We survived a party bag!
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Little Miss Green was invited to a party yesterday. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. After what felt like months of rain, the sky was blue and the sun shone all day. Just the ticket for an outdoor picnic with traditional party games!
She arrived back, happy but tired with her bag of loot. For any self respecting eco-worrying parent, the party bag is usually the biggest concern of all. The sugar hit you can cope with; kids come down from them after a nights sleep. The sticky fingers and faces can soon be dealt with. The filthy clothes can be washed and the frustrated tears from one Ribena too many can be soothed.
But the contents of the party bag can lie festering in the landfill long after the Birthday Girl or Boy have blown out their last candle.
Fortunately though, Little Miss Green’s friend surpassed herself. Her PAPER party bag consisted of lots of good quality chocolate, all foil wrapped, a necklace and bracelet made from wooden beads, a glittery pink pencil that was given to me – horrah! (it’s my lucky writing pencil apparently and what a great job it’s doing so far), a home made chocolate muffin in a paper case and some stickers – yes, they’re in cellophane but what an overall success.
The only things that needed booing off stage were one of those everlasting bouncy balls and one of those awful party, oh you know, you put them in your mouth and blow them and a reel of foil backed paper comes out and they make a horrible noise. Party blowers are they? I really don’t know.
That’s destroyed already from excessive use but Little Miss Green has quite a few bouncy balls, so they’re always welcome and well used by her. She likes to wind up the cat with them (have you ever seen a 15 year old cat with cataracts trying to catch an everlasting bouncy ball?) and leave them on the kitchen floor and stairs for me to fall over in the mornings.
You’ll notice in the photo that it was sans chocolate and cake by the time I had got the camera out. Maybe that’s why Little Miss Green went to bed early complaining of stomach ache. Ouch! But at least the landfill won’t be groaning too much under the weight of her party bag.
More on our choice of ‘negative impact on the landfill’ Birthday gift another day.
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Phew that was close ;-D
Well done on the party bag thing. That’s a great one compared to some of the ones I’ve seen. Thanks for the contribution to the new Carnival of Trash by the way and for your lovely comments….and for hosting next month’s carnival…and…well for keeping up with the challenge in such a fabulous way…and …everything else.
http://therubbishdiet.blogspot.com/2008/07/carnival-of-trash-1.html
Awww, now I’m blushing! I hope the Carnival was a success. I’m really looking forward to hosting next months 🙂
It was my son’s birthday a few weeks ago and I experienced the party bag dilemma. It wasn’t just the party bag, but the prizes for the games! I was determined to avoid plastic nasties and lots of jelly sweets. In the end we had craft sets for prizes and the bags (OK, I admit they were plastic… I’d bought paper to make them but ran out of time) contained a pencil, some little chocolate footballs, homemade birthday cake in paper and a good old fashioned Mr Man book. Well, my son approved… except that he didn’t get a copy of each of the books his friend got!
The kids were all amazed that it was a homemade cake – James I seem to remember – and not shop bought (less packaging that way, but more importantly a nicer case with no allergens in it for my son).
Oooo, Jane – the party bag survival – well done you! Fortunately, I don’t have to think about this until next March. 😀
Mr Men books; wonderful things that never outgrow their charm. It sounds like you did you son, and Mother Nature proud with your party bags – and it sounds like parents will have been pleased that their kids weren’t bouncing off the walls, high on artificial additives from the cake too 😉
Brilliant and very inspiring!