Could Evansville, IN be on that list- PLEASE??🙏🏼 Netflix subscriber but would absolutely LOVE to see this in theaters in OCTOBER🎃🕷️🕸️ i would hire back up babysitters for my scheduled babysitters just to make sure we could #frightnightdatenight
#evansvilleindiana

Although, not everything comes out in the wash. A spot of blue still lingers on my table.

Happy Birthday in the Heavens, Mom.

We’re still here, making messes and entertaining fairies.

#happyheavenlybirthdaymom

Mom often mailed cards with little handwritten notes inside, telling her grandkids how much she enjoyed their play dates. Her last letter hangs on my refrigerator, held in place by a hand-painted, blue and purple bird magnet from a 2/$1 Dollar Tree craft kit Mom bought.

She did all of the “soft” Nana things that don’t naturally come to me as a Mom. Crafting, baking Christmas cookies, encouraging messiness.

Building fairy gardens.

I do those things now because she first did so with her grandkids. It’s how I learned (& still try) to soften my edges as a parent.

…. dumping overflowing bags of craft kits, baubles, art supplies, and kitschy holiday bric-a-brac all over my kitchen table. (“Let these babies make messes, Cassie. It’ll wash out or use it as a rag.”) The sheer volume of clutter would make my palms sweat.

It was this eccentricity that ensured Mom was a natural Nana. When bringing over her own ingredients to bake in my kitchen (she used Country Crock, I used real butter- it was a whole thing), she would also clean out DG, Big Lots, and Ollie’s….

Mom’s questionable garden trinket collection is what eventually softened me to indulge in my own children’s fairy village build. They enjoy it and I try not to look directly at it- just as I did with Mom’s overstimulated yard.

When Nick and I moved into our new home, she begged to take in this abandoned, gaudy Ceramic Boy Peeing statue the former owners left. (I don’t know why she asked. I would’ve been grateful had she quietly stolen it- sparing me the knowledge that it had ever darkened my doorstep.)

Mom loved her unsightly lawn treasures so much that I compared it to Ariel’s obsessive sea-junk-hoarding situation, informing her that family intervention was imminent. Storming past me & invoking my full name, she placed another 3/$5 yard fairy in her flower bed and refilled her 7th bird feeder.