paint cut paste

over spring break in april, it was time for me to plant some potted herbs for the season. with all of the fairy house excitement as of late, N wanted to make them into “fairy herb gardens,” naturally.

even without her own pinterest account, this trend seemed to seep into the consciousness of my 5-year-old. go figure. first we potted the herbs into two large pots. N said that she would decorate the basil and rosemary pot, and the other (sage, cilantro, and parsley) was for me to adorn. i felt honored to get to do one, as i assumed she’d do both. yay!

she decided we needed our shrinky dink herb tags here, but the ones we made a couple years ago weren’t the same types of herbs, so we spent an afternoon making new shrinky dink tags. (easy steps: scribble with colored pencil on rough side, cut shape, write herb name with sharpie on smooth side, heat shrink, stick in soil.)

then it was time for the houses. i gave her a choice of using natural materials (like she does in the yard) or painting some wooden birdhouses we have ($1 bin at michael’s.) she chose the painted route, and we got to work on our fairy houses.

next we gathered up some items for landscaping… like colorful marbles, stones, shells, sea glass, and even a few of the lovely painted sticks we made a couple years ago. N excitedly designed her fairy herb pot.

she spent a lot of time getting everything just right for the fairies. what a hostess!

the herb pots are so darn sweet… and we’ve spent some time over the past month (has it been that long!!!??!) clipping sprigs of herbs for our dinners and sprucing up the fairy neighborhoods.

my little fairy-lover has been making fairy houses out of natural materials for months. she loves to create them, and then check back in on them the following day to see if she sees signs of fairy activity. (sometimes the “fairies” leave colorful marbles or sparkly treasures for her overnight. *wink*) i just love these spontaneous nature creations that can happen without purchasing any materials or having any agenda. open-ended, outdoor art supreme!

on a recent family picnic in the park sort of sunday, she worked hard to create a fairy house at the base of a redwood tree.

she also loves making them in our backyard…

and adding to this one in her school yard during outside playtime…

do your little ones like to create little homes in nature? i’d love to hear about what you’re making. for some really sweet inspiration, we love this book on fairy houses. it’s one of our go-to bedtime reads at the moment. stay tuned for our fairy herb garden, coming up on the blog in a coupla days…

this weekend i surprised my amazing husband with a super-fun gift for his birthday — spending the night in a local treehouse! and, of course, my daughter enjoyed the experience most of all! (i kept it a secret from her, as well. she’s not the best surprise-keeper, so i figured it was safer this way.) i just have to share this magical, inspirational experience with you all…

a few weeks ago, i was in bed, flipping through properties on my airbnb iphone app (so addictive!) and daydreaming about travel. i came across the special feature on the app showing houses in trees, and found a treehouse “b&b” of sorts that’s about 15 minutes from where we live! click here to check out the video about it!

i knew i’d stumbled upon a gem, so i booked it for just one night, unbeknownst to my family. on friday we arrived at the 3pm check-in time. we got a tour of this creative hideaway from its owner and builder, doug. such a cozy, unique spot! (incase you’re wondering: electricity and heat = yes. plumbing = no… but access to a private bath & kitchenette down in the main house.)

this is N's bed - we slept in a queen-sized loft bed just above

one part i loved is that there are hens on the property! this took me back to my own childhood where we had hens in our yard, and i collected their eggs each day to sell by the dozen and use the money go buy their feed – my first entrepreneurial experience at age 7! N got to have the experience of collecting their organic eggs for our breakfast the next morning. one of the hens (which i understand to be an andalusian chicken) lays beautiful pale blue-green eggs!

which were delicious, by the way!

two blue, one white, one brown

N spent a lot of time outdoors building “fairy tree houses” with natural objects she found on the ground…

…and swinging on their fabulous tree swing – a big hit!

swinging happily below

if you’re ever in the bay area, i highly recommend spending the night in a tree! it was a really interesting way to commune with nature, to listen to (and being part of) the creeeeaking of the tree moving in the wind all night long. (nope, we didn’t sleep much, but it was worth it.) it was a lovely place to watch the sun set and then rise again over the SF bay. and a sweet way to get up close and personal with other tree-dwellers.

N enjoyed making her artistic mark on their guest book, too!

happy birthday to my loving, brilliant, grounded, supportive husband!

my husband and i are in the process of creating teeny handmade tokens to serve as prizes in the game room at N’s waldorf school holiday faire in a couple of weeks.

creating handmade treats for little ones is right up my alley. because i have a bunch of random materials overflowing out of our art cabinet, i decided to donate not only our time, but also the materials to create some prizes.

mostly, we created pom pom/felted wool acorns, painted and wax-sealed wooden toys of all shapes, and some mini-pinecone fairies. we had a great time this weekend, as a family, making all sorts of fun little things together from the mish-mash of stuff that was bursting (avalanche style) out of our art stash.

i wasn’t sure if these little tokens would be “big enough” prizes until N confirmed that she’d LOVE to win a wooden heart and a wooden apple if she played a game. and she LOVED these weird looking gnomes i designed from the wooden shape that’s supposed to be a carrot. whew! kids are easy to please…

N even helped to paint a few gnomes

one of my favorite adaptations of the weekend was how we morphed our pinecone fairies from 2009 — this time instead of garlic peel wings (one of my fav art materials!) we used these wooden mustache shapes from our collection of odd wooden doodads for more durable wings. they turned out to be pretty cute with their acorn hats.

i love how each of us got in on the action and created these teeny treats for the kids at school. i spent much of the weekend creating holiday gifts for friends and family, too. i’m launching into total handmade holiday elf mode over here, and it’s not even thanksgiving!

have you ever been addicted to making flower fairies?

oh, i’ve had this bug for way too many years, and now i’m thinking it just might be genetic…

they’re just too fun! gather up some floral wire, wooden beads, silk petals, and get busy making new little friends! OR get the kit at the bottom of this post that has all of the materials in it, along with inspirational ideas for fairies you can create.

love these springtime friends!

grandma is in town and brought with her a really cool coloring set for N… metallic markers on black backgrounds with who else? the disney fairies!

nevermind that blank rectangle at the bottom where N already took the markers off.

i’m so not getting paid to endorse a product here, but i’ve always been a sucker for making art on black backgrounds, so that’s the gist of this post.

N said it was magical. something about having colors show up against a dark background is like drawing with light in a nighttime sky. she completed both images that came in this disney fairies shimmer art package.

we went out to lunch later in the day, and i thought to bring along these metallic markers from the set, along with an art journal i have with blank black pages in it. (by the way, you can get the sharpie metallic markers at target and they create the same effect.)

i drew a circle on the page and invited her to create a mandala. she LOVED this directive and really got into it.

mandala artists converse

creating this masterpiece…

for some more on creating mandalas on black paper, check out our blog from last year by clicking here.

does your little one gather thousands of leaves and twigs every time s/he’s outside? mine does! from nature walks to playgrounds to the preschool sandbox, N is constantly in search of treasures. when i saw the framework for this idea on moment to moment, i thought it would make a sweet storage space for seasonal findings.

i like how on moment to moment, the kids made beaded strands and various things to add to their fairy loom (which we’ll likely do later,) but mostly i wanted to make one where we could store natural objects… a fairy loom for all seasons! first, we needed a sturdy stick in the shape of the letter Y. last week we went on a nature walk with gwee, and hunted for said stick with no luck. we did find plenty of leaves and things, so N saved the things she gathered in anticipation of making a fairy loom.

over the weekend on a hike with her daddy, N found the perfect Y shaped stick for her loom. it was a bit bigger than i’d imagined it being (i was envisioning a 1-2 foot stick) but it turned out to be perfect.

N and i chose some variegated ribbon to thread the loom. you could use any ribbon, yarn, twine, or string you like. i wound the ribbon around the forked part of the stick. in hindsight, i should have created a loop around each side of the branch on each pass to make the weaving tighter. eh, next time.

weaving ribbon in a figure 8 pattern

we wove the found objects into it… leaves, feathers, pine needles with tiny pinecones on them, lavender, flowers, etc. N said “over, under, over, under…” as she wove.

when it was finished, N was so enthralled with it. she asked with wonder, “do you think a fairy would land on this?” (i think she’s hoping for tinkerbell to visit her, like in the new tink movie that just came out.)

we brought it into the house and put it in the corner of our den, kind of near the seasonal altar (though not in this photo.) it seems like a good place to store some of the little beautiful treats that N brings inside for us, and perhaps we’ll string some beads and shells to add to it, as well. i’m excited for the leaves to turn reds and oranges and yellows so we can add them to the loom — the color change happens later (and less vibrantly than i’m used to) in the bay area.

the loom can be cleaned out and redesigned with each season. i also think smaller (and bigger!) ones would be pretty hung from trees, hung on porches, or placed around the yard…  oooo…