Birthday Bash from Tracey Monette

By Tracey Monette www.CleverMonkeyGraphics.blogspot.com

Thought you might enjoy hearing a bit about Taylor's (my daughter) 10th Birthday Party this past weekend. She chose a green theme which gave me unique but fun challenges in creating a fun party for 10 girls. Naturally I did use my own kit to create her invites! And will do so to hand out the thank you cards too.

I did a lot of research online on doing this type of party. Not much info exists yet, does it! Loved the links on your site. But I had to make sure the games etc fit my age group and the fact that things couldn't happen outdoors in winter.

I went to a store downtown in Portland called Scrap (http://scrapaction.org/about-scrap/). Pouring through all their donated merchandise I found lots of great stuff to go into crafts for Taylor's party. I had the girls create assemblage art pieces on old hard cover book - covers. I had them layering up all sorts of cut out papers, patterns, fabric, vinyl samples, buttons, zippers and other mostly just found objects on the covers. Most of these turned out very fun looking.  I bought a bunch of old records there and we melted them into bowls. And finally I took old cardboard found in a shopping cart at Michaels and had them create mini art journals. I had even purchased old vinyl floor tiles for the girls to set the glue bottles on so as not to mess up my dining room in any permanent way. The table was also protected with old packing paper that I have insisted we hold onto for the past 10 years and occasionally use for various projects!

I had trouble thinking out games they would enjoy that could be done inside that really had to do with 'green'. So instead I made sure I wasn't having to buy ANYTHING to do the games. They were games that mostly used their imagination and they had so much fun with them.

For decorations I did make a banner with old paper scrapbooking paper that I haven't really touched since the day I went digital. Instead of putting up balloons, I got round paper lanterns which will be reusable for many years to come. And then we even found some accordian style fold out ones at the SCRAP store.

Safeway screwed up our cake so badly - can you say UGGGGGLY - that I was almost not going to bother taking it home. But instead I recycled it in a sense. I made them put more icing on top which at least altered the ugliness and they handed it to me for free.

I was going to use real plates and cups. But I realize part of the 'green' theory is using what you have wisely. Well we had an assortment of leftover cups etc from years of previous birthday parties.So instead I put them to use!

I asked Taylor if she wanted to do birthday presents where people donate a sum to a website that give her some of the money to spend and donates another part to a worthy cause of her chosing. But Taylor said she didn't want to go THAT green this year. LOL LOL  At 10, I'm not surprised. I did see varying attempts at green from the guests in the cards they created and with one who wrapped her gift in an insideout grocery bad, and one who gave Taylor a new 'green' water bottle. Funny thing was that some of the guests kind of went opposite of green with their daughters insisting they be taken out to get a 'green' earthy style shirt to wear to the party!

Tracey is an illustrator (the ones in this post are from her Birthday Bash collection), who made makes awesome digital scrapbooking kits. Check her out via her blog.