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A frugal and eco birthday party

We recently celebrated Little Eco's 4th birthday with an attempt at a good-old-fashioned simple and frugal birthday party.

Free_picnik_party_invitation

The party invitations were free. I made them using Picnik and printed them on our home printer.

Little Eco is obsessed with Pass the Parcel. To her, it's the most important part of a party. But there's no way I was going to buy 23 plastic thingies to use as prizes, so instead I printed my favourite free printables on recycled paper, creating....

Pass-the-parcel-prize-free-printables-sewing-cards

sewing cards (downloaded from here and here),

Pass_the_parcel_prize_free_printables_paper_doll

paper dolls (from here, found via here), and a few stickers to make up numbers after getting a little tired of cutting.

Pass-the-parcel-recycled-wrapping

I wrapped the parcel using old maps rescued from work.

Pass-the-parce

Pass-the-parcel-sewing

Decorating_party_bags_crowns

We also had a treasure hunt. The kids decorated their own treasure bags (and party crowns) and then went in search of a few treasures....

Treasure-huntmaps

Treasure-hunt-prize-homemade-playdough

Treasures included a few lollies and a pack of home made play-dough.

Vintage-party-dress

Little Eco continued last years vintage dress theme, wearing a dress she excitedly discovered at an antique store.

Handmade-party-bunting-prayer-flag-decorations

We re-used last year's handmade party bunting and floor cushions (which have also done the rounds of a few parties in between).

Each child also made their own mini pizza, even flattening their own dough. Sadly I don't have any pictures of that delightful chaos.

I decided in the end that there's nothing simple about simple birthday parties. I had my poor parents and sister cutting, baking, mixing and creating till late the night before. It was worth it, but I think next year i'll embrace unstructured play time.

How about you? Do you have any eco or frugal party ideas?

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