One Day At A Time

We had some rare fairy sightings at the farm this week.

I don't think fairies worry about the future much.

Napping in the kitchen sunlight is cure for whatever concerns they might have.

A few wings.

I think this will fly.

Fairies appreciate a little wardrobe help every once in a while. Grape and Big Leaf Maples are some favorite fall choices.

Ahoy there! We have discovered a likely scenario for the indoor fairy festival. Madeleine and her trusty sidekick Zoe discovered a PIRATE HEAD in Fairyland. The fairies evidently took care of the threat but then retreated in the farmhouse for good measure.

Just a little Laura telling the cats not to bother the fairies either.

That's right, shake a stick (leaf) at your problems.

That's where the fairies live most of the time. We were surprised by the visit, but so glad to be reminded of the fleeting magic that is all around us.

Who needs to worry about tomorrow?

More Make Believe

Make Believe Fun

The wings turned out ever so cute. A little flannel, a little tule, some elastic and flower petals.

The craft table is buried in the flotsam and jetsam of fun.

Crafting the night away with seven little girls, one tiny baby and one little boy otherwise known as The Crown Prince of Fairyland... ah, wings and paint and glitter, oh my!



The little masks smell like a gas station so KL and I (yes, I had an adult on my team. The I.G. and the Eng-Gen-Eer took big boys to town for a movie... like wise men, really) let the girls glue flower petals all over the masks but we will not be wearing them. What is it with the plastic that smells like gasoline? Yuck.



I just finished making blueberry muffins, otherwise known as fairy cakes. The girls stayed up until almost 1:00 a.m. Now they are all watching Ella Enchanted while drinking homemade hot chocolate and inhaling the muffins. If the EGE doesn't come downstairs soon the breakfast will all be eaten by the dainty ones.

The Lack of Sleep

I am so tired that after I typed "The Lack of Sleep" my own eyes tricked me. I keyed in the title, went to stop the screaming teakettle, and came back to the screen to wonder why I had wanted to write about our lack of sheep.

Baa.

We don't have any sheep, to be sure. At this point I would trade two and a half horses for five sheep. I think it would be fair for everyone. I would no longer have to worry about barrel racing injuries or the anxieties that follow emergency room visits, or the new choices in cast colors. Similarly I could stop worrying about the price of hay, which is really what woke me up before sunrise.

Not the price of hay specifically, which is astronomical (they say because diesel is so high, it costs $10 extra per bale to use the equipment to cut down and bundle the hay, and even the string that ties the bale is a petroleum product, not like you can use it to soothe chapped lips or anything, it's just expensive twine that breaks when you're carrying a 75-pound chunk of compacted dry grass and won't break when you have to open a new bale in a hurry without scissors or your teeth, blah, blah, blah), but the price of everything.

Yup, I woke up to worry about money. More to the point, I got out of bed so that I wouldn't be lying there with money worries spinning through my head faster than a combine burns fossil fuels.

My head is logical like that.

Tonight we are hosting 17 million little girls in a pre-fairy festival extravaganza. I cracked the cleaning whip mercilessly after school yesterday so the hordes (more importantly, their mothers) shouldn't be too freaked out by the cleanliness and orderliness quotient of my house. My 120-year-old floors have been protected by an even layer of toys, laundry, books and the like for too too long. About 119 years since I mopped, I think. It was past time to expose their gleaming beauty to a bunch of extra dress-up shoes and glue and glitter.

Well, at least no one will trip on Elmo dolls or anything while we're crafting wings and painting inexplicably small wooden garden fairies.

Then the nonsleepover can commence. In the morning we have to deliver horses hither and yon, then scramble to get all the little fairy princesses into their outfits, then load up a couple of Suburbans with wings (heh heh, if Suburbans had wings, diesel would go much further) and glittery girls, then of course drive into Eugene because they don't hold Fairy Festivals in Lorane. You have to go to a college town for that.

At least the pictures will be really, really good. I know this because I can't imagine how even I could fail to get good photos in a fairground full of little girls pretending to be flower fairies.

Hello. It should be a very good break from thinking about money. And I can sleep next week, right? Because I'll be counting the sheep I got in trade for the horses.