Eco Friendly Play Silk Party

My youngest daughter turned four this weekend and although it is always bittersweet when one of my girls turns another year older, it is also a wonderful time to celebrate her life and just have a good time. Lately I have been getting tired of big house parties where I let the girls invite anyone and everyone...maybe it's my age or maybe it's that at my last house party my youngest broke her arm and left me very stressed, but either way, I am done with the madness. This year I told Sienna she could invite 3 friends over for pizza and cake...she informed me that she also wanted her 3 friends' older siblings to come so her older sister could have friends to play with. So, in true fashion, we didn't just invite Sienna's friends, but we invited our 3 favorite families over to celebrate. We wanted to have an eco friendly celebration with limited waste and came up with the idea for a play silk party. Here is how our eco friendly play silk party played out...

Everyone showed up on time which was wonderful! I gathered the 8 children into the kitchen and asked them if they knew what a play silk was. Some of them did and some of them didn't. So I went on to explain that a play silk is a piece of silk material that can be used for dressing up, building forts, throwing around, dancing with, or many other things. Then I showed them a white un dyed play silk and told the kids we would be dying the silks. The kids each picked what color they wanted and we turned these plain white silks into beautiful and colorful play silks (check back later in the week for a tutorial on how to dye play silks using kool aid).

Then the kids went on their way to the play room to play. I put out a basket of play silks in the middle of the floor in the hopes that they would find them and start to experience the wonder of these simple little items. My hopes were fulfilled when I peeked in after a few minutes and they were fully engaged in play silk play. They used them in so many fun ways including covering one person up from head to toe then having the adults guess who was under the silks, putting some music on and throwing them around, and my favorite, putting them on their heads and walking around hunched over with sticks pretending to be old men and women.

At the end of the night each child got to take home their silk as well as a music CD that I had made. The night was a hit and the smaller group of people made for a much lower stress party for me. After the last guest left, I walked around the house smiling to myself as I noticed all the play silks scattered throughout the house.

I mentioned earlier I wanted this to be an eco friendly party and I was so happy with how little waste was produced from this party. Below is a list of things we did, and you can too, to have your own eco friendly party

1. Forgo the decorations. I was tempted to buy balloons, but didn't and no one missed them.

2. Make your own cake. As you can see my cake wasn't fancy and that was fine with everyone. I did use a gluten free cake mix which came in minimal packaging

3. If you are going to give out party favors, give out something that will last and can be used and forget about the small plastic toys. Check out my blog post here for more ideas on eco friendly goodie bags.

4. All the presents at this party were wrapped in reusable items including a pillow case, a piece of fabric, and a reusable bag. If you are close with the party guests you could mention to them you are having a low waste party and to please wrap using something reusable.

5. Forget about the paper plates and plastic silverware. Having a smaller party really allowed me to just use my every day plates and silverware...no need for plastic or paper anything.

6. No juice boxes needed. The kids were served water and there were no complaints

7. Email invitations. Again with the small party I was able to just call or email the guests and invite them.

If you have other ideas, please feel free to add them in the comments!

Eco Friendly Play Silk Party