A few weeks ago, my Little Sir turned 3 years old! He requested a “racecar” birthday party. He likes all racecars, so he wasn’t really picky about a Disney theme, just cars in general. You can read more about the specifics of the birthday party on our family blog. I am really not much of a party planner, but it was important to me, as always, to keep our ecological footprint as small as possible with this party. I did go with some disposable plates, cups, and napkins. Sorry, earth. At some point I do plan to purchase bamboo plates and utensils. Expensive. Later.

So, OK, I had to focus on only one thing to “green”: the favor bags. If you have young kids, you know that favor bags are typically full of plastic things that are thrown away eventually and never, ever biodegrade. I was determined not to contribute to that kind of waste.

For the bag itself, I bought a yard of Disney Cars fabric from our fabric store and made simple drawstring bags with grosgrain ribbons. There were only 4 seams on each one, so it really didn’t take much time. Here is a picture of what was inside, pictured laying on top of one of the bags:

1. Cars Halloween themed pencil erasers
2. Car shaped crayon that I made out of our old, broken crayon collection using this tutorial found on Pinterest.
3. Each guest got a Hot Wheels racecar. The metal kind.
4. Cars temporary tattoos. This was also an activity at the party – I had a sponge out and everyone got to apply tattooes.
5. Not pictured – most guests did get one of those paper party blowers, I just didn’t have any leftover. Hopefully since they were paper they were biodegradeable.

Now that I look at the list, it could have been more eco-friendly, but this is a good start. We’ll try again for Little Lady’s birthday!