26Dec 2024 by catbird No Comments
New Year’s Eve Chocolate Piñatas

New Year’s Eve Chocolate Piñatas

New Year's Eve, Play, Recipes
By New Year's Eve I am pretty tapped out. Strangely though, it's become one of my favorite holidays to celebrate with my family. My kids love it and I do way less in preparation. We have what I lovingly call "tiny dinner" which is a bunch of store bought appetizers heated up throughout the night at pretty random intervals. My kids love this, probably more than any of the huge homemade meals I make for the other holidays. We have adapted that "do an activity every hour" pinterest stalwart to do a bunch of activities at completely random intervals until we get tired and go to sleep. We do a bunch of fortune telling games and activities for the new year. (You can read more about some of our traditions…
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30Dec 2023 by catbird 2 Comments
New Year’s Eve Simmer Pot

New Year’s Eve Simmer Pot

Folklore, New Year's Eve, Winter
New Year's Eve is a time when cultures all over the world practice various traditions to clear out the old year and start the new year off positively. An easy (and nice smelling!) way to practice a few of them is to make up a special New Year's simmer pot. Use this recipe as a start and add anything else that speaks to you-- you might just really like the smell or want to encourage more of what the plant symbolizes in your life. Juniper is featured here both because it smells nice and because it is used in the Scottish tradition of Hogmanay, or celebration of the last night of the year. It is used for saining or protecting/ blessing the household. The branches are set on fire and the smoke…
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27Dec 2023 by catbird No Comments
New Year Family Bucket List Countdown Printable -Updated for 2026

New Year Family Bucket List Countdown Printable -Updated for 2026

Free Printable, Nature Journaling, New Year's Eve, Play, Winter
Every year we fill out a bucket list as a family so this year I decided to make one of my own! I made it black and white so it's easier to print out. You can color it if you'd like or leave it as is! The plants I used to decorate the bubbles are all ones I associate with the winter and the new year. Bay, juniper, pine, mistletoe, sage, rosemary, fir and snowdrops. The first 16 have prompts to get you thinking and the last four are blank so you can write in your own! Wishing you the happiest of new years! (Click on the image below to download!) download
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23Dec 2023 by catbird 1 Comment
New Year’s Eve Bay Fortune Ball Ornaments

New Year’s Eve Bay Fortune Ball Ornaments

Campfire, Craft Project, Folklore, Nature Art, New Year's Eve, Winter
For whatever reason many of our New Year's Eve traditions revolve around fortune telling. There are a number of cultural fortune telling traditions like the Austrian Bleigießen and the Finnish uudenvuodentina, and it seems like a good time to think about your fortune and or wished for the new year. I actually love low key New Year's Eve with kids-- far more than I enjoyed the expensive and weird nights on the town in my 20s. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that my post kid celebrations are the first time I really enjoyed this this celebration. It's still mistly a late night holiday so while we sneak some nature in here and there (nye nature crowns, first day hikes) much of this night is spent inside.…
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02Jan 2023 by catbird 1 Comment
New Year Nature Crowns!!

New Year Nature Crowns!!

Craft Project, Nature Art, Nature Collection, New Year's Eve, Play
One of the activities that we do every New Year's Eve is to make some sort of crown or party hat. In teh past we have mostly just colored in something free and printable and not gotten particularly fancy with it, but this year we decided that we needed to step up our crown game. The kids requested nature crowns, but we couldn't think of a way to make them "New Year's Eveish." I considered make stick crowns and spraying them gold because gold seems to be my default on NYE, but then I had an epiphany! Half of the crown would be bare sticks (like winter and the old year...) and the other half would be greenery (spring and the new year!) we ended up adding some sticks with…
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