It feels a tad weird to be writing about Springtime and flowers while currently traveling through winter weather, but Spring has already sprouted in our southern home: trees budding, wildflowers sprinkling the highways, songbirds chirping at sunrise. As Rilke wrote, “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” And so we celebrated our youngest songbird’s eighth birthday with flowers and friends, two of her very favorite things.
To keep birthday experiences simple for our home, our children only have the option for a birthday party on certain years, a year when they can opt for a party experience with friends as their gift from me and Mark. So when they choose a party, I tend to make the details special, something they will enjoy and something to remember. Olive and I had several conversations about what type of party she wanted, which left me feeling she should consider event planning one day, as they were all such large-scale, fun ideas. In the end we opted to recreate a flower market experience and allow each friend space to make their own arrangement. Blythe thoughtfully painted a sign for Olive to hang in her shop.
Since our backyard is currently a mesh of backyard projects and renovations, I asked a dear friend if I could host the party on her beautiful property in the country. We don’t have a flower market at our farmer’s market, but they are one of my favorite things to enjoy when we travel.
When the girls arrived, they each had a spot at the table, marked with a paper doily, mason jar vase, drinking glass, and paper-lined basket for little nibbles. They each perused and gathered from the flower market (set up with a lemonade stand) and returned to their spots where they had access to scissors for trimming stems and various colors of string for decorating their vases (and for marking their personal arrangement). We talked about the importance of flowers and pollinators in the world, a repeat conversation from our homeschool group’s flower study the week before.
Once the girls finished making flowers, they sipped Italian soda and filled their baskets with berries and popcorn. We sang happy birthday to Olive with mini lemon-filled cupcakes, and she opened gifts and read thoughtful notes from friends, many of which included bubble gum. The girls each filled and stamped small envelopes with wildflower seeds to take home and grow their own cutting gardens.
Although the party created quite the mess, it was a simply, beautiful way to celebrate the season. For those of you interested in hosting your own (even for adults!), here are a list of materials I used. for younger girls, it’s best to have a few extra set of adult hands available for helping tie knots and cut difficult stems. For older girls and adults, create a bit more time for the art of arrangement with helpful tips, such as how to choose colors or arrange by height and spill. Consider the audience ages and their attention span/interest levels. Most of this group preferred to simply jump right in! Either way can be fun. Enjoy!
MATERIALS TO CREATE YOUR OWN SPRINGTIME FLOWER PARTY
- an assortment of fresh flowers
- canning jars or milk glass vases
- paper doilies
- small craft envelopes or here
- wildflower seeds for your region
- berry baskets with wax paper inserts
- scissors
- colorful jute string or chalk paint and wax to decorate the glass jar
- tasty nibbles and drinks
Comments
I love this. I have my oldest’s birthday party coming up this weekend (3! AH!) and I am already feeling like I picked the crazy train for birthday parties by having done one each year so far. I couldn’t figure out how to get off. Thank you for the idea of having them choose a party as a present on specific years. It sounds silly, but I feel relieved already!
This stole my breath away…from the meaningful way you have your children choose which birthday to celebrate to all the beautiful ways the thoughtfulness played out. Your family is a vision of God’s love and beauty and I am so thankful for the glimpses and the inspirations.
This is simply beautiful Beth and I love your idea of keeping with your family values even when it comes to tricky kids parties.. may I ask which birthdays you allow a bigger party?
It’s not an exact rule, but generally, ages 1, 5, 8, and 10 are optional party years for our kids, give or take a few times, and then at 13, we host a large coming of age party with friends and family to welcome them into adulthood, like this one from our son’s thirteenth last year.
What a beautifully simple and yet special way to celebrate Olive’s birthday! I can just imagine the girls delight as they made their arrangements. Your table looks fabulous. I’m so glad you shared this one- I’m pinning it so I can remember it when it comes time to celebrate E’s birthday. I bet she’ll love this idea!
This is such a wonderful idea! My oldest girls both have birthdays around Christmas so we have never done parties for them, but I’ve always thought something in the spring/early summer would be fun. A flower party is perfect!
What a wonderful birthday party. You truly know how to make life beautiful for your children and to create extraordinary memories.
Oh this is such a fantastic idea! My girls were both born in May so I always do a joint girls-only party. I am going to show them this as an option for this year!!