Meet Echo

I should probably begin this post with a little bit of background info, to give all of this some context. For the last five years, we have had a fairy named Echo living in our attic. She made herself known not long after we moved into our house in Takoma Park, MD by returning confiscated toys accompanied by notes and gumdrops. Over the years, we have learned of her history (via notes and e-mails which come sporadically from a hotmail account). She lives with her mother (a garden fairy), but her father is dead. (He was, before his untimely passing, the attic fairy at The White House.) Echo is fourteen in human years and has wings like a monarch butterfly. She and her mother moved here to San Diego with us but are a bit cramped in our now very small crawl-space of an attic. So....the girls suggested we make her a proper house.



I miss our backyard in Takoma Park. When the girls first said they wanted to build a fairy house, I had visions of acorn bowls and pinecone trees. I thought about twigs and moss and leaves. But alas, our backyard Wonderland was one of the sacrifices we made when we left the east coast...trading oak trees for palm trees and acorns for seashells. Time to improvise...and at least we have a Michael's close by. So today we got the framework for the house...an inexpensive wooden box which we are painting and covering with Spanish moss. For the rooftop garden, we found a miniature gazebo (I think it was supposed to be a birdhouse) and some balsa wood picket fencing. We got some moss and paint and sparkly stuff. There's been talk of twinkling Christmas lights.



Side note: This whole play project has taken a turn for the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie lately...I'm not quite sure what's going to happen when the girls have to go back to school and I start my next round of classes/edits/etc... and these all day play sessions are no longer possible.