When my daughter Violet was a young toddler, she had no use for dresses. She screeched and flailed around if I tried to put her in one. She was extremely physical. She walked early, she climbed anything in sight and she had no fear.

I liked it and dare I say, I was even “in your face” about it! She was an aggressive monkey, climbing around on everything, wearing her hair very short and always running ahead of everyone including the boys. “To hell with these people who raise the foofy-girly girls,” I told myself.

I have a picture of her on Santa's lap when she was 2 with a tear-stained face. I had cajoled her into wearing a fabulous red vintage hand-smocked dress for the occasion and she immediately threw a fit, demanding her pants. I felt guilty and I didn’t do this to her again, but I secretly did occasionally pine for putting her into a dress.

Continue reading "Saying goodbye to the princess phase" →

If you have young children (or even older ones) who believe in fairies, this is a fun, ongoing project you can do with them. A fairy mailbox is a special mailbox that kids can use to write the fairies and receive messages from them.

The idea originally comes from Cultivating Sacred Space by Elizabeth Murray. In the chapter on her own garden, she mentions a knotty hole in one of her trees that the neighborhood children use as a fairy mailbox to send letters and small gifts to the fairies (as well as receive them, sometimes).

When I moved into the enchanted cottage where I live now, there was an old mailbox in the backyard that my mother had put there as a birdhouse. A light bulb clicked and I knew it would make a perfect fairy mailbox for my own daughter. She loves it and checks it everyday in case the fairies have sent her something.

Here's how to make your own:

Continue reading "How to make a fairy mailbox" →