Celebrating Summer Solstice...Mid Summers Nights Dream...A party for the fairies!

I have been meaning to post this for the last week, but just haven't had the time. I got the idea of a fairy party from one of my favorite books called Mrs. Sharps traditions. It's a book about reviving Victorian family celebrations and is beautifully illustrated. It is one of those books I look at over and over. The author name is Sarah Ban Breathnach and also is the author of Simple Abundance. The book goes through each month and gives ideas of old fashioned traditions. I have been doing crafts with the littles several times a week so I thought this would be a fun one to work on. It started out much more simple than it turned out, but my teenage daughter got involved and it became a week long project. She made the large fairy house and the littles made the smaller ones. We started our prep by purchasing small bird houses, moss and flowers at Micheal's. I had paint and glue. We then out in the yard and gathered tree bark, sticks and other dried grass an leaves. We then proceeded to paint then and hot glue all the dry stuff on. Like I said it was a week in the making...we worked on them several days. On the day of the summer solstice I told the littles that the fairies come just before dark. We sat about setting things up for the party....we put out the fairy houses and covered the table with a table cloth. I got a chance to use my new snack trays that I got a garage sale for $2.00. I had told the littles that the fairies come and bring gifts in exchange for the use of the houses. While my daughter caught lighting bugs with them, I sat out a few dollar store items...a glow wand, beads, candy. When they came back it was waiting for them...they were so excited. It is all kind of silly, but they had so much fun preparing for it. We also talked about what the summer solstice is and how it has been celebrated in many countries for thousands of years. I figured that I may get to do this with them one more time, but since they are boys they may think it to girly to continue in the future. Here are some pics from our party.