Megan's Birthday

Last week we celebrated Megan's 4th birthday. Birthdays are very special to us. Each life is special and important and a birthday is a fun time to celebrate life. With that said we don't feel the need to have huge parties or spend lots of money on extravagant gifts. I like things to be special but simple!

   I think that we hit a new low with this birthday of how much was spent however. The only thing that I ended up buying (all other stuff we already had around the house and was not bought particularly for her birthday) was a bucket of icecream for $5.69 that we only ate a portion of. Of course we wouldn't have even needed icecream but we just kind of like it at birthdays.

   I thought it would be fun to share how Megan had a fun and festive birthday without us spending money. We always start the birthday with gifts (they get opened at our house before we eat breakfast) so I will start off with them.

We did give her one very large gift this year, a art set. This I had won on a blog giveaway and then decided to set aside for her birthday. Obviously not everyone will win presents for their children but it worked very well for Megan this year. She has really been enjoying it but she would have been just as satisfied without it too. In fact before her birthday she had found a pinecone outside and told me that I could wrap it up because she wanted it for her birthday. I forgot to do that, :-) but it shows that little ones can often be very satisified with something simple.

Each of the older kids wanted to make Megan a present. This year it was very fun for me to see how accomplished they have become at making things. They required very little assistance from me.

Mara made a pillowcase for Megan. Megan has a smaller than normal pillow and we don't have a very big selection of pillowcases that fit it (and they are kind of boyish) and Megan likes pretty pillowcases so Mara made one that worked perfectly! Mara also made Barbie clothes for her to play with as Megan enjoys playing with barbies.

Jonathan asked me for some white fabric (We used some from an old shirt) and proceeded to make this little doll (Petunia- Megan says Atunia) for Megan.

Megan appreciated it very much.

Aaron decided Megan would need a boat for her Barbies so he went to the craft cupboard and made one complete with life jackets, paddles and much more. It was fun to see his creativity.

Aaron and I also worked together to make a special box for Megan to keep her stuff in. She had previously just had a plain old box that she kept under her dresser with her "special stuff" in. (Special stuff like outdated coupons that she thinks are valuble, candy, and finger puppets.) We used a shoe box that had a hinged lid and modge-podged flower, bird and other nature pictures all over it. Then I also glued a ribbon around the rim and added a few ribbon roses. Megan was happy to use it to replace her old box. I also placed a couple other little treats I had on hand in the box.

I also made a busy book for Megan. This one I did in a bit of a hurry and it has quite a few flaws but Megan didn't seem to notice and she liked it quite a bit. The above picture is of the outside and I sewed a zipper around the edge to keep things from falling out. I was able to make this completely out of things we had on hand, most of it was stuff that was recycyled -for example the zipper had previously been used in a dress.

Here are the pages inside:

This page has a little doll I made from wire, yarn and felt tucked into bed. The sheet is sewn so it is a little bag and then their are two blankets on top that are only attached at the bottom of the bed so she can make and unmake the bed.

I made 4 dresses and one nightgown that Megan can change on the doll.

This page has a mirror and barrettes and a funny looking girl that can have her hair fixed.

This next page has a house shaped pocket that holds a car, that can drive to church. (The car was one we had around the house so I didn't have to go buy a new one.)

This page has finger puppet Jonah in the boat with a big fish nearby that is a pocket so Jonah can go into his mouth and be insde the big fish.

The last page has pockets for art supplies.

These books are nice for taking to church to entertain kids during services. Megan enjoyed hers quite a lot on Sunday night.

On birthdays another way we make things special is to let the birthday child pick special foods to eat. Megan chose to have coffee cake for breakfast (along with scrambled eggs), Mac and cheese for lunch (that is a pretty normal choice for birthday lunches as they don't get it a lot otherwise) and then she didn't choose anything for supper so I decided to have our Vietnamese meal.

Megan had requested a Little girl cake, with the little girl holding her own cake. I baked the cake but was glad to have my sister Keren frost it as I was running behind on supper when she came over early to help.

Megan was quite pleased with her cake and we all enjoyed it.

 Well that is some of the projects that have been keeping us busy lately! What have you all been up too?

This is linked to:

A soft place to land

Reinvented

Frugal Friday at Life as MOM