Rapunzel

Okay it is absolutely pouring rain outside and I could have sworn that they said that the chances of rain today were nil...."We'll see about THAT," says Mother Nature.

But on a completely different subject,(and jumping around a bit) I finished another storybook doll today that I wanted to share with you. Here is Rapunzel, a pensive child, what with all that hair to lug around and being locked in a tower and all that...


And only two more days to sign up here for my birthday gift away.....

We Won!

Thanks to all the wonderful support of our fans and friends, Maeve won the Woodland poll on Etsy!! Woo Hoo!! You can read the post here. And a huge thank you to all of you for your support! I'll be dancing around the studio for a bit.....

Maeve is in the Running!

Maeve, my Fall Fairy Queen has been nominated for the Fall Equinox poll on Etsy! How awesome is that? If you have an Etsy account and would like to give her your vote, you can do so here. Wouldn't it be cool if she won?!

A Birthday Gift Away!

Hello everyone! Tomorrow is a big day for me...drum roll please...my half century birthday! Fifty!?! It's hard for me to even wrap my mind around the fact that I've been alive for 50 years... it seems such an impossibly short time since I was small enough to ride on my father's back, play house in a big chair (with my sister and two brothers!), and hide in the tall grass of the field behind our house. And I'm sure it was just a moment ago that my children were sweet little babies and I was a new and fairly terrified young mother. Now they're young men, still sweet but so grown up! Of course it seems that way to my parents too, I was talking to my Dad on the phone yesterday and he seemed astonished that I had the audacity to get this old! :) I guess in his mind I'll always be his little baby girl with the bow scotch taped to her head.

My First Birthday

So since it's a nice, round, and rather eventful birthday, I felt that I wanted to share my big day with my friends online. To this end I've decided to have another gift away and hold a drawing for the little birthday pixie at the top of this post. She's holding cake of course...what's a birthday without a bit of cake?



All you have to do to enter is simply respond in the comments section of this post and you're in...easy peasy! If you are a fan of The Fairies' Nest on Facebook you can leave a comment there as well and be entered twice...if you're not a fan... and why is that?!...you can become one by clicking on the fan button at the top right side of the page. Make sure that you leave some way to get in touch if you don't have a blogger or Facebook profile! I'll throw all the names in a hat and have a drawing on October 1st. That's my youngest's birthday so it seems fitting...maybe I'll even let him pick!

Good luck everyone!

Feeling Fall!

Three little babies sittin' in a tree...


It has been so lovely and cool here the past few days that I feel completely revitalized. All kinds of doll ideas are popping into my head...now if I can just find the time to make them! And so for your reading pleasure, and because this is after all my birth month, a couple of September poems...Enjoy!

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
- William Wordsworth, September

The goldenrod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusky pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest
In every meadow-nook;
And asters by the brookside
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

- Helen Hunt Jackson , September

Witches Three!

Here's a trio of witches I just finished for a commission, aren't they cute? A mommy kitchen witch and her daughters; a love witch and a green witch. Imagine all the trouble that combo might get into!

Because of the low response to the fabric exchange I've decided to hold off and try again in January. If at first you don't succeed...
And I have a big round birthday coming up in September so I think it just might be time for another gift away in celebration...something special this time! (How's that for a tease?!) Stayed tuned for more details.....

But while you're waiting you could head over to The Cart Before the Horse blog where Jo is giving away an awesome doll like this! Pretty wonderful, so go check it out!

When the bough breaks...

I have been terribly bad about posting on any kind of a regular schedule lately and that's something I'm going to work hard on changing now that school is starting up again. Actually I have a really good excuse for my absence this week...now I sound like one of my teens when they've come in after curfew, "I swear I have a good excuse this time!"... but we had a bit of a calamity here Wednesday night and things have been in... hmmm... let's just say a "state of disarray" ever since.
We had a small storm that night, nothing major, no heavy winds, no fierce bolts of lightening...but as it was winding down I heard a strange cracking noise that went on for several minutes followed by a dull THUD. Then the power went out. I looked out the front door to find that the massive, 100 + year old, Black Locust tree next to the house had decided that it was tired and that it was time to put down one of it's trunks. There was no horrible crash and amazingly nothing except a few power lines were damaged. Even my neighbor's bushes and flower garden came through unscathed! And usually his car would have been parked right where the trunk fell but he was gone at the time. It really seemed like the tree decided it was just time to put down the burden. Unfortunately there is a huge crack running down the middle of the rest of the tree so the whole thing will have to come down....it's heartbreaking to loose a giant tree like that. Who knows all the history that he's seen go past, it's like loosing an old friend as we've lived here for 25 years.


It's been kind of crazy ever since. First the parade of firemen, police, and power company people; then the next few days more power trucks and employees discussing whether the rest of the tree was in immediate danger of falling...they decided to take off some more limbs to prevent more destruction of power lines...then my hubby, son and neighbors wielding chainsaws to clear the debris, and tomorrow the tree guy will be back to take down the remaining tree. I know I'll shed a few tears in the process, I hate to see him go.

These pictures were taken Thursday morning after the firemen had removed all the limbs in the street and the power lines were back up. So you can see I Do have a pretty good excuse for my distraction! Hopefully we'll be getting back to normal soon.