September 22nd marks the shared birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Of course, the LOTR enthusiasts debate how the Shire calendar matches up with ours and, therefore, think the birthday falls on a different day. But, for plain folk like myself, I’m just happy to have a day to celebrate hobbits.
In other years, Hobbit Day has merely been a mention from me at the dinner table. But, as I’m edging out of survival mode, I thought this would be a great year to do something fun to celebrate. There are a million and a half great ideas online (and I ‘pinned’ some of them here), but we started simply this year.
We began the day with apple cider, since Hobbit Day lined up with the first day of fall. Then we made Lembas bread. Wow! Way better than I thought it might be. Very simple ingredients too. (We didn’t have chia seeds, so used two eggs in place.). We wrapped these in green fabric ‘leaves’ and headed out for a mini picnic amongst trees.
I brought one of our copies of The Hobbit, of course, and we had hot apple cider and Lembas bread while I read. I had made a pair of hobbit feet the night before, but since they needed adjustments, they didn’t make it on the journey. We did, however, choose hobbit names, using some of these little charts.
We also translated some Elvish and wrote letters to each other the best we could. Then we sealed them with sealing wax, which proved a great lesson in trial and error, since I didn’t know what I was doing and we didn’t actually have the proper equipment. I held a flame up to old crayons to get the ‘wax’ and then we tried everything from carved corks to rubber stamps to pencil tops with no erasers to get the designs. Nothing seemed to work very well, but it sure was fun trying.
We watched some of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit (just the opening) and Lord of the Rings (just the opening, after the prologue). There are great tours of people visiting Hobbiton on the YouTube. And, of course, I busted out my tin whistle for a little hobbit theme music.
I’m glad to finally be celebrating Hobbit Day!
Here are some of the things I look forward to in future years:
–More Hobbit feet (obviously)
–Definitely making a Gandalf hat
—Making this awesome miniature
–Reading more of the books together as the kids get older, sharing favorite parts, etc.
–Watching more of the films when the kids are older
–More decorations!!
(These are the ones we currently have around the house:)
-A Hobbit door I made out of cardboard
-A Hobbit scene I decoupaged onto an old cupboard door I found at ReStore
-This silhouette I found on Etsy
-This sign I made and sell on Etsy
Looking forward to more Hobbit Days in the future!