Friendly Friday: Our Tree Celebration

We had some old, good friends over as we celebrated a minor holiday sometimes called the birthday of the trees! This little chalkboard has been hanging on the door to our art room as long as I can remember. There is an entire chalkboard wall in that room, so I am not sure how this originally got there. Anyhow now it is a tradition! We change the ribbon and message all the time.

We set up a little planting station on the kitchen table for the kids to make mason jar terrariums. Since the idea of the holiday is about trees waking from their winter slumber, I thought this fit right in. You will see the book A Tree is Nice in the background of one picture. It is such a sweet book, and I would really recommend it for kids of all ages.

Above are a few shots of my table. You'll notice we didn't have any silverware or plates down at this point because we were reading from placemats I created. We noshed on the fruit and nuts in the center as we read about four categories of fruits, which represent the four seasons and aspects of the human personality. The four sections of the service each have a corresponding glass of juice to symbolize the same--from Winter (white) to Fall (red). These are just thimble size glasses--I know they look huge in this picture!

After the service (it was six minutes tops), we served a buffet dinner of colorful, natural dishes. We had zucchini boats, tomato-cucumber salad, cut veggies for the kids and orzo. I used twigs and lemons to decorate the buffet to represent trees:

It was a quick weeknight celebration, and all was neatly put away by 8:30. Overnight, we had a snowfall that dusted our yard, but the terrarium in the window reminded me that Spring is not far off!