Yesterday was the day our fairy house was scheduled to arrive. Unfortunately, it was also the day I was scheduled for a spinal tap, so I missed UPS when they came. I had warned my boys to be on the lookout for UPS and explained that they were not to touch the box when it arrived because it would be extremely fragile. Imagine their surprise then to see the UPS driver pull up in front of our house, kick and then toss the box of the truck, and proceed to roll it up to the porch (mind you, the box was not even the least bit heavy!). Did he miss the big red "Fragile" stickers all over it?! I suppose it should've been no surprise that when I opened the box, our beautiful fairy house was virtually in pieces - despite all of the extra careful packaging (ironically, it had been packaged by a UPS Store!). My heartbroken Maddie began sobbing immediately. Every day prior we'd had to check the UPS tracking number to see where her house was because she was so looking forward to it, in particular, because it had been made especially for her birthday.

Here are a couple of pictures of the house when it arrived:

The entire structure had a huge crack up the back, a crack in the front (as shown above), the second floor had come loose, stained glass was cracked and broken, the twig railing on the tiny bridge had been broken to bits, numerous bits of moss and twigs were broken off and a chunk of the back wall had fallen off (and since it contained the battery pack for the lights, it was pretty essential!).

After calling to file a rather irate claim with UPS and e-mailing the artist, I yielded to Maddie's mournful plea to "just do something, fix it!" I spent hours with the hot glue gun, trying to piece back a part of the magic that had been...Let me just say, this gave me an entirely new respect for the work Rachel does on these homes. Gluing little bitty twigs and other equally fragile materials is hard work!

My results weren't entirely successful, but I did fix many of the broken bits so that we were able to put the furniture in the house and enjoy it's beauty for a few hours. We added a new gnome from Painting Pixie that arrived at the same time as the house and she fit perfectly!

This morning UPS arrived to pick up the house for inspection (yeah, silly me, I shouldn't have bothered to repair anything!)...the driver was even rougher with the house than yesterday's had been - shoving it repeatedly to make it fit back into the box, which resulted in some unpleasant cracking and further damage I'm sure. He just laughed and said "Well it's trash anyway since it's already broken" (this promptly sent Maddie into another fit of tears!). So, there we have it. The house is gone, though the artist, Rachel, is sending us "The Great House" today as a replacement, which is very kind. Maddie's still very upset that *her* house is gone, but I'm hoping the new house will cheer her up at least a little. It's all just a sad situation, especially since I know Rachel takes such care with these homes, to ensure that nothing is broken - all of her Etsy feedback has been very positive in this regard.