Dealings with Fairies

Tending her fairy house

Almost every day, Little Sister asks me why we can't move back to Florida so she can be with her best friends again.  It has been 3 months since we moved to the Pacific Northwest, and while the rest of the family has adjusted wonderfully well (and I am almost giddy with the thrill of being surrounded by woods and water again), a preschool-classful of new friends here do not make up for the ache of missing her dear ones left behind.  And talk of dad's job satisfaction or the proximity of extended family is no match for a 5-year-old ego.

But when I ask her whether there isn't one thing, just one single thing that she likes more about living here than back in her old home, she does admit that here, we live in a house with a real live fairy (named Primrose) in the backyard.  And that would be hard to give up.  And while she hasn't yet seen Primrose, she does see her hummingbird friend, Calliope, at the feeder all the time, so you never know, she might yet catch a glimpse of the fairy that replies to Little Sister's notes and flowers with teeny tiny letters of her own, and gifts of ripe berries and sea glass.

So today I am grateful for the fairy folk that make this island their home, and want to share with you an easy way to make your own fairy house so you can invite some more magic into your yard.

 

From fence slat...

... to fairy hut.

Much of the cedar fence surrounding the back yard is old and rotten and in need of replacing if it is to have any hope of standing up to a 75 lb dog with a curious nose.  After attending to the worst sections we had a dozen old fence slats that were just soft enough for a 7-year-old with a coping saw and a penchant for building to cut through.  Our first house was held together with hot glue, hope, and a haphazard nail or two, and while beautifully irregular and charming, it didn't stand a chance against that same dog in chase of a squirrel.   

So we came up with a way to put together somewhat more regular houses, held together with a few more nails, that are hung up on trees and thus a little less likely to get trampled, with rope ladders for those rainy or windy days when a fairy might not want to fly.  And because rope ladders are just plain fun.

Start with a fence slat so old and rotten you really can't put it to any other use.  The fairies really wouldn't have it any other way (and if you need some, come on over, I have a pile of them).  It'll be so soft that you can score it with a pencil or a screw driver to give you some guidelines to cut by.  First, cut off two rectangles about 7 or 8 inches long for the roof.  If you are a obsessive enough that asymmetry will bother you, make one of them 1/2 an inch longer than the other:

Then, nail them together at right angles to each other, nailing through the longer piece into the end of the shorter piece, like so:

...and you've got your roof.  You can dog-ear the corners if you'd like; of course the ends of some fence slats are already dog-eared.

Using the roof as a template, make some score marks on the remaining fence slat so you can cut a back that matches:

and cut it straight across the bottom to whatever height you'd like your house to be.

Before you nail the roof to this back, though, it's best if you put the sides and bottom on it first, since it's easiest for little helper hands (not to speak of adult helper fingers) to hammer into something that can be set firmly on the ground.  So holding the roof in place as a size guide, score lengths of fence slat for each side of the house:



...and then hammer the sides onto the back piece (here this helper decided he wanted to make a shelf of one of the triangular scraps).

Do the same for the bottom, setting it in place to measure the length you'll need, and then scoring it for a line to cut by (ignore those angled score marks; that was where we'd initially scored the roof lines before we realized that this end of the fence slat which had rested on the ground was so rotten it couldn't even hold nails, so we started at the other end of the slat):

Nail that bottom into place with a few nails through the side walls...

Then finally, affix the roof by nailing through the back into it:

And you have yourself a fairy house:

For a rope ladder, gather some twigs, about 1/2" diameter or wide enough to drill holes 1/8" holes through, and cut them into 2-3" lengths with some pruners.  You'll also need a couple of lengths of twine, each piece at least twice as long as you want the finished ladder to be.

Drill a hole through the twig about 1/4" from each end, then thread the twine through (this is easier if you use a large-eyed yarn needle for the twine), making an overhand knot on each side of the twig to hold it in place. 

Make another overhand knot about an inch away, then thread on another twig, and secure it with a second overhand knot.   Repeat until you have a long enough ladder for your purposes.  Then repeat this threading and knotting twine through the holes on the other end of the twigs.

Hang your rope ladder from a nail in the floorboard, then drill a hole in the back of the house to hang it from a tree:

And then comes the best part... putting in some furniture and decorations and love notes, and waiting for the fairies to come.



Little Brother left some roses and Little Sister some pictures, which they later found Primrose had tacked to her walls with rose thorns.

Last week, when I showed Little Brother how to pick a thorn off a rosebush to pin up another picture for Primrose, he gasped and asked me, wide-eyed, "Mom, did you used to be a fairy?"  Because, he said, I knew how to pin things with rose thorns, just like Primrose did.  I just smiled and left that unanswered, so glad that she has sprinkled a little fairy dust on me, too. 



A Lone Ranger Birthday

Six turned Seven last week, and asked for a Lone-Ranger-themed party (inspired by -what else?- Lego).  You might think he's branched out from cops and robbers, but really, it's just the old obsession with a Texan twang.  In the last month-and-a-half, we've moved across the country, bought and sold a house, and started 4 kids in 4 different new schools... so I was just grateful to be able to pull together a party at all, and have new friends to invite to it.

I owe so much to a couple of other bloggers from whom I pilfered ideas that I thought I'd share what I came up with for future moms-of-small-boys to look up late at night.


The Costume

I tried - oh how I tried! - to find a brick-and-mortar or online retailer that had a black duster in his size... but the Disney Lone Ranger that the Lego minifigure is modeled after doesn't seem to have enough of a following to warrant mass production until closer to Halloween.  So with some guidance from one of my favorite DIY kid clothing bloggers, his police man costume for a pattern, and a couple of yards of pleather from Joann's, we had a pretty passable duster and leather vest.  And enough pleather left over to make a half dozen masks, a double holster (hidden under the duster), and some chaps in the future when I recover from this birthday.  I couldn't stomach spending $20 on ebay on a Texas Rangers badge, so $2 worth of silver sculpey made a good enough knock-off to put that smile on his face.


The Accessories

 Gun/silver bullets/spurs/sheriff's badge:  $1 Western toy kit at the Dollar Tree, cheap enough to outfit each guest with a set in their goodie bag.  Red bandannas, $1 at Party City, white Stetsons $5.99 at Party City, or $1 for pink foam ones at the Dollar Store, and a can of white Rustoleum will cover about 2 (the flocking on the foam just soaks it up... try to find smooth foam ones if you go the spray-paint route).


The Cake

Another mommy blogger saved me with her idea the night before the party.  The only difference here is that I just used straight granulated sugar melted in a pot over the stove, colored with some red and yellow sugar sprinkles, and then poured onto parchment paper to harden.  Sticking the seven candles among the sugar flames was a fun effect.

The Décor

I used all our patriotic décor for a red-white-and-blue theme.  Another blogger had found a saloon door curtain at a party store to use as a statement piece.  No such luck for me, but it was pretty easy to replicate with a roll of wood-grain contact paper and a sheet of plastic drop cloth that I happened to have on hand - a clear shower curtain would work as well or even better.  Cut identical door shapes for each side of the curtain, front and back, add some details with a sharpie, and cut it into strips.  Seven likes them so much we still have them hanging in our doorways.

Here is another accent piece and fun activity for the guests from partycity.com.  Take their pictures as wanted criminals, then print them up and send them as thank you notes after the party.

The Activities

Little Sister contributed her hobby horses for a lassoing game:  armed with rope-tied hula hoops, the kids practiced lassoing these wild mustangs.  It's harder than you'd think for a bunch of 7-year-olds... and they'll do it for longer than you'd expect, especially if a bag of candy rewards is involved.  The rope is crucial - it is so much easier to haul back failed attempts with it.

The Eldest came up with a pin-the-mask-on-the-Lone-Ranger game, and it was an easy thing for him to print up a photo from the old black-and-white TV show, and cut out a handful of black construction paper masks.

Dad had the idea that was, quite literally, the hit of the party - target practice on balloons with a BB gun.  We gave a our new Pacific Northwest neighbors a taste of Florida.  It was well-supervised, and no-one lost an eye... phew.

Then Twelve read them a story while Ten set up a treasure hunt to recover the stolen gold, with the clues he'd spent all morning plotting and writing out.  The kids ran all over the house and yard from one clue to the next, until they wound up at the "campfire"  -- the cake -- where the robbers had left the money bags: burlap loot bags (an idea recycled from last year's party) filled with 100 Grand bars and Hershey's Gold Nuggets, as well as their other Lone Ranger accessories.  We sugared them up with cake, and then sent them home to their parents completely overstimulated. 

And now I have a few weeks before Four turns Five.



Marshmallow fondant changed my life

Two posts in the same week!  But this is too good not to share. 

Over the years I've gotten used to being up past 2am the night before birthday parties, decorating the cake.  Partly it's my own procrastination, but it's also my inability to work on things like this with kids around.  And frosting takes me a long time to get right.

With Little Brother's birthday theme being yet again cops and robbers, I thought we'd have ourselves a real cops-and-robbers game in the backyard, complete with money bags stolen by the robbers (conscripted dad and older brothers), a police station, handcuffs, and 6-year-olds running around armed with mini-nerf guns.  The requisite pinata was the easiest ever (brown paper bag filled with candy and tied with string), and the cake took less than an hour to assemble.

I'd prebaked the cake in a friend's giant cupcake pan, and then smoothed it out with a coat of buttercream, but this is what you really want to know about:  How to make marshmallow fondant.

I pretty much followed her instructions, using a 10.5 oz bag of minimarshmallows, flavoring with almond extract and throwing in about a tbsp of cocoa to tint it light brown.  It was easier to make than homemade playdough, and is very easy to work with if you have lots of powdered sugar in the bowl and on the work surface (I put in 3 cups which turned out to be way more than I needed, but that also made it very easy to work with since it didn't stick to anything.)  It was softest and easiest to roll out and work with while still warm, but even after it cooled it was still very pliable.  It tastes pretty much as you'd expect: straight sugar, lightly flavored, but you make fondant for its decorative possibilities, not for its taste.

Now I am a whole 2 hours ahead of schedule, even with a blog post thrown in.  Life changing, I tell you.

Edible Lego Minifigures

Another year, another birthday... but still legos and police.  At Little Brother's insistence, this year we got a bit more adventurous and tried for colorful minifigures on the cupcakes using candy melts instead of chocolate.

Here's how:

Start with some colored candy melts.  Melt them in the microwave in snack-sized ziplock bags at 50% power.

Snip a small hole in a corner, and squeeze melted candy into a silicone minifigure mold.   The consistency is like toothpaste, so it will hold its shape.  Try not to think about how much fat saturation that takes.  Start with the head and a small dab for each hand.

 

Repeat with color of choice for shirt and pants

 

 

Shake or tap mold quickly for about 10-20 seconds to liquefy the melts and release air bubbles (which you should see come up to the top and pop).

 



Let harden in the fridge or freezer, then pop them out.

 

Pipe on some faces (black decorator's icing here, but you could use candy melts too) and you are all set.

 

And for some truly spectacular Halloween treats, check these out.

Passionfruit Plenty

 So many of my childhood memories of visiting my grandparents in Taiwan center around flavors and scents - many of them fruits.  Wax apple, star fruit, guava, papaya, loquat... all available on dooryard trees or at the open air markets.  My favorite of them all was the passionfruit, or more aptly, in Chinese, "fruit of a hundred fragrances". 

When we moved to Florida and discovered that in the warm climate we could grow all these childhood favorites, I went to the local nursery, and after picking out the obligatory citrus trees, brought home our first passionfruit.  Like all vines, it was a fast grower, even on the north side of a fence, and covered that fence in a season.  It didn't have as many flowers as I would have liked, and I had to fight the squirrels for the fruit, but it did well until winter, when a hard freeze killed it to the ground.  Not quite the same climate as Taiwan, after all.

 After a few years, I finally got it together enough to make a planter last year, and in May, picked up another passionfruit vine from the nursery.  Inside the screen porch and covered with a blanket during frosts, it survived the winter and didn't even lose all its leaves (we did have a mild winter.  In colder weather mini lights under the blanket and soaking the pot with water will probably keep it warm enough to survive).   Here it is this spring, covering the trellis.

I moved it outside into the full sun (your standard screen will cut sunlight - and UV - by a startling 50%) and the growth and flowering really took off.  Because of the shape of the large flower, pollination is most effective by a large pollinator like the carpenter bee, and not having an abundance of them around our yard, I had to hand pollinate with a paint brush to get the fruit to set.  It's a quick process, but needs to be done for every single blossom that the bees don't get, and since they only bloom for a single day, I missed about half of them.  All the same, I got over 100 fruits.  About two weeks ago, they started ripening and the real fun began.

Passionfruit, when they are ripe, fall off the vine with the slightest touch (about half the time I am picking them up off the ground since they dropped during the night).  Their rinds shrivel within a day or two to give you that characteristic wrinkly look you see in stores.

Cut the fruit in half with a sharp knife, and you see the flavorful pulp:  little pockets of juice surrounding each black seed.  Scoop it out with a spoon and use it immediately, or if you have too much, freeze it in ice cube trays to keep for future use.

 The easiest way to use them is in a smoothie, blended with other fruits.  The seeds are edible (if crunchy) and don't have much of a flavor of their own.  I prefer not to strain the pulp since I don't want to lose any of that juice, so we just eat it seeds and all.  If you want a smooth texture, you can always strain them out.

Another easy preparation is to make a simple syrup, with 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 1/2 cup passionfruit pulp.  Bring it to a boil and reduce until it is slightly thickened and syrupy.  This sweet, tangy concoction is perfect mixed into plain yoghurt, poured over shaved ice, or drizzled over a panna cotta.  Here are some recipes to get you started.  In all of them, you can increase the proportion of passionfruit pulp to get a stronger flavor.

Vanilla Honey Pannacotta with Passionfruit syrup

(1 cup plain yoghurt, 1 cup heavy cream, 4 tbsp honey, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 pkg powdered gelatin.  Sprinkle gelatin over cold cream, mix well, then heat until dissolved.  Mix in other ingredients, pour into molds, and chill until set.  Top with passionfruit syrup.) 

Perfection in Small Things

It's been a while since I tried to sit down and write anything.  The addition of our floppy-eared, furry-tailed fifth child to the rest of the family chaos has eaten up pretty much any time I had to spare.  But today we bewail celebrate the first day of summer vacation, so it seemed like a good occasion to risk a chewed throw pillow for the sake of a post.


Last spring I came across a pot of hydrangeas that were so blue that they haunted me until I went back and purchased them.  Florist hydrangeas are about as disposable as cut flowers (they're not bred for hardiness) and I am not usually one for throwaway purchases (too many years feeding a family on a graduate student stipend has ingrained in me a certain parsimony.) But they were just so... blue.  A genuine blue, too, not the dye-in-the-water blue of carnations around Independence day and moth orchids at Home Depot.

So after a glorious month of blooms, I trimmed the dead blossoms, watered it occasionally, and hoped for the best.  It survived the mild Florida winter in the screen porch, and I was excited to see flower buds a few weeks ago.  But as you can see, it's a shadow of its former self.

But thank goodness for bud vases.  I love bud vases, because they are so much easier to fill than large vases (remember, I don't buy cut flowers... I could pretend it's because of the pesticides, but really, I'm just too cheap).  And because it's just a single flower, I don't try to keep it around past its prime and watch its sad, slow decay (can you tell I have issues with cut bouquets?)  Perfect for blooms from my orchids, and now perfect for this hydrangea:

Which is a good life lesson to help me survive the summer.  I love for my kids to have the down time of summer vacation, and I love the freedom it gives us to fit in the unscripted - the impromptu picnics and fishing trips, the Ninja's random science experiments and the kitchen upheaval when the Eldest decides he wants to make a sachertorte, the late night swims with Little Sister and walks to the park with Little Brother, past all normal bedtimes.  Which all sounds idyllic until the kids wake up crabby at 7am (why will they never sleep in??) and I realize that the day hasn't even started and the house is already completely trashed and my life looks something like that scraggly hydrangea.  It's then that I need to reframe the picture, cut off a pretty branch, stick it in a bud vase, and zoom in.  Enjoy the small perfections, so intensely beautiful that it can carry us all through the laundry, cooking, decluttering, hollering, and squabbling that ties it all together.

Horse Art



 

I got the idea for an art wall in Baby Girl's room when I discovered Costco Photo Center's gallery of free art images.  We had a fun afternoon of browsing through and picking her favorite horse pictures, then I added a few more images from other sources (like the Uffington and Lascaux horses) and had them all printed on photo paper for under $15 (considerably cheaper than the framed canvas option).

With the help of a hand-me-down workbench from a friend and a circular saw, a few sheets of MDF scrap were soon cut into the right sizes to back these photos.  I painted the edges of the MDF with an off-white to match the room's trim, used a thin layer of wood glue to fix the photos onto the boards.

Then of course the pictures sat stacked on her dresser for months until I finally got around to hanging them up today.  But I do have an excuse:



Introducing Barclay, here at 11 weeks, the newest member of our family