Fairies. Crafty Little Beasts.

I'm not what you'd call "highly structured" when it comes to opening up my home to caring for other people's kids. What I like to do is make kids feel loved, welcomed, safe, fed, and happy.

I encourage them to run around (downstairs, outside, but not so much around the DR table, or circles around my couch), play creatively, use their imaginations, and get familiar with scissors, paper, markers, and colours.

Not that I have a daily craft plan or anything remotely "type A" like that.
But every now and again, I feel sort of convicted to raise the bar a little and do an actual, Planned Craft Event. (which I think should add big points to my reputation)

So, I engage in another guilty pleasure of mine- Dollarama. Now I know that because of my ethics and convictions, I'm not supposed to like Dollarama. I'm not supposed to shop there. I certainly shouldn't promote it on my blogspot, or really admit to sinning in all of the above ways.
I know the stuff is produced by someone who is not getting paid what they ought to. How else could they ship it to our continent, staff a store, and still make a profit on a buck a thingie?

But I'm sorry to let you down. I'm no saint. I am, in fact, a hypocrite and I'm not opposed to telling the whole world about it. So, today's well intentioned Planned Craft Event is brought to you by Dollarama, where I got a kit of six fairy parts and pieces for a whopping $2.00. That sort of deal floods my synapses with seratonin- and for the price of prozac, that's saying something.

We (and I say "we" loosely here. Keep in mind that the maximum age is four. That leaves room for two and three years olds. I'm the only one with actual years of scissor and glue and eyeball placement experience within miles of this establishment)So, anyway. We began with the glueing on of the hair and googley eyes.
That went remarkably well. Well, okay. So it took me a while to "help" glue on five sets of pony tails and blinky eyes, but what of it?

On second thought, putting out the stickers and coloured pencils seemed like a better attempt at group participation. After all, there's not much glory in going home to mommy and saying; "Look what Joycie made for craft today!"

I guess there might have been some scissors in amongst those pencil crayons and stickers. Someone's not looking too happy....Well, she is a fairy for goodness sakes. Kind of show-offy to go around with wings AND legs.

And eyes. That's just excessive.

Besides, she's still got those hands, with the magical wand and all.

If you look really closely, and squint, our fairies look a lot like the one on the front of that expensive craft pack that I so ethically bought.

Next week maybe I'll just put out the markers and scissors again.....