Do You Believe In Fairies?

Do you believe in fairies?  I have a special little girl in my life that truly believes! Since there are going to be fairies in our lives we had to make a special spot for them to come and visit.  We love flowers and garden fairies so we had to make a special Fairy Garden. First, we had to have a plan so she drew a picture........

You can see she knew exactly how she wanted her Fairy Garden to look.

We took a trip to the nursery and bought a variety of plants varying in shapes and texture. She was very good at picking the plants out. We knew we needed moss as a ground cover , something soft for the fairies to walk on. We also needed very small rocks for their path, so a pretty colored pea gravel would work for that.

Since we needed a few structures to add to our garden, we took a walk to the park with scissors and a bag.  We went on a adventure choosing straight twigs for the gazebo and fences and bendable branches to make a garden arbor.

Here is the result of our little Fairy Garden that she named,"The Crystal Fairy Garden."

You can see from the pictures that we used a large ceramic pot. After making this one I would use a pot at least the size of a wine barrel. It will give you much more room to add things as you go. We had to eliminate the idea of a shell  bath for the Fairy Queen and a clothes line to hang their fairy clothing to dry after they washed it in the pond. Your imagination will totally take over, trust me on this. I see many other Fairy Gardens in my future.

Suggested steps to take:

1. Make a drawing or plan
2. Decide which container you will use
3. Buy a variety of plants and ground cover
4. Try making your own structures using natural materials
5. If natural materials are not available I am sure Michaels would have some things to use in miniature
6. Place plants where you think you want them to go and then plant the plants first.
7. Next do the mossLast, add the garden path and the pond. Now you are ready to place your structures

Remember to name your Fairy Garden. Now you have to wait for the fairies to arrive.

Fairies usually come out some time after midnight and before dawn. Since our Fairy Garden was named the Crystal Fairy Garden I was sure they would leave something like crystals behind and maybe a rose petal or two from swimming in the pond. You know they dry off with rose petals. The next morning when we woke up, my special little girl went to see her Fairy Garden and guess what? There were three crystals and two rose petals on the moss and even a flower floating in the pond. I do believe in Fairies, how could I not?

The next time my special boys come to visit, I want to make a garden for them also but theirs will be for dinasours, leggos or cars and trucks.  Who knows what they will create?! They have great imaginations. If you have special little visitors come to your home, I highly recommend this activity. What a fun day it was!

"Enjoy the Process." Of: Using your childlike imagination and creating something wonderful.

Kathysue

And Then There Was PAINT!!!

The playroom bed has a few changes if you notice in the picture below. I am going through the process of picking the paint color.

 I am going to take you along with me on this process even if it takes me awhile, I hope you don't mind. I had already decided a green room would be a fun gender neutral color.   The first thing I do is get out my fan decks or color swatches from the paint store and lay them out and look at them for a couple of days.  As I pass the room the colors get moved around according to preference. I like to do this throughout the day because the light changes and so will the color.   I also decided I did not want to try and match any of the existing greens in the elements. I wanted something that would be kind of an in-between color. Therefore, making it become more of a neutral.  With that being said, I needed a citron colored green. More on the yellow side of green than the blue side. The green that is in the quilt is actually has a touch of blue in the green. I knew I did not want that green.   Before I show you  the picture below, I must explain. I normally will go for a more subdued color in a room, but this is a playroom that will be having all white furniture so I wanted it to be bright, cheerful and a clear color. Don't gasp when you see all the swatches. I am only looking at the very top color.  This is how the bed looks now.................

 Pretty bright aren't they? I am using the top two values nothing any lower on the swatches. I went from this too this..................

 Now I have five possiblilites but trust me I will be narrowing this down to the top three contenders.......

 There is one thing I would like to point out here. You can tell it is a process of elimination. You can also see I did not stand in the store under harsh flourescent lights and try to pick a color on the spot. That is virtually impossible to do. It is all about the details and it is important to make sure it is right in the enviroment in all lighting. There will be times when you will like a color better in the day than at night or vice versa. Think of when you will be in the room the most viewing that color,and it should be most appealing that time of day. I am lucky that the room has a good amount of light so the color did not change drastically throughout the day. Now we are down to the top two, the second and third swatches.  Time to go to the paint store and get some sample quarts.

Paint poster board with minimum of two coats and move around the room throughout the day.

And the winner is........????????  Let me know what you all think.

I will be showing you my big swatches in a later post.

"Enjoy the Process" Of: Choosing Paint Colors

Kathysue

Easter Inspiration and Ideas

As I was saying the other day, Easter is only a few weeks away- 21 days to be exact. Time to get moving! I purchased the turqouise ceramic egg holder from Anthropologie a few weeks ago. When I saw it I thought to myself that I should try to do an Easter table around it. With that in mind I am going to use that as my color inspiration. Right now I am leaning towards a turqouise and yellow table. I have a few things in mind, but you will have to wait for a little while until I have some more of the elements pulled together. Until then I thought I would share a few of the images I have in my inspiration file for Easter...........

Nobody does it better than Martha Stewart when it comes to Easter colors. I saved this from last year.

Simple , cheerful and very effective.

I love the use of one statement color. The lovely satin ribbon is such a nice touch. If we are going to tie a bow on something, it is important to make it a good quality ribbon and use an ample amount of ribbon to have a nice floppy, flowing bow.

Again so simple, but with great texture and repeated elements. I love all the real flowers spilling out of the baskets.

This is inspiring my idea for my egg holder. Can you see where I might be going with this?

I love this idea. I don't remember where I got this image so I apologize if it is yours! Let me know and I will gladly give you credit for such a great idea.  I would use real moss or grass and real eggs died in pretty pastels. These square clear vases are so cheap at Michaels. I think a bunch of these in mass down the center of a table on top of a mirror runner with tealights gleaming would be stunning and simple.

How simple and cute! This would make a darling Easter center piece. You could put flowers in clay pots, add a nest with eggs and a little bunny and Voila, It's Easter!!

For those of you that love a coastal look, why not use this as an inspiration and add some soft shell colored eggs to the vase and maybe a few soft blue eggs in the moss that is holding the flowers.

Country Living Magazine

This is so simple, but lovely. I think a group of 3-5 down the center of a table on a lavendar table runner with tealights would be so pretty and easy to do.

Country Living

This is being Green by using different sized tin cans and painting them soft Easter Colors.  Notice how using all of one flower in each can makes more of a statement than if they were all mixed bouquets. This is something I have observed by looking at floral arrangements and even visiting gardens. Whenever there is mass plantings of one kind of flower it makes a bigger impact visually.  If you have ever been to Disneyland notice their plantings.

You can not look at this small vignette of egg cups and not think of Easter.

Being Green again!  Painted wine bottles in bright colors to go with the flowers. In place of the oranges and kumquats use dyed Easter eggs to go with one of the colors you choose to paint the bottles. Think of this with blue and lavender bottles. Yellow and lavender flowers with lavender, yellow and blue colored eggs. There will be no limit with what you could come up with. Just keep your color pallette tight. Two main colors and one accent or just keep it to two colors.

Pink and white transferware and even the eggs have a lacey pattern in the same color as the transferware. The pink is also picked up as the main color in the flower arrangement.

Another square clear vase. This time it is covered in ribbons. The same colors are repeated in the flowers. I can see several of these on a table in varying sizes with brightly colored jelly beans in clear small bowls with a votive candle in pink sitting in the jelly beans.

For those of you with a collection of cake pedestals this is a great idea.  All you need is a ball shaped florist foam that has been soaked in water and add flowers. Using mums or carnations would be the least expensive way to go and you can order those through your grocer. Eddie Ross has shown this on his blog several times and it is spectacular. See his How-to here.

Very simple, bowls, colored eggs and ribbons. I think I would have used at least one more ribbon or even had them going from side to side making a cross in the middle. By keeping the color pallette tight it has more impact.

Although this is not a new idea, it is an idea worth re-visiting. I am beginning to realize there are a lot of square clear vases used in a lot of these arrangements. This is so affective because the use of one type of flower. Love this!!

Porter House Designs

This is obviously a large banquet table and probably for children (notice the white paper).  Let's think of using an actual cloth table cloth in place of paper.  They have taken sugar molds and put one half of a pastel plastic egg and planted grass in it and added eggs and tulips.  I did this one year in a long vase and just planted grass and tulips and it made a great centerpiece.  If you want to plant grass you need to get fast growing rye grass and plant it at least 2-3 weeks in advance so that means NOW! I also buy wheat grass already grown at my grocers. I just call and order however many baskets I think I will need.

Here they have used pictures of flowers inside a clear vase. I am not sure why they have clothes pins, I really don't like the clothes pins. I was thinking, "Why not use seed packet pictures to line the vase?" Maybe use the seed packet that matches the flower in the vase.

I am not sure but this looks a lot like alpalpha sprouts planted on a mat and used as a placemat. I am not sure this is that practical, but the concept is one worth trying. I used a moss mat as a runner, so why not a grass mat. You can buy sod  at Home depot in strips and use that down the center of your table. I used that very concept for an outdoor wedding to hold rocks that were the place cards with people's names on them.

These darling polka dot candle holders are from Pottery Barn. They just shout EASTER!!! to me.

I hope some of the images and the ideas I gave you are getting your creative wheels turning.

"Enjoy the Process" Of: Coming up with ideas for your Easter Table.

Kathysue

BTW: If you would like to see more wonderful Easter Inspiration be sure and visit Torie Jayne blog here

She is having a whole series of Easter Inspiration , you will be sure to enjoy, I know I love each post.