A Light Green Birthday
At first glance there wasn’t much that was green OR healthy about Drew’s 7th birthday partythis past weekend. The S’mores, the pinata, the disposable paper products. Clearly I give in to a lot of the traditional birthday party fun! But hidden in the agenda, there actually were a few ‘green’ elements and a healthy snack to make me feel better about the whole thing.
Creating ‘junk sculptures’ was the main activity. I gathered together lots of miscellaneous ‘junk’ like plastic plant pots, old gift boxes, yogurt containers, ribbon and felt scraps and of course paper rolls and egg cartons. I also had some fun stuff like colored glass stones and pipe cleaners. And glue guns – a bit dangerous but highly supervised.
The kids had a blast with it! It was fun to see all of the different creations that evolved. Plant pots became towers and hats, old jewelry boxes became treasure boxes and race cars, egg cartons became baskets….
Some other green & healthy party ideas:
- Homemade invitations, delivered by hand to avoid envelopes.
- Minimal decorations – setting up our big tent in the middle of the yard was the main attraction. An old sheet painted with fish was used for the ‘fishing’ game.
- Instead of goodie bags filled with junk, Drew created CD’s with his favorite tunes. We reused old CD cases (who doesn’t have a few of those laying around?) instead of buying new ones.
- S’mores instead of cake (the only disposables needed were a few plates and plenty of wet naps!)
- A big bowl of homemade trail mix for snacks.
- Water was the only beverage served.
The birthday boy had lots of fun (shown here on his actual B-day) and his brother clearly loved his first S’more experience!
Love, love, love the Junk Sculptures! Great idea!
Hi! One of our best — and low impact — birthday parties was so simple: We had kids bring their own bananas. They wrote their names on them, then we hid the bananas in the yard. After going through an “obstacle course,” (just a bunch of stuff they had to run around and jump over), they had to find their banana. Then they could bring it back in the house and make banana splits (organic ice cream, natch). For goodie bags, we just had them decorate brown sandwich bags. It was fun – low impact on our end, and lots for them to do!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who compromises on birthdays, but I try to sneak in a little green too. Great suggestions. Keeping it simple is probably the best and easiest one of all.
I agree with keeping it simple Betsy! There is such a temptation to go all-out for birthday parties – when all the kids really care about is playing with each other!