Happy Birthday my little one!

I don't think I ever have felt more gratitude for 2 warm, cloudless, sunny days than I did this past weekend! 2 days of 70+ degrees! In Alaska! In MAY! At the beginning of May!!!! For the last 4 years I have lamented the fact that Lo can't have an outdoor party with games and fun in the sun like the awesome shindigs we had for Dea's July birthday when she was younger. That she was destined to indoor parties with a slight chance of it being fare enough to do a little running around outside. We could not have asked for finer weather for Lo's birthday party, yesterday! It had actually called for rain yesterday and when I woke up to blue sky, I prayed that it would hold for the party. Lo's friends started arriving around 2 with not a cloud in sight. They had a great time-as did the parents-enjoying the sunshine out on the deck and on the property. The teens set up a fun scavenger hunt resulting in a treasure of wood butterflies that I had scroll sawed. They then got to transform them with the watercolors. What a beautiful colorful bunch of butterflies they created and the kids loved it! Then we played a game of What animal am I? Tape a picture of an animal onto one kid's back and then that kids asks the others YES and NO questions to figure out what the animal is. Such a simple game but the kiddos are SO into it! It got quite raucous with all the kids mimicking animals! Then it was on to eating some munchies, singing Happy Birthday, devouring butterfly cupcakes and opening prezzies. And then more running around amok in the yard and swinging in the play garden, while the parents conversed, the teens kibitzed and all seemed to relish and bask in the day.

Lo has received some amazing stuff -handmade from me, Dea and Nature Lady, some ETSY crafters, as well as from some other great online shops...all of which I would like to showcase in some posts later this week!

I LOVE putting together "Party Bags" for the party goers! I'm always searching for unique stuff and I really enjoy making things as well. I try to lean toward a Waldorf toy approach in the hopes of catching the interest of a non Waldorf parent. Always a pleasure to introduce someone to natural non-Disney, Non-plastic toys! This year we made ribbon wands, story dice(something we did with the spec. ed. kids I used to work with to spark ideas in writing for our fairy tale unit-except we used paper. Boring!), Billy Bob teeth, the butterflies, Stockmar multicolored pencils, a bag of soil and Alaska wildflower seeds, all packed up in a terracotta pot that they can plant the seeds in.

She'll be 5 years old next week...time is going by too fast, folks....