magic for a child.. to build it AND to play in it. It is a creative and imaginative jewel of childhood who's magic and memory can last forever. Please invite as many people and their children to join us in this magical challenge and LETS MAKE SOME FAIRY and GNOME GARDENS!

Rules of the Challenge;

1. We encourage everyone to create their own FAIRY or GNOME GARDEN. It can be in a bowl, a planter, a shady spot in the garden... anywhere, as long as it is a place of fairy magic and enchantment.

2. Post about your FAIRY or GNOME GARDEN and let me know or send me a photo of it on my email and you will go into the drawing to win...

**A package of fairy garden furniture and treasures, including this mushroom,

AND

**A $15 Gift Voucher to my Etsy shop, Fairyfolk (click here to see the magical fairy folk in my shop that you can choose from)

Everyone who has participated in The Magical FAIRY or GNOME GARDEN Challenge, will go into a draw and the winner will be randomly selected. In addition, K will choose 3 of her favourites, these three will be added in the draw an additional 10 times! The draw will take place on Wednesday, September 23, so, be sure to get your Fairy or Gnome Gardens in before then.

I will link to your Fairy Garden so that everyone can see your enchantment too.

Leading up to September 23, I will be posting many Fairy Garden activities, including making how to make a Fairy or Gnome Garden and how to make all sorts of fairy furniture so be sure tocheck it out daily.

Blessings and magic.

Silent Saturday.

Poppy Flower Fairy.

Blessings and magic.

Friday's Nature Table.

Welcome to Friday's Nature Table, a forum for us to share our nature posts, our nature ideas, activities, inspirations and photos.

I encourage everyone to participate, the more wonderful ideas we can share about how to enjoy our beautiful earth, the happier we will all be. And thanks to everyone for their wonderful and inspiring posts last Friday... I am learning so much!

Enjoy! and thank you for sharing today...

Blessings and magic.

Washing Day.

Oh, the tears... Little Miss K left her precious 'fine china' outside for a few days. The mowers came and blew dirt and dust ALL over them.

My gosh, what an affront! They made them 'all dirty!'

'If you have fine things, K, you have to look after them,' I said, 'you have to take care of them and keep them safe.'

'Oh, Mommy,' she replied hopefully, 'will you put them in the dishwasher?'

'Definitely NOT', I replied, 'YOU will wash them.'

We filled a basin with warm soapy water, found a sponge and K got to work.

She washed her 'fine china' until it sparkled, plunging her hands into the fluffy water.
She worked diligently, making sure not a speck of dirt remained.
Then she rinsed her crockery and put each piece carefully on the rack to dry.
I smiled to myself as I watched her work and marveled at how much she has to teach me... it was the way she threw herself, body and soul, joyfully, into her work. When similar mishaps happen to me, I begrudge the extra work that has been caused. I cuss and stamp my foot and do what has to be done with a scowl on my face. Here was this little girl, working joyfully. What time I have wasted with that scowl on my face when I could have been working joyfully instead! Not to say that I will always be cleaning up spilt milk with a smile on my face... just that I know I could be.

Today is the last day of voting for the Etsy Kids Halloween challenge. Alas, Pumpkin Mouse is coming second. He is such a delicate little fellow and I anguish terribly over the disappointment he will feel if he does not win. He thinks he is the cutest little mouse in town and I fear that his self confidence will shatter into a thousand pieces. I will have one neurotic little mouse in my cupboard, that's for sure. So, if you haven't voted,

pop on over to HERE to cast your vote. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the VOTE button. Pumpkin Mouse is number 11. He says a big THANK YOU to those of you who have voted for him..

Blessings and magic.

A Favourite Book.

This is one of Mr T's favourite books and the great thing is that K loves it too. It is called 'What Baby Wants' by Phyllis Root, illustrations by Jill Barton.

The illustrations are wonderful and the story is just delightful. It tells the story of a sweet farming family. The mom is tired and the rest of the family lets her take a nap while they look after Baby. Baby starts to cry and each family member in turn tries to console Baby with bringing something from the farmyard into the house... a cow to kiss him, a duck for him to snuggle, sheep to keep him warm until the house is chaos and Baby is SCREAMING!

Then Little Brother has an idea. He picks Baby up, wraps him warmly in his gorgeous quilt, sings him a lullaby and, would you know, Baby goes happily to sleep! It's such a sweet story.
T loves all the animals coming into the house and the chaos they make. K loves the idea that Little Brother is the only one who knows what Baby wants... she has been the only one to know what T wants a number of times and she identifies, proudly, with Little Brother.

And then there are the front and back covers that we all love. The front shows the farm in the middle of the day's activity... all hustle and bustle as each family member is busy with his or her chores.
The back cover shows the farm at night... all calm and still with the wild animals having their turn.
A lovely book with a lovely message.

Blessings and magic.

How to make a Wet Felted Soap-On-A-Rope.

Both my kids love the bath. They play in and with the water for ages. I love it because it is one place these days where they play happily together (yes, we have entered the stage of fighting)

One of the things that I find really sweet with their bath is that they wash each other. We decided to make a soap-on-a-rope.

We needed a bar of soap, sturdy yarn, warm soapy water and our wool supplies... roving and our needle felting needle. I get my wool supplies from Weir Dolls (www.weirdolls.com).

I tied the yarn around the soap as if the soap was 'brown paper packages tied up with strings'. K launched into 'Raindrops on Roses and whiskers on kittens...'
I made sure there was enough yarn left on the ends to make a loop for our rope part of the soap-on-a-rope and tied it into place.

This is what the yarn-wrapped soap looked like.

We made a hole in the wool roving for the yarn loop to fit through.

We threaded the yarn loop through the hole in the wool.

Then we wrapped the soap in the wool.

One strip of wool around one way like this...

Another strip of wool around the other way so that the soap was fully covered. It was important not to skimp on the wool as we didn't want any of the soap to show.

This is what our wrapped soap looked like...

Next, it was time for the warm soapy water. We dipped our wrapped soap into the water and started to gently massage the wool.

We massaged and massaged, very gently at first, so that the wool fibers slowly interlocked and the wool became tighter over the soap.

When we felt that the wool had started to felt together, we started to agitate the soapy wool soap with more vigor. The wool shrunk over the soap and the soap started to feel nice and snug over the soap.
Then we gave our soap-on-a-rope a nice rinse in fresh water and hung it up to dry.

Our bath tonight was even 'funner' than usual. The children took great pleasure in lathering up their woolen soap and scrubbing themselves clean.
They washed each other and themselves over and over again and I think they truly are the cleanest they've ever been!

Remember to pop over to Friday's Nature Table on Fridays to share your nature-inspired posts... everyone is encouraged to participate!

Blessings and magic.

Needle Felted Halloween and a chance to vote.

This is what I've been working on for a Needle Felted Halloween and below is a link to go and vote in the competition I've entered...

This is Pumpkin Gnome... she lives in a pumpkin.

This is her brother... he lives in his own pumpkin too.

These are my Felted Halloween Acorns. We collected the acorn caps when we were up in the San Bernardino Mountains for our camping trip a couple of weeks ago... we had such fun seeing who could find the biggest one.

The acorns have been wet felted from my Kool-Aid dyed wool I posted about a month ago. Turned out well, don't you think?

And this is Pumpkin Mouse. He is shy, that's why he's hiding in his pumpkin.

I have entered Pumpkin Mouse in my first competition (yikes!). It is the Etsy Kids Halloween Challenge. Pop over and have a look at all the lovely entries. Pumpkin Mouse sure would appreciate your VOTE!

Pumpkin Mouse in the Halloween Challenge.

Halloween is such a fun holiday. K has decided that she wants to be Simba but I know it'll change 1000 times before the big day.

Blessings and magic.

Silent Saturday

An African Sunset

Blessings and magic.

Friday's Nature Table.

Friday's Nature Table is a forum for us to share our nature posts; share our nature ideas, activities, inspirations and photos.

I encourage everyone to participate, the more wonderful ideas we can share about how to enjoy our beautiful earth, the happier we will all be.

Enjoy! and thank you for sharing today...

Blessings and magic.

How to make a pendant from Sea Glass.

Sea Glass is our present beach obsession... we walk along the surf for hours in the early morning, searching for these frosty treasures. They come in all shapes and sizes; green's, aqua's, brown's, white's... Our collection has outgrown it's tea cup and now is quickly filling it's bucket.

A Good Man recently asked what I was going to do with my Sea Glass treasure. Alas, I had no answer... I had been collecting it for the joy of finding something. But his question got me thinking how I could put our sea-treasure to use.

Sea Glass jewelry is one idea. We decided to make a pendant.

All we needed was our Sea Glass, thin, bendy wire and our pliers.

I cut a bit more than an arms length of wire with my pliers. I used the rasp on the pliers to file the ends of the wire so that they could not hurt me.
Then I wrapped the Sea Glass tightly with the wire.
I finished it by making a hoop where the chain would thread and twisted it for strength.
Voila! A Sea Glass pendant, in all of 10 minutes!
I wore it all day and K remarked a few times how pretty it looked.
Beware any friends who's birthdays are coming up... guess what I'm going to make for you?

Blessings and magic.

Making a list for a Nature Hike.

Whenever we go to El Dorado, our local Nature Center, there are a few things we always do. The first is walk along 'The Stepping Stones' at the entrance. 'The Stepping Stones' is a little stone entrance wall. It is a highlight for my kids to balance along it. Mr T thinks he is oh-so-very clever that he can now balance along the whole length without holding my hand. 'In The Beginning', I used try to hurry them along 'The Stepping Stones', eager to get to the hiking part of the walk. But, now that I am a little wiser, I let them get their fill on this beloved attraction... why rush such a fun activity. I sit on the ledge and 'oooh' and 'aaaah' as they walk up and down, down and up. It is a joy to watch their concentration, their daring, their delight in their own agility.

Look at how hard Mr T is concentrating...

So, our 'favourite things' aside, I always try to introduce something 'important' for us to do on our walks. We have looked for shapes in nature, colors in nature. This walk, we made a list of things we wanted to see.

Here is the list...

K set to work enthusiastically, marking off the treasures she found...

A spider was on the list and it was Mr T who spotted this beauty. Look at the view from his kitchen...

We definitely weren't expecting Mr T to find this little guy...

Mr T couldn't believe his luck when this baby lizard happily walked onto T's hand. T proudly showed him off to the rest of us...

K couldn't miss her chance to hold the 'tiniest little lizard we have ever seen in our whole lives' too. She wanted so badly to take him home with us for a pet. I reminded her of the story of 'A Fairy Went A Marketing' and the rule that we can only hold wild creatures for a little while before letting them go back to their mothers and fathers. K dutifully let our baby lizard go home.

I love watching my kids love nature. This photo made me smile as it is so typical... K is sprinting down the hill and Mr T is sprinting behind her, trying to keep up...

As they ran, they 'whooped' in joy, I think a little loudly for this grumpy fellow!

I always feel refreshed and refueled after a hike and my kids and I get on so well for the rest of the day, wish we could live in the woods and be a forest family.

Blessings and magic.

Honeysuckle Nectar.

Everywhere, the honeysuckles are blooming. It brings so much joy to my heart to see my children delight in the simple joy of drinking honeysuckle nectar just like I did when I was a child.

Pick a honeysuckle flower. Smell it's intoxicating perfume.

Clip the very base of the flower with your nails...

And suck...

Only the tiniest little drop is the sweetest tasting nectar to a child who is thinking 'THIS is what the fairies drink!'

Blessings and magic.