What a cool little tree..."I can fix anything...where's the duct tape?"...Gotta love that GW..I hit ours every Monday morning, and am amazed @ the cool stuff that comes through there. The prices are great, plus the turnover is fast...unlike some other local thrifts where you see the same tired stuff week after week! Does yours have the 30 day tag discount? At ours, all the tags have a date, and if the date is past 30 days, you get the "treasure" for 1/2 price. Most of the stuff I search for doesn't seem to last that long..only got the 1/2 off twice on some vintage fabric & a Chinese Checkers game...I have a collection of those for some reason :o)...just in case I loose my marbles??! LOL *elaine*

Thank you all for so many wonderful ideas! Agardenstateofmind- Such a great list and I appreciate the websites :) Schoolhouse- Little lights would be magical. Ianna- Great ideas and I would love to do a party with all of those fun details. Mbravebird- That does sound fairy like :) Tammy- A teepee would be fun. Kay- I love your little houses. That's going to be charming. Token- That would be magical! Aimeekitty- Very cute and just the right size. MeMo- Funny that you say that, because I've had this "picture" in my head of a fairy garden that is part woodland garden and part climbing old-fahioned roses twining up an arch or wall. Then the other night, I realized where I'd seen that...Snow White was on TV and I was going through channels....and there were the old-fahioned roses by the well, and five minutes later, there was the woodland part. LOL I haven't seen that in so many years, but I guess it made quite the impression on me when I was young :)

mine - or should I say my daughters - Ah! who am I kidding! It may be enjoyable to the girls and any little kids who stop by sit and stare for HOURS, but essentially it was my idea, I designed the whole thing, and have been the driving force behind having it at all... And I continue to think up and create new things for it... Anyway - mine has ended up being placed under a 2 year old corkscrew willow tree instead - It's closer to the house and is much much bigger than originally anticipated. For now the sweet woodruff and wild strawberries are filling out the area around the base of the willow, there's a violet and elfin thyme covered hill with a small lake at the bottom of it and a small gravel path leading to the top (a gazebo and miniture roses pruned to look like climbing roses are being added to the top of the hill later this fall) and a flattened out hollow covered in irish moss for a "meeting place." I have variegated forms of thyme and melissa lavender as shrubs around the edge of the garden and a few branches from my over zealous pink and white weigela hangs over the "hollow". The fairy garden is actually an extension of my butterfly garden, just slightly shaded (and will be deeply shaded when the willow fills out over the next couple of years) I just added some rembrandt tulips I hope will give a nice dramatic splash of color next spring before the freesias, columbine, violets and roses bloom. (and after years of plain colored tulips I can tell the girls that the fairies painted these ones!!!) I will post pics as soon as I can but right now I'm being selfish - want to keep it to myself till I feel it has some semblance of being ready for public viewing... :) Also waiting for the plants to fill out and really look like it does in my head (did that make sense or did I just seem nutty???) As well as the gazebo I'm working on 4 houses to put nestled in the sweet woodruff and a "bait shop" for beside the lake and looking for some small stumps or seats to put around the thyme hollow, maybe even a little swing for the fairy babes? Next year I'm hoping the willow will be big enough to dangle twinkling lights in and lots of birdhouses of course... Soon as I figure out where to put it I'm adding some white heliotrope that I grew from cuttings and have slightly too much of. Now I'm just hoping that the wild strawberries calm down cause they are going bananas and I fear they will choke out the rest of my plants... I'm 30 years old, mother of 4, a criminal psychologist in training and I am no afraid to admit that I love my garden. I am envisioning a few years from now laying in soft green grass in the shade of my contorted willow tree staring into the little village and seeing if I can see the sparkling glint of gossamer wings, or hearing the giggling of fairy children in the rustling leaves of the willow tree.....

Tam, I absolutely LOVE your pink tree! But then, i've had a pink tree for the last 30+ years, so i'm prejudice when it comes to pink Christmas trees. When I saw your toe shoes, I thought of my own that i'll soon be getting out of the box to hang on my tree. They're my original shoes I wore when I was about 11 years old, and i'm a little older then your Mama would have been(bless her soul). I lost my own Mother several years ago, but when I place the old shoes on my tree every year, I lovingly remember her putting them on my feet for the first time. Incidentally, a 6 1/2' tree in the MB is perfect~a great nightlight. ;o)