Nanucoder’s first birthday party

(Editor’s note: This post was written by S, who as you shall see, put in a lot of thought, time and energy into making the birthday party not only different but also memorable.)

“We should eat organic, because why should we have fun and not the earth?” I read this on the organic spinach box at a local grocery store. And it was then that I decided to do an eco-friendly party for Nanucoder’s first birthday.

My friends commented “Why now? Why do it on your kid’s first birthday? You can do it later when he grows up.”  Admittedly I was daunted with the idea of a party with kids and 30+ adults without the many conviniences that single use plastic products provide. But it was a personal challenge for me. I was not going to celebrate my kid’s birthday by leaving him a giant swirling garbage patch.

I started by reading up a few blogs of Mommies who did eco-friendly parties for their kids. Through their blogs I found this great site Stubby Pencil Studio where I could find a lot of cool and green, yet not so expensive party supplies. Kate, the owner of this site, also sent some free goodies with my order, to accommodate my venture. Also, I had a lot of help from M (M is family friend) in doing the decorations.

Invitations:
This was a no-brainer. We simply used evites, emails and the traditional phone calls.

Decorations:
We decided to make most of the decorations ourselves. The intention was if we put in enough effort to make the decorations, it will incentivize me to save it and reuse it. So M and I made this Happy Birthday banner from scratch! (Never thought I would say that about something that’s not food). We cut them, stuck them, painted them and strung them.

Then I used Nanucoder’s baby socks, which he had grown out of, and strung them up in a Christmassy fashion.

I bought a festive flag, made of cloth from Stubby Pencil. It added a lot of color and ran all across the room. I admit this was an expensive item. (And the fact that it came from Holland, not so green. But again a great reason to reuse.)

I also got some great decoration ideas from this website. So M made the boats using the paper from some old magazines and I wrapped them with crepe paper. She also made some colorful fishes (For some kids at my party, this was the most attractive thing, because they got to pick the fish they wanted to take back home.)

Cake:
I dint want to go to a very high-end bakery and get an expensive cake and at the same time, the local bakeries that I went to decorated the cakes with plastic toys. I went to 3 different Cake shops and they all turned me down. I had to either select from the custom designs (= plastic toys) or choose a plain cake. But I wanted a pretty cake! Finally, a really sweet manager at the Ralph’s bakery agreed to do an Under-the-Sea theme with plants, fishes and octopus. And all this with just icing, no plastic toys, and voila!

Party favors:
For the goodies, I bought some wooden toys, crayons and stainless steel water bottles from Stubby Pencil. For the goody bags, we wrapped the gifts with brown and colored paper that I had saved from some previous gifts.

Tableware:
We borrowed some plates, bowls, steel forks and spoons from friends. But I couldn’t avoid using paper cups and napkins. Since we had a lot of kids at the party, I dint want people leaving their glasses around and breaking them. (If anyone has better ideas about that, please leave a comment)

Food:
This was a major setback. I ordered falafels, hummus, pita chips and pita bread from a local Mediterranean restaurant. The food was really good, but the restaurant owner dint really share my vision. My husband took some containers the day before the party, from home, in which he could deliver the hummus. But the restaurant owner was more like the presentation guy, and he instead sent 15 orders of hummus, each in a different plastic container. Yikes! (Note to self for next time; make sure you deal with a restaurateur who appreciates the effort you are taking.)

So all in all, it went well. And I am happy that I at least tried. This was indeed a very fulfilling event of my life. A special thanks to M! It wouldn’t have been so wonderful without your help.

(More pics)

Tagged as: NanuCoder, S