Having just moved house, and after a year of upheaval – the big move from the farm,  and then renting  for around 9 months, my 3 year old expressed genuine concern about whether our garden fairies would know how to find our new house. In our rented house garden, we built many a daisy-flower fairy ring, and fairies had been with us on the farm.  Her time in the garden was pretty much about talking to them and making cups of tea for them, and occasionally they would leave a tiny chocolate treat in the fairy ring when she hid from them. No wonder she didn’t want to leave these generous little denizens behind! Friends and treat-bearers are not easily left behind!

So, to reassure her – about the fairies and the move to the new house – we built the fairies a new faery house before we’d barely unpacked. This seemed really important to her, and with a new brother on the way in a few months, moving the fairies in to our new house seemed like a good way to lay down a bit of stability and continuity between the ‘old places’ we’d come from and our new place where life was about to change again.

Anyway, it had to be quick and easy amongst working, unpacking and being 6 months pregnant, so here it is, How to make a fairy house – really quickly!

Step 1: Find a small bird house from your nearest hardware store. (If you haven’t just moved house you may have something around that you can recycle for this project.)

Step 2: Gather wild leafy and flowery bits from around the place. This was fantastic as we got time to explore what is growing in our new garden.

Step 3: Engage a faery expert to decorate the house.

Step 4: Admire the house and wish you were little enough to step inside and sleep on the rose-petal bedding.

Step 5: Find a leafy place for your house (faeries prefer leaves as no tell-tale faery footprints are left behind).

Step 6: If you have elusive, secretive, shy faeries (the most common type) find a dingly dell or secret glade for your house so that faeries can come and go via spider-web bridges, untroubled by mortal eyes.

….and of course, the fairies did move with us as we discovered the next morning…