Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Rock/Fairy Gardens!!

 fairy garden 1
We’re making better and bigger fairy gardens than the pots we had before!
This is turning out to be more fun and a better idea than I first thought.  Look at the cute pebble paths?  Those fairy houses we made last year out of Fimo Clay.  Wait until you see the new Fimo Clay Fairy stuff we’ve been working on!  But they’re not ready so I’ll post those another day!
 fairy garden 2
I am loving these fairy gardens because it gives us even more reasons to be outside.  It gives us something to do together that we are all enjoying.  It also gives me us an excuse to do more crafting!  Gotta love that!  My kids have so many ideas for these things that I cannot keep up!
 fairy garden 3
Here’s a view of more of this daughter’s fairy garden.  I have these “rings” of dirt in my backyard that are perfect for each child to build their own fairy gardens in!  In the middle (kind of lower right of the picture) that was my attempt at a pond, with island in the middle, waterfall off to one side that has a hidden fairy house underneath the waterfall.  I’m not loving how it turned out, but dear daughter does, so that is all that matters!
 fairy garden 5
Daughter number 1 made a tunnel with a cave.  I thought it was so cute.  I’m having fun making surprises for the kids to be found in their fairy gardens.  I made that pile of gold nuggets to go in my daughter’s mine.  Now she is making a mining cart! ;)  Our ideas are breeding off of one another.  Love the arch?  It’s a horseshoe from daughter’s birthday party about 3 years ago!  We’re using what we have.
fairy garden 4
My dear Son’s Fairy Garden is turning out more Army Barracks right now.  He can’t make up his mind between garages for cool cars, or an airport.  Yet, his fairies are the army men (last year, said army men even got wings!).  I’m still mulling this one over.  I’ll come up with something to delight that sweet boy of mine!
  rock garden 3
This all started with my children bringing home more rocks to collect.  Being the good Mother that I am…..I usually toss, said rocks. ;(
But I finally decided to let them pile them up in their own piles in the backyard (it’s mostly rocks anyway…we live in AZ after all).
We found large rocks and I cut out their names in Vinyl.  They put their vinyl letters on the rocks however they wanted. 
rock garden 1
Then, I let them have at those rocks, with spray paint.  It was interesting the colors that each of them chose.  I would not have guessed it!
rock garden 2
We had my kids covered with gloves and giant face masks to do the spray painting.  Those masks aren’t for tiny faces (and the gloves weren’t for tiny hands either), but they worked.  Once they were done spraying, I peeled the letters off the rocks.  Now their name rocks will go in their fairy/rock garden.  The rest of their rocks they can scatter as they please.  There is plenty of room for plenty of rocks. 
Now maybe I can regain my title of “Good Mother”, by not throwing out anymore of their precious rocks!
  garden composter
One more picture to leave you with.  Isn’t she a beauty?  I’ve been drooling over something like her for about 10 years now!  She was my Mother’s Day gift this year!    I was not expecting to get her, so it was a very nice surprise!  She’s already got egg shells and banana peels in her (I stole them from my Mom at our Mother’s Day brunch.  I know my Dad thought I was kooky, but it’s not the first or last time he’s thought that of me!).

Rebecca
PS  Thanks to my whole family for a wonderful Mother’s Day!  You all are too sweet and it was such a joy to spend the day with you. As always, the food was to die for, as well!  I am so thankful to have such wonderful and amazing family in my life!  I think the water balloon launcher broke, so all the cars should be safe now ;)

10 comments:

pink and green mama MaryLea said...

So fun!! We've expanded our fairy garden this year too and the girls are having great fun with it -- I'll have to show them this post to get some more creative ideas flowing!

LollyChops said...

My mom used to let me use her oil paints to paint rocks! It was SOOO much fun!

...if you need someone to send one of those faux logs to... I'm your gal! I am in love with those!

RootsAndWingsCo said...

As always, Lolly, thanks! You are such a sweet heart! That faux log was daughter #2's surprise of the day. I'm loving surprising them with surprises in the fairy garden. We are going rock hunting to find great rocks to paint to look like fairy houses. Should be a fun project from start to finish. I'm thinking glitter and sequins needs to come into play! ;)

Pink&Green Mama, I'll have to see if you have any fairy posts. I love perusing the internet for what others have done!

Lisa said...

we love fairy houses!!! this one is wonderful! you can make a fairy house anywhere out of anything! we've even made one out of a partially eaten watermelon!
have a great week
lisa

STAEDTLER said...

We have just discovered your gorgeous fairy gardens made of STAEDTLER FIMO!
We'd love to meet you on our facebook fanpage http://www.facebook.com/STAEDTLER.headquarters !
It would be great if you bacame a fan, too, and showed your artworks on our page.
We are looking forward to seeing your latest creations and best regards from STAEDTLER headquarters in Germany, Yvonne

inadvertent farmer said...

What a super cool fairy garden! Love the mine...kids have the best imaginations! Of course being a mother of 4 boys I am so all over the army men faires, lol!

Congrats on the new composter...may you have years of fresh lovely compost for your garden! Kim

Melissa said...

Oh - I must, must do this with my girls this year!!

Lainey said...

Oh! I am so excited to see fairy gardens in the desert! I live in Tucson, and I've been wondering how to approach the fairy garden "thing". Thanks for inspiration. I have 2 boys so I have a feeling ours will have lots of clone toopers. With wings!

http://uncommoncharm.wordpress.com

Lainey said...

Oh! I am so excited to see fairy gardens in the desert! I live in Tucson, and I've been wondering how to approach the fairy garden "thing". Thanks for inspiration. I have 2 boys so I have a feeling ours will have lots of clone toopers. With wings!

http://uncommoncharm.wordpress.com

Amber said...

Love the fairy garden!

Could you please tell me what kind of composter that is? I have been looking for one similar and cant find one. Thanks!