Let the Mad Hatter's Tea Party Begin!

 All set up the night before for our  We Can (service organization) Mad Hatter Tea Party!!

 Above Chawton Cottage takes on the 'Mad Hatter's Tea Party banner ... (Reconfigured from my collection of alphabet pennants!!)

The mix matched chairs are gathered here ... along with the mix and match china ... waiting for the 'drink me' bottles of water, and some friendly crumpets and clotted cream ..

Its my first time to use my Union Jack pennants ... but I am sure it won't be my last!

When the We Can girls do the Christmas Tree for the children's hospital fun raiser in December, some of these chairs will reappear with bright new paint!!

I even made a new banner of Alice in Wonderland playing cards to top the archway into the garden  ... on Wednesday, check back to see the Alice in Wonderland theme ornaments that we will be making for our Mad Hatter's Tea Party tree for the Festival of Trees this year!  I can hardly wait!  

Fairy Garden Fun!

 I've been promising my granddaughter that we would make an outdoor fairy garden for over a month.  When I redid my miniature indoor garden last week, she was worried I had forgotten her.

She was so excited to come to Grandma's for an evening of gardening and a sleep over.  She is such a soul mate (After dinner we sat in my craft room and made sculpy fairies for the garden, and she said, "Grandma, someday I want a craft room just like this!)

Using an old fountain bowl on top of the stump of the catalpa we chopped down last fall seem like the perfect camouflage.

Eva loved how the garden turned  out, and said, "Grandma, if this was a contest I think we would win, don't you?"  Then when I posted it to Instagram, and showed her others that came up under the hash tag #fairygarden, she was disappointed that she found one she like even better than ours!

 I think she really loved the gardening gloves and water can I got for her for the occasion, and is so excited to get to take them home! ("I think I will make a fairy garden at my house, Grandma!")

What a super fun project .... I love it when it works our just like you planned it, don't you?

Glass Garden Whimsy Totem with Birds!

 I recently read an article in a magazine about gathered glass garden whimsies.  When I looked them up on Pinterest I found them listed as garden totems.  Of course, I thought they were charming and decided to 'shop' my booths at Treasures Antiques for some likely elements.

 Then, when I got home, having chosen some pretty robin's egg blue glass ware, and a couple of bird theme items, I thought that tucking my real live robin's nest with eggs into the structure would be perfect.

Fortunately, I have the perfect 'dome', really it was my English Trifle dish, but since it always took too much trifle to fill it, and I had since moved to a smaller dish ...  I also needed to gather a few other things from home to comlete the stack.

I then spent the evening using E6000 to glue my whimsical totem together in sub sections, shown above.

Then the next day, I grabbed the Americana (sometimes called cubist) punch bowl to serve as the base.  Then last of all, I carried the sections out one at a time, and glued them together in place. The sculpture is four feet tall.

This orphaned butter dish lid, which I have had for sale at the mall for about 6 years, has finally found a happy home...

and this sweet little bird salt shaker gets to be the crowning glory of the menage!

I even get a peek at my garden whimsy-totem while sitting in my garden house!!  So fun!