Carol the Fairy

A few weeks ago the library where I work had the annual Fairy Tea Party. This is a huge event that little girls and their moms and grandmas look forward to year after year. We do four different teas for two hundred people at each one. The tickets went on sale one Saturday morning at 9am. People started lining up at 5:30am to buy the tickets. We sold over 600 of the 800 tickets in about 45 minutes. In past years I have been lucky to escape most of the fairy finery by working at the reference desk so others could have the opportunity to dress fairyish and frolic around the ballroom with the guests. Not so lucky this year. First off our boss asked each of us to decorate either a birdhouse or a large jar (like a terrarium) to display in a room full of fairy houses. This was lots of fun and I am hoping we can do another one next year. I used only natural things (except the glue). All things were either found on walks around the neighborhood and cemetery with Geddy or in a bag of potpourri from the dollar store which was full of seed pods, leaves, husks, etc... If you look closely at the pictures you might even be lucky enough to spot the three fairies that I made out of rosehips and other seed things. There was a fourth peeking out one of the windows, but apparently she got tired of that and fell inside never to be seen again.

I call it the Forest Fairy Condo. Can you see the pet squirrel in their backyard? I guess he isn't made of anything natural, but he fit in so well I couldn't resist.

The upper window is where one young fairy disappeared.

The fairy in this picture is probably the easiest to spot.

And yes, I finally had to dress up and don a pair of wings! At least they were cool wings and I still avoided all the glittery, feathery, pastel fluffy things. Notice I am a supposed to be a forest fairy as well? One little girl said I was "the fairy of the trees".

Kindy 500

 A little while ago all the Kindergartners at Geddy's school participated in a fun event called the Kindy 500. Each child (and parents) were to decorate a cardboard box however they wanted to "drive" around the school. They visited numerous stations where they learned about such things as The Statue of Liberty, The Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross and the Flag, Abraham Lincoln, Mt. Rushmore, The White House and Geddy's favorite - The Bald Eagle (stuffed of course). At each stop they received a little trinket representing the station. I was a helper for Geddy's group so I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked. It was a kind of crazy but very fun morning! It was interesting to see the variety of vehicles that had been made. Some were quite obvious that the child had little to do with, others were completely opposite and you could see that the child had done everything themselves. Ours was pretty much a 50/50 split. Geddy designed the whole thing and helped paint the black and the bat symbol stencils on the sides. I touched it up. We picked out wheels and headlights and license plates online thanks to google images, printed them on photo paper and he glued them on. The windshield was my surprise for him. I had hoped to make a joker hood ornament, but ran out of time.

Surprise, surprise - Geddy (and I) made a Batmobile! (Even the license plates say Bat 1).

Geddy's favorite stop. He and a another kid are demonstrating how big a bald eagle's wingspan is.

He liked this one because it looks like the eagle is standing on his arm!