This container garden was created with $12 - a little pricey compared to what I've been creating recently, but it's nice to splurge once in a while. The farmer, Sweet Miah, his wife, Jessica, the goat, sheep and chicken (as well as a farm house not pictured here) were all part of a set that was $12. Everything else in this container is something I already had, including the plants.
Oh, and at the end of the video I talk about the new contest we're having starting April 1. I'm trying to get as many new YouTube subscribers as possible, so tell your friends and make sure they let us know (in YouTube comments) YOU sent them so you can get credit for it and possibly win a prize!
The following pictures are the final submissions I received for the Fall challenge, which uses the popular movie Nightmare Before Christmas to incorporate two popular holidays celebrated at the tail end of each year. Thank you, My Fairy Folks.
This Fall scene is created with autumn-inspired decor such as the stacked pumpkin house, a hay bale and a wheel barrel full of a fall harvest. Send me photos of your fall gardens and I'll feature them on my blog. I'd like to put together a slideshow of all the seasonal gardens and decor sent my way and share them on Instagram. I will choose one entrant at random and share something of their choice (blog, YouTube or other social media)
Pumpkin (middle) and Susie-Q always work together to during harvest season.
Here we are at yet another anniversary post. One more year gone by with more experience under our belt and exciting things ahead. The fourth anniversary flower is the hydrangea which is what I used to create the banner above and the garden below. Unfortunately, mother nature didn't realize this week was so important to me because she decided to scorch my lovely anniversary flowers with temperatures reaching 112 degrees.
Based on last year's review, here are some numbers for comparison. In the last year I've made 108 blog posts, 40 of which were published last month alone thanks to my Garden A Day Challenge. June 2018 saw more posts published than in either 2016 or 2017, each of those years only having 46 posts in them! Google + is still pushing along with 544 followers. Since last year, my YouTube channel has gained over 50 uploads (124 videos) and the views have more than doubled at just over 10.5k! I'm pleased to say that my YouTube channel now has cleared the 100 subscribers mark. The most viewed post in the last year wasSeason's Greetings in December with 189 views which has a long journey to cactch up to the overall most viewed video fromM&M Nursery back in 2015 with 578 views. Since last year, my granddaughter helped to get us connected on social media including Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. I began pushing these accounts in May 2018 and currently have 17 Twitter followers, 40 Pinterest followers and 83 Instagram followers.
Numbers aside, we had many accomplishments in the past year. Most recently was the Garden A Day Challenge, my first attempt at anything like this. I feel like this challenge did a great deal for me personally (cleaning up my garden and allowing myself to be creative quickly and cheaply) as well as helped my online presence (social media numbers grew significantly). The blog has seen very little of the food garden - which will change - but my YouTube views have really seen an improvement thanks to my edible garden updates. I also attribute a rise in YouTube viewership to a few of my new monthly features including my shopping hauls and unboxing videos. I still don't understand why "the haul" is such a big deal to people but I'm glad my grandson told me they were popular and we have been able to benefit from it. On the topic of monthlies, we have been doing a DIY fairy garden class each month for quite some time and have slowly begun to add new staples to the blog which I hope you will look forward to. The monthly list includes fairy garden class, My Fairy Folks - a visit to one of my follower's garden each month, Gifts for the Garden - a look at the gifts I receive from followers and family each month, unboxing posts (currently Seed Bank Box and My Fairy Crate which may change in the future), shopping hauls, food garden updates and garden projects that will including repainting and lights as a main feature. Whew!
That's all quite a lot of accomplishments but according to last year's review, our biggest goal was to put together a contest. Unfortunately, we were unable to make that happen in the last year, however you may be surprised to know that planning has been underway for a while! There is a lot that goes in to something like that (especially technical web type stuff that I don't know about), but actual progress is being made on making it a reality. We are hoping to begin the contest before the end of this year and will reveal details soon. What I'd currently like to announce is the fact that my blog has it's own url now! In March I purchased the name GardenWithGrandma.com and if you type that into your browser now, it will bring you right back to this blog. In the future, it will host our contest and blog posts. I felt this was an appropriate move since it would allow us to possibly make money through ads (which will help continue to fund all things fairy garden and food garden related), allow us to host the fairy garden contest and anything else we'd like to do in the future all under a website name that is easy to remember and access.
If you can believe it, I think our goals for the year ahead of us are even bigger! The previously mentioned contest is our biggest and scariest goal! This is uncharted territory for myself and any of my grandchildren but we are determined to make this happen. I was inspired to do this contest since the one I used to participate in (The Magic Onion) has not been active for years. I felt that there were a lot of people like me who were just hoping to find a similar contest and decided to take it upon myself to just create one. Also on the horizon for the next year is expanding the food garden and adding new fairy garden areas. I plan to make the front garden more kid friendly since my great-grandchildren are getting older and I'd love to have them over more. I plan to visit more local stores and nurseries to showcase fairy garden accessories and hopefully add this to my list of monthly features.
There is talk of getting the fairy garden class back out to an actual location, allowing me to meet up with My Fairy Folks and have a lovely morning of creativity. November 2015 was the last time a physical class was held at Sunshine Growers Nursery in Yucaipa, CA. It is a favorite nursery of mine and they have increased the stock of fairy decor as well as miniature plants since then, so I think we will be setting ourselves up for success upon our return. We have not set a date just yet, but if you'd like to sign up for our email list to stay in the loop, please send me an email with the subject "Fairy Garden Class" to grandmasefg@gmail.com and feel free to make class theme suggestions. We are hoping to get this started before the end of 2018. My immediate future holds a day trip this week with my granddaughter to participate in a Fairy Garden Class hosted elsewhere. Follow me on Instagram to keep track of Thursday's events and look forward to my review on the location and event later this month. If you have any suggestions for me or would like to say hi, my contact and social media information is at the bottom of this post.
Finally, I'll leave you with this photo of Prince Finn Mac Fidaig, seated in front of our anniversary hydrangea with an inviting setting for tea.
Oh my goodness, it's time to celebrate another year already! As of tomorrow (July 9), this blog is turning 3 years old! Can you believe it? Last year's review mentioned Wikipedia's anniversary flowers - I remember looking at the list and being excited for this year because the third anniversary flower is my favorite; the Sunflower! Here's one of my beautiful sunflowers from last year's bloom since I don't have any blooming yet this year, but you bet your bottom that they're in the ground, working their magic.
Now, lets get to the progress we've made in the last year here at Grandma's Enchanted Fairy Garden. My Google+ followers haven't gone up much (and I still can't figure out how to see my Google+ views), but my YouTube views have increased by 1,979 in the last year to bring me to a total of 3,126. This means that I more than doubled my YouTube views in the last year. That's wonderful! I know that wouldn't be possible without My Fairy Folks sharing my videos with friends and family, so thank you very much! I am just shy of 70 videos uploaded to my channel.
Speaking of My Fairy Followers, I want to thank those of you who have shared your own creations. Lets look back at all of them.
Again, thank you to all of my followers. I appreciate every one of you, even if you haven't sent in any pictures or made any comments; just knowing there are eyes on my blog and YouTube (represented by views) keeps me going. There are so many of you all over the world. Some of you might even hail from the following locations, represented in my vacation series of fairy gardens.
These two vacation-inspired gardens, Ensenada and Hawaii, were created within the last year and helped me achieve one of the goals I set for myself in last year's review. There are also a few more that I have planned and that you can look forward to in the future including Yellowstone, Alaska, Williams Arizona and Cabo San Lucas.
I have made many posts about Fairy Garden Classes, a few that took place in public but the majority being just tutorials. Some were based on a holiday theme or a monetary goal. I want to expand these tutorials to include child specific activities and make this blog even more family-friendly.
With all the successes we've had in the past year, there is one that slipped through our fingers and that would be the Gnome wedding. Things in the real world got in the way of making this event come out in November (which was what last year's review slated it for). It was decided that we would just move the date forward another year. Between you and I (and the rest of the internet), the pictures were all taken and in the system but my granddaughter's (who helps me write this blog) wedding was a priority.
With that being said, I had time to do some thinking about the goals for the next year of our blog. One thing that really popped out to me was a contest. There's only been one contest here and the product of that was the name My Fairy Folks. In that same vein, I want to continue to celebrate My Fairy Folks, their creativity and promote my blog. With all that being said, we have plans here to start our own miniature garden contest that will last a whole year! You will be allowed to enter with multiple miniature gardens (maybe one for each season!) and have your friends and family help by voting. Prizes aren't decided yet and neither is a start date, but I will keep you updated. I really want to make sure there are at least two winning categories - people's choice and best of show. I'm very excited about this and hope you are too!
This will be the second year that I enter The Magic Onion Fairy Garden Contest. The following blog posts are the gardens I chose to enter in the contest this year. I feel they are the best work I have done in the last year.
I chose the Halloween scene because I am proud of how my very first holiday-themed garden turned out, trying something new with the use of artificial lighting. This scene was also the first time I implemented the use of video paired with spooky music, which I absolutely love.
This picture of Woodland Grove, part of the Fall Fairy blog post, is one of my favorites. This scene had begun small and in preparation for this contest, I wanted to spruce it up and gosh darnit did I do a good job! Just about everything about this scene is an upgrade to how this area started and I'm so proud of how it has turned out. I feel there is little room for improvement but for the most part, this is my pièce de résistance.
Back in May I opened up a simple contest to all my readers, asking them to give my readers a "name." I announced that I would choose a winner and not only would I be using the "name" in future posts, but I would also send the winner a partial beach scene that includes a matching table, chairs and umbrella. I would like to thank everyone who submitted ideas.
Our winner wrote the following for her name submission;
Congratulations, Carmen! Please email me your name and national shipping address at grandmasefg@gmail.com and I will get it sent out to you as soon as possible. Perhaps you can share a picture with the rest of My Fairy Folks of the beach scene in your own fairy garden.
I've received a handful of replies to my very first contest and would like to thank you all. The contest is still open for entries and you can enter with as many suggestions as you like but I'd like to address a mistake I may have made. Most of the entries make me believe that I may have worded the contest in a confusing way; most entries seem to be suggesting a new name for the blog which is not what I'm looking for.
So, to clarify, I am looking for a term or phrase to use to describe my followers. My granddaughter found information on wikipedia to describe fandom and I think it may explain it better than I am. You can find that information by clicking this link. This is along the lines of what I'm searching for - a title for the collective you, my readers.
To see the prize that is up for grabs, click here. For the post that introduces this contest and to add to our FAQ to be answered in June, click here.
