Back in the Spring, I posted about our 5 Hints & Tips to reduce the Plastic-Footprint of your Party. Our eldest is a Summer baby, so it was time to get back to the (plastic free) drawing board for party bags. I'd love to share what we came up with and provide some inspiration for plastic free party bags for your own parties.
Home-made Lavender Eye Pillows.
Back towards the end of the Summer, 10YO said we should collect up our lavender heads and make something with them. I suggested lavender eye pillows and she was all over it. After many sessions of separating the flowers (and 10YO insisted some of the leaves because they smell nice too), we ended up with a jar of lavender, which we mixed with some rice.
We then used some material scraps (see next project) to make some bags for our lavender and rice mixture. And voila! Lavender Eye Pillows ready for lots of sleeping at the birthday sleepover! (Note: that did NOT happen - my final grump at the non-sleepers was at 1:30am!)
Homemade Stuffed Toys
My eco-brain-washing is obviously having an effect, because 10YO came up with the idea to make her own stuffed toys for her friends, instead of buying new. So off she went to the charity shops on the high street, and came back with a green scarf, a grey shirt, a black shirt, a white shirt and a yellow t-shirt. Plus when she told the shop owners what she was doing, one of them suggested a fluffy cat basket, the back rim of which formed the snake's body.
A few spare buttons, and a cut up Cheeky Wipe later, (plus a good amount of parent-participation), and there you have it - four personalised stuffed toys!
Final touches
Instead of buying new (even plastic-free) party bags, we dug out old gift bags we'd been given and kept. Plus a plastic-free party-bag wouldn't be complete without a trip to our local traditional sweet shop, Sweet Memories, served up and sold in paper bags.
I won't lie, it took some time and a great deal of effort. It certainly wouldn't have been possible if we'd had 30 kids to the party! But with four friends over for a sleep-over, plus the thought we'd had a month or so before that, to make eye pillows, it was definitely doable. And fun even!
Our end result may not have been as 'polished' as shop-bought goodies, but 10YO's friends loved them! Plus everything was second-hand, plastic-free and some of it recyclable, and even biodegradable. Not perfect, but a step in the right direction, and hopefully a bit of inspiration for plastic free party bags for your own party.
Together we can keep moving forward on this plastic-free journey, towards zero-waste, up-hill struggle as it is...
As always, with love from our family to yours,
Elena x