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Pickle Me This

December 19, 2012

The Fairy Door

IMG_0166For me, the blogosphere has always been about inspiration, new discoveries, things to learn, and people to learn from. And while very often I’m unable to measure my own life up to those seemingly perfect ones I find online (I can’t decorate a cake for shit, my knitting is always wonky, and if I had a lifestyle blog, it would be called “Cluttered and Dusty”), I usually come away better f0r these encounters. My life is so much richer for what other bloggers have shown me to strive for over the last decade.

Sometimes these bloggers make it all seem so hard though, out of reach, or perhaps they are just underlining the very things my own world is lacking (like an expensive camera, patience and artistic ability). I’m here to show you, however, that none of these things are really necessary to create a little magic in your lives, and the Fairy Door is case in point. Now, Fairy Doors are amazing. I think I heard about them while I was pregnant with Harriet, and I loved the idea of a tiny portal, a door to nowhere and anywhere, of a secret world beyond our own. I wanted that kind of everyday magic in our household, an otherworldly realm to believe in. So at some point in Harriet’s first year, I “built” one.

IMG_0168According to Pinterest and other fine sources, a Fairy Door is a beautiful thing. Apparently you can buy accessories for it. It’s one of those projects I would never ever have accomplished, or even tried, except that I made mine without a template. In fact, I made my Fairy Door without anything except a Sharpie marker, and it’s not beautiful, and my stairs are really dusty, but I promise you that neither of things mean that my daughter believes in the fairies any less.

Somewhere along the line, our Fairy Door became the home of the Hoopty’s, Mr. and Mrs. Hoopty and their daughter Harriet Hoopty who have been identified our own family’s reflections in the kitchen windows while we eat our dinner. (They must shrink down when they go home.) They have a younger child, a son called Hando, and they’ve also taken in Cousin Dupa since his parents disappeared and his babysitter died. Apparently, they’ve also just had a new baby, christened Butterfly, and it must have been a high-risk pregnancy because Mrs. Hoopty was in the hospital for 7 weeks. She’s been reported to be fine though.

Anyway, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it appears, parenthood. Which is not to say that it’s easy, but there really are so many wonderful things for which almost nothing is all that’s required.

10 thoughts on “The Fairy Door”

  1. Kim says:

    What a brilliant idea! My daughter would love this, especially as she’s a bit annoyed that spiders have moved into the fairy house in the garden. On a good day, I find those blogs inspiring; on a bad day, they leave me feeling totally inadequate! xK

  2. AngelaH says:

    Oh, I love this. When I was a kid our hall closet had a tiny (working) door out the back and my mum always called it the Alice in Wonderland door. In reality, I realized much later, it just led under the stairs, but it was magic for us as kids. (It should probably have been called the Narnia door, though, since we went through coats to get there; never mind, we never once questioned it.)

  3. Lisa says:

    Yes, I love this–the “almost nothing” required, the development of your child’s imaginings, the “clutter and dust,” the inspiration to be found in what others achieve, come up with, etc. But also the vital personal/political gesture here–i.e. to not attempt to perfect the representation of one’s own life (or one’s parenting).

  4. Jennie says:

    I love this idea! When I was little my parents convinced me the reflection of my dad’s watch was a fairy. I could ask it questions and it would respond with yes or no (up and down, or side to side). I still remember the fun I had with that.

  5. Joan Clare says:

    Please pass along holiday wishes and love to the Hoopty’s. I neglected to send them a card this year.

  6. Susan says:

    Ah ha! Thaaaaat’s where the Hoopty’s live! So charmed.

  7. Maureen says:

    I love your fairy door – sharpies do make magic. At my grandmother’s house there was a door led into the bedroom closet but if you crawled under the clothes or pushed them aside and hung a right that led to another door straight into a corner of the kitchen. We could hide in the closet among the clothes if someone came looking for us to do chores or sneak into the kitchen for late night cookie or ice cream munching. That was our fairy door.

  8. naomi says:

    I love it. Simple. Perfect. Sweet.
    Haa made me laugh about being cluttered and dusty: ditto. I hate house work.

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