Fairy Garden

For the past year, Eleanor has loved all things dinosaur.  We have listened to dinosaur songs (oh yes, two whole CD's full of songs about dinosaurs), done dinosaur puzzles, read countless dinosaur books, seen the dinosaurs at the zoo (twice), thrown a dinosaur birthday party, visited Dinosaur World in Plant City, eaten at the dinosaur restaurant in Downtown Disney, visited the dinosaur store in Cocoa Beach, watched The Land Before Time and many episodes of Dinosaur Train, and pretended to be dinosaurs many, many times.  I have completely loved her fascination with dinosaurs (along with planets and pirates, two of her other favorite things), but I have to admit that I'm excited that she is finally into something a little girly: fairies!

Eleanor loves telling stories about fairies and pretending to be a fairy, so today we made a fairy garden.  I took her to Michael's and let her pick out a few things.  It was fun to see what she wanted for it versus what I would have picked out.  They had a little set of  toy fairies, but she said that she didn't want those because she already has fairies; they're just invisible.  I love her imagination!

First, her's my fairy and her double-tailed dinosaur brother going on a walk.

We looked at lots of bird houses, but this is the one Eleanor picked out to be her fairy house.  She also picked out her paint colors and spent a long time painting her fairy house just how she wanted it.

We got a little one for Arthur to paint too.  This kept him occupied for probably 30 minutes!  He painted for a long time, then when I thought he was done he did the sign for more.  I gave him another color and he kept signing for more colors.  He is quite the little artist!

So proud!

Arthur's final product
Of course you can't tell, but the inside is almost completely painted!

Eleanor's fairy house

Eleanor's fairy garden.  The "mushrooms" are actually wooden drawer pulls from Lowe's that I painted.

She loves it!  We keep it in this box so that she can put the lid on (after taking the fairy house out since it's so big) and keep out destructive little brothers.  It's also nice because it can just slide under her bed for storage.