Second Attempt (plus one)

Last summer, my oldest Grand-daughter and I made our first attempt at creating our North Woods fairy houses. It was truly a magical experience. This summer, we again made our plans to create a little woodsy fairy village and her younger sister joined us in the creation - she's the "plus one."

We have established simple rules for making our fairy houses:

1. We use only forest findings - pine cones, tree bark, moss, sticks, ec.

2. Rocks from the lake are acceptable to use.

3. You work on your place, I work on mine.

4. Connecting paths are encouraged and we work on them together!

This year a new rule was added based upon finding these at a local thrift store:

5. You can add thrift store embellishment provided they are removed upon cabin departure!

Seriously, aren't these tacky??? But they are all metal and the flowers were easily removed with a wire cutter - and perfect for fairy house gardening. The girls absolutely loved them!

This is Miss E's place festooned with flowers and the blue bow.

This is Miss M's with birch bark houses and moss roofing which she dubbed the Mommy and Daddy

and Baby houses.

My house had sticks woven together with twine (oops - rule breaker!)  and the pink bow.

Our village was created around the base of a tree; it circled the whole tree.

The girls could have kept at it a lot longer, but the mosquitoes were in high party mode. They came inside and wrote notes to the fairies instead. And waited patiently for a response.

What a surprise that overnight the fairies answered with this heart!!!!!

And flowers attached to their notes!!

Long live fairies in the forest!  

(And the magic of young imaginations not on an electronic device to get to those fairies!!)

The Grown-Ups Birthday Celebration

Look at these five birthday celebrants---all have their big days within about a three week time span!

Cumulatively their years on the planet total one hundred ninety-three years. Meaning this oddball non-summer birthday host (me) has to put together an out-of-this-world party! Though I love Pinterest, I was determined to do this without that app.

Each year I try to think up a fun theme for the party and this year my inspiration came from a "find" at TJMaxx - a clearance robot party pack complete with 3D glasses, invitations and blank thank you cards. A matching robot with stationery (inside its body) was purchased to use as a table decoration.

This sure made decorating a snap!  With the blank thank you cards I used Target's sticker burlap letters to make a "Happy Birthday" swag.

But most fun of all?  Using recycled boxes, bottle caps and more I put together a robot to house little gifts for the birthday celebrants (note the letters on the robot bodies to indicate which robot goes to which birthday person):

Food was simple, too - Lou Malnati's pizza and salad.  The cake was a silent auction chocolate cheesecake from Forrest and John C. (Soooo decadent and yummy; thanks, guys!!!)

It was decorated with Dollar Tree robot stickers.

Thanks to the robot vest from IKEA, pot holders and red bowl from Dollar Tree, and Vera's grabber, the guests were greeted by the birthday robot!

It was a scorcher of a day, thankfully we could all be outside. I filled up a big planter with water and let the Grands go at it before our pizza was delivered.

Thanks, Becky for the special delivery of Gilbert's backyard toys!!

Following our pizza and cake, it was time for some backyard relay games!

And, yes, I made them all participate!!!

It was (hopefully) fun for everyone from one to sixty-two.

Happy Birthday, John, Jed, Kari, Anne and Wes!!