Homemade Birthday

My two youngest children share the same birthday, and so for their upcoming big day I made the above toadstool trinket box and toadstool peg people. I wanted to do a design that was not "fussy", something whimsical and not too distracting. I am really happy with the result!

From meager beginnings....

.....to the finished product.

We are going to have a small, intimate celebration on their actual birthday. We're saving the bigger party for later on when the weather warms up a little more because we're planning to rent a "bounce house" from a local hardware store and invite everyone over to 

bounce around and enjoy cupcakes and ice cream.

I've always felt that having a big party on the actual day of a child's birthday can put a lot of undue stress on the day.  I have found myself running around so much on the day, with all of us scurrying in a frantic pace to get everything together, people getting over stimulated, and so much pressure to make everything fall into place (and if it doesn't, that can leave lasting memories years later).

I want my children to remember their birthdays as something incredibly special, intimate, 

and stress-free. If the big party is held on another day, there is so much less pressure to ensure that their birthday memories are good ones. Besides, how cool is it to extend the celebration of their birth?! We certainly were on cloud nine for weeks after each of our new arrivals, so why not spend a goodly amount of time at their birthdays celebrating?!

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Homeschooling Updates:

We've been really focusing on the changes that spring is bringing to our neighborhood lately. I've also started some seedlings in my indoor rolling greenhouse, and we make note of all of the changes the plants are going through as they poke through the soil, get their first set of leaves, then their "real" leaves, and finally they reach up further and further towards the sky in anticipation of (hopefully) eventually bearing fruit.

My son is the type of thinker who, when we see a squirrel run up a tree and then we see a cat do the same thing, he will ask what makes the two animals different and the same. He doesn't just mean that one is classified as a rodent and the other as feline. He wants the whole kit-and-kaboodle. As you can imagine, this makes for interesting car ride conversations at times!

The things I'm really grateful for with the Waldorf approach are the suggestions on how we can help him balance his tendencies to be "in his head" with dreamier play, balance work for his body coordination, art and other expressions of creativity. 

Now to get ready for a week of yard work, gardening work, inside de-cluttering and...what am I forgetting? Oh yeah, somewhere in there we need to do homeschooling and deal with my clients :D