Rock/Fairy Gardens!!

 
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!
 
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!
 
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!
 
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.

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!
 
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. 

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!

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!
 
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 ;)