MY FAVOR-ITE

Birth day parties are stressful times, there is so much to arrange and keep track of. First the invitations, this year I decided to go green and used evite to send a nice e-mail invitation. I bought a pretty illustration of Sarah’s theme TadPoles and Pollywocks and designed a custom evite. Evite is very handy to keep track of who’s coming and sending reminders. It even includes a map function. 3 months in advance I called our local Nature Center and made a reservation for a Saturday afternoon, the park rangers will show some animals and take the children on a small nature walk and do some netting at the forest pond.

Then it comes to the food and favor planning, my favorites of course! Our party was in the mid afternoon, so some healthy snacks and THE cake were enough, no pizza required. Even though the veggie and fruit trays seem convenient, you get a lot more for your buck when you buy it separately and it is so much fresher as well. I got celery, carrots, grape tomatoes and (European) cucumber. For fruits I gathered a huge box of strawberries, black berries and a nice honey dew melon.

To balance the healthy and sweet I bought healthy (no partially hydrogenated oils) cheese puffs, pretzels and crackers, some cheeses and a big jar of Tuscan hummus at Trader Joe. For drinks I thought it would be better to reduce the trash by buying big bottles instead of boxes and small bottles, so we had (no high fructose) fruit punch, grape juice and water. Since part of this party was about being green I really did my best to buy biodegradable items like paper plates and cups and paper table covers (that was the hardest one!). Luckily there are more and more options available.

Sarah is not a big cake lover, but she loves ice cream, so we got her a big bad (to balance the good and bad LOL) ice cream cake at Baskins and Robins, Spongebob and his friends were too tempting!

My favorite part of the party are the favor bags. It is often the last thing and too much to deal with and so it ends up to be that plastic baggie with plastic toys and more plastic wrapped candies. I just could not do it that way and I found out I am not the only one! Green moms unite! I bought for each child a vegetable and flower seed packet, 2 small biodegradeable plant pots and found a nice alternative for the sweet tooth: Annie's snackpacks come in Cheddar Bunnies and Chocolate (chip).