Plum Creek's Fairy Garden

I know you know all about Pinterest.  But do you know all about how addictive it is?  Do you know you cannot look at pictures of a fairy garden without wanting to make a fairy garden?  I have nearly 450 pins on my Fairy Garden Board, you can find it here  http://www.pinterest.com/candystefan52/fairy-houses-and-gardens/.  After you look at a few of these lovely little gardens you will know what the attraction is.  After nearly a year of drooling over someone else's fairy garden, I have finally made my own.  Last year I wanted to make a Secret Garden out of a book.  When my son Chris and his wife found out about my new interest they sent me a set of fairy garden wrought iron trellises, furniture, and gates for my birthday. At Mother's Day they sent my fairies (yea!).  Over the year I found a few things here and there that I incorporated into the fairy garden.

I started with a container that I found at Marshall's.  I used my two ten dollar off coupons. After tax I paid less than two dollars for the tub.

 I filled the bottom third of the tub with shipping popcorn and  filled the rest of the tub with moistened potting mix.  I set my "fairy house" and some plants I had been collecting into the tub and played with them repositioning them until I was happy with the configuration. I designed the garden to have an attractive front view and an attractive back view independent of each other.

 The fairy house was a wizard house complete with gargoyles that I found at Goodwill. I chiseled that wizard and gargoyles out of the house voila! a fairy house for four dollars (less my discount of course). The little tree is called China Doll, I found it at Marc's.  The moss is Scotch Irish moss form Home Depot. I do not know the name of the flowers hanging over the side of a tub.  I took them out of a hanging basket that I had bought at Marc's for this purpose.

Then I added fences and trellises (and fairies too) and moved them around until I was happy.

The fences came from my collection of Christmas Village fencing.  I did end up using a smaller brown fence.  I will probably still change  the fence again.

I ended up repositioning the house to leave a little more room in the back for the garden arch and another fairy.

I placed the battery pack to the lights in the bottom of the turret and hot glued the lights under the eaves and inside of the rooms, Laid dried moss in to the areas of exposed soil (to keep weeds from popping up I hope).  Now please understand that this is my first attempt at making a fairy garden and I will be tweaking it for weeks, but for right now I am pretty happy with it.  It needs a little more of a polished look (but not to much) and a little bit of a better definition of the spaces.

 The twin fairies were my Mothers Day gift - Thank you Chris and Genia.

 I found the fairy below at Goodwill.

 The fairy babies are from Goodwill too.  The larger garden fairies are from Marc's.

 This little chair came from the Goodwill store near where I work.  It fits the twin fairies perfectly.

 This fairy light was a Mother's Day gift from Chris and Gen too.

 

It was a very long hard day.  I worked in the yard to finish planting and mulching so I could get to making my Fairy Garden.  I am glad I did.


Thrift on ladies, thrift on

Linking to:

Christine's Table it Party.

Susan's Metamorphosis Monday

Arod's and Sue's Meet the Neighbor Party

Dawn's History and Home Link Party  
 


Last week's post "Red, White, and Mostly Blue" was featured at:

Meet the Neighbors at Housekaboodle 

and

Anything Blue Friday at The Dedicated House  

Red, White, and Mostly Blue Tablescape

My goodness it is well into June already.  I have been on a little blog vacation while I have been cleaning up from the water that found it's way into my garage during the flooding in our area last month.  I had already been packing up from Easter and packing glassware from the china cabinets after one of the glass shelves scared the bejeebies out of me when it just snapped in two.  As luck would have it,  I had just stacked plates for tablescapes on the wood shelf beneath to within an inch of the bottom of shelf that broke.  The crystal on the shelf slid together and the plates rolled in their track to meet in the middle where the break was resting on the plates beneath. A close call,  and very scary for what might have been.  Consequently I lightened the load on all of the shelves from both of my twin dining cabinets.  We will have new flooring installed in a month or two and I had wanted to get everything packed up from all three china cabinets and the buffet to it get  moved to the garage that week. Well that did not happen because now I am afraid to store much out there that is not at least a foot off of the ground!

I did take the time yesterday to move the boxes in the dining room out the way so I could set a summer table for today (just don't look to close at the reflections in the mirrors).  The tablescape evolved from yesterday's dinner table to the table we used for dinner today.  So I will post phase one today and save phase two for another day.  First I would like to share a few pictures from our Memorial Day cookout that my son Richard took before dinner.

Red, white, and blue are my favorite colors for all of our cookouts in June and July.  I used four yards of material that was folded in half  lengthwise and laid down the middle of the table as a runner.  My little red Valentine's Day buckets with geraniums and flags,  along with one red lantern in the middle of the table serve as the centerpiece. My summer everyday cobalt blue dinner plates and my red summer salad plates along with red  plastic handled flatware and serving pieces complete the Memorial Day table setting.

Baked beans,  pasta salad, coleslaw, steaks grilled on the barbie, and strawberry shortcake for desert. YUM!  My son takes great food pictures.  Thanks Rick!

All simple, easy peasy.

*************

The Mostly Blue,  Red,  White, and Blue Table setting started with a six yard piece of denim like material that I found at Goodwill.  Material is usually one dollar a yard and with my thirty-five percent off coupon it was very easy on the pocket (I also bought six yards of the same fabric in red at the same time, which I will use later for another table).  I cut off three yards and frayed the ends for an attractive finished edge.

 The denim material has a subtle square pattern, kind of like quilt blocks sewn together but they are actually a part of the weave in the fabric.  The Studio Nova salad plates are the inspiration for this table.

They will soon be making the journey across this great country (via the USPS) to reside at my friend JoAnn's house.  JoAnn blogs at "Scene Through My Eyes",  she always amazes me with her beautiful photography. Serendipitously JoAnn had mentioned a couple of weeks back that she had been looking for this pattern to add to the set she has been using for her family's summer gatherings. Imagine my surprise when I checked out the link to this pattern and realized it was the very same pattern that I had just bought at Goodwill  (in like new condition) and had left in the garage still wrapped in newspaper until I needed them.  These little cuties will be on their way to their new home very soon.  They certainly helped make a lovely series of tablescapes for me and I will look forward to seeing them in more tablescapes in the future.

 The dinner plates were bought at closeout at the HomeGoods store after Christmas this year (three dollars each). I think the name is Circa, but I am not sure that could be an O and not a C.

The charger is a dark navy blue color.  The chargers came from Goodwill as did the napkins and placemats. I did play with the table arrangement for awhile before dinner, the following pictures show some of the changes I made. The light blue bowls and some of the red disappeared.

Not a drastic difference,  just enough to change the mood slightly.

You can see the stacked plates in the cabinets that saved my blue crystal and yellow plates.

You can see the pattern in the tablecloth better in this picture.  I love the way the patterns mix and match between the plates, the napkins, the covered tea cups, the flower pots, and the vase. Tablescaping is so much fun when everything comes together after years of finding a little of this here and a little bit of that there.

Usually the I will keep the table setting for a week or two before changing for the season, or a holiday, or a party of some sort or another.  But I am thinking of red. I am thinking that I will incorporate some of my odds and ends of red items and see how I can make them work in different tablescapes over the next few weeks.  Red just makes a picture "pop".

See what I mean?

 POW

 Have a Great Week!!.  Thrift on ladies,  thrift on.

Linking to:

Susan's Tablescape Thursday

Susan's and Arod's Meet the Neighbors Party

Kathryn's Anything Blue Friday

Christine's Table It Party