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Have you ever made a fairy house? The premise is simple really: use beautiful objects, mostly from nature, none of which have been plucked from a living creature, and make a home that a fairy would like to live in. (If you’re looking for a how-to guide, I recommend Fairy Houses…Everywhere! by Bruce and Tracy Kane ).
Every summer as part of the Vermont Festival for the Arts, there is a half-day workshop for children called Faerie House Creations. Tommy has made them in the past, and for the first time this year Teddy was old enough to join us. The kids start by gathering items in the woods and then are given huge pieces of bark and wooden bases to use as frames. Once the base of the house is in place, the children get to decorate to their hearts’ delight, encouraged to think of ways to make their house appealing to a passing fairy.
Stef Metalious does a great job of leading these workshops. Supportive without telling anyone what to do, she is a wizard with a glue gun – and let me tell you, bark is not a substance that glues easily. She spends hours making her own houses as examples and it is obvious that she loves to collect materials for the kids to use. There are always an abundance of wonderful things: piles of feathers, cloth, buttons, bark, glitter, cloth flowers and various small items that most of us would probably throw away but that actually make a dazzling abundant array to choose from.
She is on hand to help those (like yours truly) who are challenged by trying to make sure that laden roofs don’t topple and personally inspects each house as it is completed, offering supportive comments.
Tommy built what he called a “winter house” because of the cool colors, glitter, and paper “snow” that decorated it. Unfortunately it was not as steady as one might have hoped and actually had to be reconstructed several times, much to his chagrin.
Teddy’s house was what I liked to call the Magical Tricked-Out Crib, complete with a glow-in-the-dark shark and a festoon of shiny silver hearts, because really, why would you want a low-key birch-bark house when you can dump blue glitter on the roof?
The workshop is held at the Inn at Lareau Farm, under the large pavilion presided over at one end by the large oven used by American Flatbread, which was blazing the entire time the children worked. The smell of garlic and warm dough infused the air and everyone was ready for a piping hot slice of pizza when their creations were complete.
We were lucky to make these houses with lots of new friends and using many wonderful materials, but I think this would make a great activity for any vacation in the woods or at the beach – simply collect treasures wherever you are and use them to make a magical abode in the sand, woods, or yard. If you really feel like you don’t have enough bling, a quick trip to the local drug store should do the trick, but really, shells, feathers, twigs, beautiful leaves, and stones are all you need. Stef also included eggshells and moss in the materials she had on offer.
And if you’re considering a family trip to central/northern Vermont in August, I encourage you to check out the calendar for the Vermont Festival of the Arts in the Waitsfield/Warren area. It last for the entire month and encompasses a variety of activities for adults and children ranging from cooking classes (some of them taught by my dad – see the India Experience Cooking Class listing) to gallery walks to concerts. We usually fit several of the activities into our busy schedule of swimming, hiking, biking, and maple-creemee eating.
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LOVELY. great photos! wish we’d been there. we love to make fairy houses!!
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How neat! I am going to add this to my list of summer activities before the kids go back to school. They will love to do this project!
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These are beautiful. A friend of mine has a fairy stump close to her aunts house. She has furnished it like a house, and fairies periodically stop by and leave small treasures…very cool.
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