By Rachael Classi, Tiny Earth Toys Co-Founder & CEO 

 

Our family is all-in on imaginative play. We love playing dress-up, building castles and forts, playing in the dollhouse and imagining fantastical creatures like mermaids, unicorns and fairies. 

And we spend A LOT of time in our backyard. We're lucky to have a decent-sized backyard but I've always hated the bushes along the fence line. They're uninspiring and it just feels like wasted space. 

Then one day we were searching for river rocks to put around a tree when the idea for a Fairy Path was born. All of us got SO excited to see what we might build. We started with one simple rule, the Fairy Path needed to be made of natural materials we found outdoors. When we find these materials, we add them to the path to build the sides of the path and create and decorate little nooks that can be used as fairy houses. 

Along this multi-month journey of building our Fairy Path, we've noticed a ton of benefits: 

• We go on more family walks to find treasures 

• We are more observant when we're outside as we're always on the hunt for special materials 

• When friends visit, it inspires play 

• We've been engaged in this project for months and it stays really fresh for all of us as we build something that takes time 

 

Our favorite finds so far:

• Bricks that used to be in our garden 

• Horse shoe crab shells from the beach 

• A massive piece of bamboo we found in a park 

• Stumps from a recently fallen tree that we use as chairs 

 

And finally, here are our top 3 tips to get started: 

• Find a contained space that is your designated Fairy Path. This could be in your backyard, on a porch or in a windowsill. 

• Bring a container with you when you go for walks or to the park, you never know when you'll find a good treasure!

• Take your time building your Fairy Path. There is no need to rush to finish it. Allow it to be an ongoing project with no "finish".  

Happy building! And if you catch a fairy, send it our way, we've still yet to see one!