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Faerie Houses with Sarah

Mom and I went on our annual trip to Columbus, Ohio to visit our friend Sarah, who Mom used to work with at AEP. The traffic was super heavy for some reason, but the foliage was gorgeous.



Sarah lives in German Village, a quaint neighborhood with lots of brick and wooden houses, brick-paved streets and sidewalks, flower boxes, trees, and people walking their dogs.


This is the street Sarah's house is on.


And this is Sarah's house!


The front of the house is original, but Sarah and Dan bought the land behind their property and added on to their house and made a lovely garden.



When we went inside, we were greeted by a new member of the household - Nettie!


Nettie had fooled Sarah and Dan at the animal shelter by pretending to be old and feeble, and then when they came to pick her up to take her home she was racing around the place. Turns out Nettie had just been spayed before their first visit and wasn't feeling very well. She's a pip!


Mom and Sarah, neither of whom wanted their pictures taken. In Sarah's defense, she was suffering from a cold while we were there and spent most of the night hacking. This is Mom's fake smile (in case you couldn't tell).


This is the Deaf School Topiary Garden nearby. Matty and I got together and had lunch and then went for a walk there on Saturday before hitting the airport for a round of shopping - really! I got myself a Columbus sweatshirt, my mom a Columbus t-shirt, and everyone some yummy cookies. The Columbus airport rocks, yo. Anyway, the Topiary Garden shows a scene out of a Seurat's "A Sunday On the Island of La Grande Jatte." Can you see it?


This is Mom working hard on her faerie house. We had been collecting bark and twigs and flowers to dry for a couple months before going to Columbus so we could make wonderful faerie houses.


Mom got a little hot glue crazy, but she thought it had a nice sparkly effect. Note the swing at the side of her faerie house!


Sarah contemplates her faerie house. She thought her faerie house was too large in scale compared to ours. She decided her faerie house was for giant faeries or perhaps gnomes.


The finished product - beautiful!


This is the beginning of my faerie house. I started with a relatively flat piece of bark for my base.


I made a little bed, complete with flower pillow and feather blankets, and a little round table and benches out of cut twig. I used dried flowers for my carpet.


Then I added a back wall, to shield the faeries from the wind, and a side wall of a dried mum branch so they could see outside.


This is the front of my finished faerie house. If you look closely, you can see the teeny furniture inside. Outside are dried Russian sage, iris, some variety of evergreen, astilbe, and many other dried flower blooms stolen from public parks and the ground at Lowe's.


We kept our supplies so we can build faerie houses again someday. All of us wanted to do another. Sarah and I would like to try our hands at making cool furniture for inside. I think Mom might want to improve her swing, as it didn't have a lot of flexibility. :)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my faerie house. I know if I put it outside, it will get ruined by the weather, but I don't know where to put it inside either. Right now it's on my dining room table. :)

Pictures of Gooch, Lily, Hollie, and Treble

This is the old Gooch Pooch, aka MacGuyver, aka MacG, aka Poindexter. I'm sure we had other nicknames for him. He would answer to anything. :)


I'm pretty sure I tossed him in the flowers so I could get a cute picture of him walking in flowers.


Poor, pitiful little Treble after his first bath. He didn't get many more. I could tell he considered it torture.


Lily is in the top left of the picture. My strongest memory of her is when I heard plaintive meowing and went to see what was going on. She had started to climb a lace curtain that blocked off a closet and she'd gotten herself stuck. Treble was sitting on the floor staring at her with concern. They were so itty bitty!


Treble destroys a catnip mouse on the lovely red 1960s shag carpeting in our living room on Hoagland Avenue.


Gooch channels his inner wolf.


Gooch chews on treble's head.


Gooch and Treble on the stairs shortly after Lily died.


Hollie Ann McKitty. How could I resist her?


MacGuyver and Hollie. I always maintained they were having an illicit affair. He would lick her ears and she would snuggle against him to take naps.


Treble, looking very glossy. Before he was neutered, he did not have a belly. After, however, he developed the neutered kitty paunch.


Mom relaxing with the three kids.


Treble and Hollie. They were sweet little imps!


Treble on his post. He was always shiny like this, until the very end. Such a handsome fellow. One thing I loved about him was when I would pet him from head to the end of his tail, he would let his tail fall in slow motion back down to the ground. Most kitties just let their tails flop, but he made it into a very graceful movement.


Yes, that's me, circa 1995. I had gotten my hair permed that morning and the next day all the curl had disappeared (but I had split ends until the permed part grew out).


The cats never seemed to enjoy posing for pictures like this. I also made them wear Santa hats for Christmas, and MacGuyver had a set of reindeer antlers. :)


These were all taken from the photo album from the first year I had my babies. Looking at their early pictures was bittersweet, but it did make me feel a little better. It was such a long, long time ago!