Fairy Garden for Mothers Day

Today we set up one of Mom's Mother's Day gifts, which you can see some of the pieces of above.  It's a fairy garden, and it looks nice now, a few houses, a church, some miniature garden pathways, fencing, props, and of course some hedgehogs too.  We spent an our or so setting it all up today, and it turned out well, as you can see in the pictures below.  You can also see we set up the gnome area, which has a new garden gnome, one with some birds that we thought would be nice, given the recent bird residents at our house.  The house above I got because it reminded me of a trip we took to a whimsical fairy garden north of here.

Ah, here's a gnome that's been with us for a while, still working on that book.  To me, this looks super relaxing!  Makes me want to read a book right now, in fact.  Let's finish the blog entry first though.

Okay, this looks like one of the older pieces, but we also have a new archway there, and you can see - just barely - a path through the archway that leads back towards another house.

Just so you know, the weather vane is actually directionally correct.  North points north.  I'm a stickler for that sort of thing.  This bridge is along the small pathway we set up that goes by a small garden area and towards a few more houses.

One of our new residents, a hedgehog of course.  You have to have hedgehogs, right?

Juliet has been with us for a few years now.  She and Gnomeo have been repainted from time to time, as the weather and years have faded them somewhat.  These two are the favorite gnomes, of course.

Ah, I like this one.  You can see that pathway that went through the archway earlier, all the way up to this tree house here.  

And here's a piece from last year, a flower house alongside a lamp post.  The fence there is new, part of a long section of fencing that Mom cut in places to add to different areas.

And here's the church, which rests just upwards from the rest of the village.  It sort of reminded me of the church we visited at Foxfire, which was a nice little trip last November.  Here are just a few more pictures of our fairy garden:

Oh, and here's the new gnome for our family, the one holding a few birds - in honor of our recent wrens on the door.

Today was a nice Mother's Day.  We went to church this morning, and the service itself was really fun.  We had a joke that had us playing Chubby Checkers' "The Twist," and it went really well.  There were Mother's Day videos and a really good message about Esther as well.  It was a very solid morning, and in between services, we went upstairs and outside to visit the flower shop that was set up so we could get flowers for Mom, and then some for Nana, and then some for my mother as well.

Each year, Free Chapel saves Mother's Day by offering this nice flower shop outside, and you can see above that it was pretty packed this year.

We got there just in time.  You can see me to the right up there with a whole lot of flowers though, enough for all three of our recipients.  The cart is much emptier as of this picture here, but you can see my expression there, happy we got some flowers at all.  There was a flower shortage this year, and I'm not entirely sure why.  But Madison picked out some good ones, and they were arranged nicely, and all three of our mothers just loved them so much.  Our flowers, in fact, are currently on the table in a vase of water, making the kitchen look much nicer.

We did visit my mother, and in fact drove over to work to pick her up, and then take her home.  We had a few slices of cake with Mom and Nana, and even had some more gifts to give, including this tumbler that Mom really likes.  And that gluten-free cake is amazing.

It was a nice day.  We really enjoyed setting things up outside, and that was part of the Mother's Day gift too, all of us out there on a beautiful afternoon, playing in the garden.

Tonight we wrapped up season one of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." with the two final episodes.  No doubt about it, we'll be starting season two soon enough.  We read tonight, continuing with "Kingdom Keepers III," and saying our prayers before getting tucked in and getting some sleep.  We were all super tired, and sleep came quickly.  It was a really nice day today.