Building a Fairy House with Your Child

“There are fairies in the sky. All around you, fairies fly. Flit and flutter, tumble, twirl, when the wind blows, fairies swirl…”

The above is a cute little excerpt from A Fairy Friend, an enchanting, whimsical book my husband and I recently purchased for our daughter for her birthday. We came across it after she received a book called Once Upon a Cloud (another really cute book) from my sister-in-law a year or two ago. Both are illustrated by Claire Keane who actually worked on Tangled, one of our daughter’s favorite movies.

A Fairy Friend tells a story about fairies and what humans have to do to get them to appear (building a house, making a fairy stew, etc.). After reading A Fairy Friend to our daughter plenty of times following her birthday, I decided it was definitely time for us to build our own fairy house. She really seemed to enjoy reading the book and I thought it would be fun to bring the story to life.

We ventured to Joann Fabrics and Hobby Lobby for some fairy house accessories. Right now, Joann Fabrics has all of the fairy accessories for 40 percent off (win!). She was pretty antsy during our trip, but did end up picking a house she liked and I went ahead and picked out the accessories because fairy house exterior design is in my wheelhouse.

We bought a variety, including moss, a house, flower stepping stones, a tire swing, bridge and bird house. For the base, we used part of an old tree stump we had at home, which is something you can easily purchase at a craft store.

Putting it together was super easy – I hot glued most of it, having her help me place the different parts onto the stump. Today, we plan on reading the book and putting the fairy house out, and tomorrow morning, I’ll place the fairies outside, telling her that her house brought fairies into our backyard. I can’t wait to see her face when she sees them!

I hope you’ll take on this summer activity with your toddler. It’s such a fun way to bring some magic to summertime! If you end up finding inspiration from this post, don’t forget to tag your photos with #marinamakesdiy!