When my family came up for US Thanksgiving, we still hadn’t built the house for the Candy Faerie. Sure, the kids had eaten and given away plenty of candy, but the faerie herself was getting pretty annoyed, threatening the children’s teeth at night and whatnot. So Mom, the amateur architect, not one to simply cut holes and slap things together in a hurry, sized up our boxes and did some miniature cabin design with Iris. They decided on the number, size, and location of windows and doors, the length and height of the walls, and even the pitch of the roof. Lucky faerie! Hope we didn’t spoil her because, unless Iris gets as into building houses as I was at her age (which I was, at her age), I’m probably going to go back to slapping together a quick house again next year.

measuring the roof pitch

cutting the window opening

procuring roofing materials

After the structure of the house was completed, our fine contractor absconded. She returned to work on bigger, less instantly-rewarding projects, namely the seemingly endless renovation of her own dwelling.