Making the Fairy Houses

I loved doing this project with the kids.  We filled up a box with shiny things, and now the girls know just what I mean when I say "Please get the paint box, your smocks, and the fancy box."

Actually, we've done a lot of projects this week.  It's been nice to have our supplies organized and accessible again, with our new cubby system in the school room.  The kids and I made a new wreath for Fall, and Mimi adores it.  She loves anything fancy, and she loves building things.  Making jewel-encrusted fairy houses might be the absolutely perfect project for our pixie princess.

I should explain- we have decided that Mimi is our spring pixie princess.  She's flowery and warm and sweet, and sometimes she just showers and rages, and then everything is sweetness and dancing again.  Our spring pixie princess.  She prefers to be barefoot, and to eat nothing but sugar- if that doesn't say flower fairy, I don't know what does.  Bread and jam for her, outside, please!

Ernie is our water sprite.  When she's hot inside, she boils and steams and shouts.  When she's cold inside, she's sluggish and impossible to get moving.  But, when the weather is gentle she can be chirpy like a little brook and bring joy and life to everyone around her.  She can be impenetrable as fog.  She's deep like an ocean in her thoughts, and can be as still as a mountain lake.

Cocoa is our earth man.  Our dwarf.  Small, strong, agile, with a simple-minded focus on the world and what he wants; he's happiest when he's shoving heavy things around.  He's hard to divert from his path, and knows his own way.  He loves and accepts everyone he sees.

Daddy is the wind- he blows change and blessings and seasons through our lives.  He's the wind in our sails.  He brings the storms from outside our little home, and then blows them away again.

That leaves me- fire.  I come through and destroy and break down what I see that isn't what it could be, and I build and teach and nurture into something better nourished.

It's a silly little thing, but it's calmed the kids down and help them reflect on their own personalities, and helped them appreciate the personalities of other members of our family as we talk and giggle about our own strengths and weakness described this way.  Fairy time won't last long in our home, but for now it's a sweet way to look at and understand a big world.