Saint Valentine's Day

This year I really wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day* but in a sweet, homely way. I was most inspired by this book, which I've been referring to often. I made templates of birds and used them to cut out bird biscuits which were strung up on our Valentine tree (it had a couple of red ribbon ties on it). I thought people might laugh or be puzzled over it, neither of which concerned me anyway as my main focus was the kids, but surprisingly it went down well. The kids were spellbound! Pretty soon they realised the birds were of the edible kind and began their usual pleading. We bargained that all the birds had to stay for a full day, then they could eat one per day. Naturally this quickly became three per day but they asked nicely each time and waited patiently when they were taken off the tree. Such is the power of biscuits.


The book has lovely ideas for festivals, special days and crafts. It's made me realise that since we now have our own little nuclear family, we can celebrate the things we want to, how we want to. Dan loves the idea too so now I'm planning our family calendar which will include those days special to us. Family and friend birthdays will be on it of course, Easter with its associated Christian days, plus National days from our respective countries.

In the past couple of years we've begun celebrating Christmas from Advent Sunday and I really appreciate the perspective this gives, as well as a structured time of anticipation and preparation. January this year was incredibly hectic but next year I'd like to finish the festive season with Three Kings cake for Epiphany on January 6th. When we heard about Pi day (as in π ) on March 14th, we thought how cool it would be to make pies on that day, or a cake with Pi icing - the amount of icing will be finite however!


Our calendar hasn't been finalised yet but really, I'd be more than happy for it to evolve as the kids grow and develop interests which they would like to include. Who knows what other interesting events we could be celebrating?


* Yes, this really should have been posted in February but we got sick just after these events took place.