Izzy’s Birthday is a little under a month and a half away. So now is about the time I start going neurotic with the planning. I’ve always found it a challenge to idea with the guilt trip of tossed platewear, busted balloons, and fondant cakes with more slide than the Slip and Slide we used at our last party to keep the kids entertained.

Green celebrations aren’t as much about finding alternatives to commercially produced bright party stuff as they are redefining the meaning of the party to begin with. Going green means remembering what we are celebrating, the happiness with having that little somebody in our lives and inviting guest a glimpse at what that means.

So to start off the first of our series on Eco-Friendly Birthday Parties, we take a look at decorations! You know: the bright paper plates in full glossy regalia, the plastic signs and flag banners you throw away every year and the hundreds of dollars some parents spend on this whole ordeal. It’s almost mind boggling to think of how “disposable” it all is.

Green Friendly Platewear

I came across greenpartygoods.com a few weeks ago. From colorful platewear made from corn to sustainable flatware made of bamboo, this store has it all. My favorite is their plateware made of sugarcane which can be drawn on by the kids with edible markers, which they also sell. They even offer hand crafted favors for kids and hand dyed garlands.

Reusable is the best way to go, if you have the storage space. If you are looking for affordable platewear, try Ikea. My husband and I found plates and flatwear were cheaper to buy here than to rent when we were looking for our soulbinding ceremonies. Don’t have the storage space? Your local homeless shelter would love the donations or resell them on Craigslist!

Reusable Birthday Banners

Another area that greenpartygoods.com covers is one of my favorites: fabric banners that can be reused from year to year. Where as greenpartygoods.com does have a few in stock, I’ve found Etsy.com to be the best place to find a HUGE selection of banners, just search for “bunting” in their handmade section and walla! Over 400 options as of this writing!

A great replacement to the birthday banner in general, or in addition to it is to string a “clothes line” which could be rope, ribbon or yarn where you would normally fly the banners: along a wall, along a fence, up high to the ceiling (works best for babies) and clothes pin some of their keepsake outfits to the line. Attaching little notes or photos of the birthday baby in their outfit is a great way to invite the guests to a more personal level.

Table Decorations

And never underestimate the beauty of flowers! Cut is the first things that come to mind, but rooted plants are better! Bamboo is typical, but even strawberry plants make excellent table center pieces and double as favors.

Get creative with things from around the house! Teddy bears, toys and family photos make free centerpieces. Every year I put together a photo album for the girls on the year before as my present to them. On their birthdays, we dig the albums out and lay them around the seating areas for guests to flip through.

Quick and Easy Family Tree Centerpiece

1. Send the kids out to bring home fallen twigs from around the yard, park or neighborhood.
2. Set these in a tall glass vase in the center of the table (or gift table if you have one, drink table, buffet table, etc.)
3. Print out family photos, cut into circles,
4. Hole punch at the top, add a small cut of ribbon and tie on to the sticks.
Walla! It’s not a centerpiece…it’s an instant conversation starter.

Recycled Birthday Decorations

What you can’t dig up from around the house can easily be created. Spray Paint cans, or better yet, glue a strip of fabric around each one to make great silverware holders.

Lots of these ideas can be used in whatever theme you decide to go with. Check out Kiwi Magazines list of a bagillion Green Kid’s Party Ideas for inspiration.

The Medicine Woman, a new-to-me blog I’ve recently fallen in love with, is a must see. This woman is amazing! A practicing herbalist in the Anima Medicine Woman Tradition with a writing style like none other, everyday is filled with new recipes, medicinal inspirations and more following the lines of “Bioregionalism”. She says about her practive:

 My practice is focused on local plants, sustainability, whole person/whole plant understandings and earthy, practical ways of teaching people to work with the plants themselves rather than being dependent on experts. (…) Traditional healers have long known that the medicine we need the most, grows very near to us.

Today she posted a recipe for Green Olive and Pomegranete Relish. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Check it out!

It went a little something like this…

F: La, la, la…oh, look over there —> Melbourne. That looks nice. I think I’ll SIT HERE a while.

The end.

And so the heavens opened up and the roads were full of big SPLISH! And I was sick. And in my squeaky no-voice I begged D to let me go play (outside of the car which we drove up and down streets JUST TO SEE how stuck we could get). And he said “no.” and it was not good. And so women, being of sound mind and unsound body, did negotiate. And it was so.

D: Ye can go swim in the mighty river-streets if ye wear this…techni-color rain gear.

And it was so.

And so she played in the puddle and did think it swell.

S: Gee, this is swell.

And then they came to where the rivers ran over their banks and the water ran red (with Brakish delight).

And it was not swell.

S: This sucks and is not swell.

The End

“You’re not exactly gardening-y” -super cool bloggity blogging site on trying to figure out which category to feature WereAllMadHere.com in…paraphrased.

My garden, itself, concurs.

My Apology:

Followers of the Madness, I apologize. I haven’t exactly been much of anything the last few weeks. My desperate attempts to not fall off the edge of blogland has left me with a collection of lackluster entries. I am a horrible, horrible person.

Since I’ve started this new project I’ve been super busy, just yesterday I fielded 150 emails…in three hours alone! I’ve neglected you, substituting entries on how many birds one can stuff inside one another for anything of real substance. A reader cannot live on sake alone. And I have heard you. I swear to you to wrap my head around my schedule and not leave you with twitter-esque entries anymore. I’ll bring you more green, more homesteading and more emo-preschoolin’.

Dooce at Blogher

All of you guys who traveled here looking for “Dooce + Blogher” posts from google, sorry. If you ask google “who’s mad at dooce?” yeah…we’re there. Top ten. After this post, probably top three, under the great and powerful dooce herself. We’re not mad at dooce, just for not talking about all the kick ass chicks she met at Blogher. But with so many wigs, we can understand the snub. I’m not really a dooce hater. She just needs to get out of my keyword searches.

P.S. It’s Raining

See that little town under that big tropical storm? That’s us. D and I were out today looking for roads to swim in. Sigh, we never get any fun.

S: What is Fay doing? She is just hovering over us.

D: Wants to be closer to the cool.

If you have no clue…you should. If you’ve never tried it, you should. If you live in Indian River County, FL, go to Inlet Wines in Sebastian and have them order you one. Else wise best wishes or travel to Louisiana. Bryan cooked the one that has been hibernating in his freezer, waiting for Hurricane season so it could emerge and be eaten before the power goes out. Or the annual “Hurricane off The Port Bow” Celebration.

Sigh. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a blowing?

It’s like the weatherman takes a big red marker, circles the ENTIRE southern coast line and smiles, proud of himself “There,” he says, “It will land there. Be sure to visit our sponsor.” And then the news wipes their entire line up and loops this nonsense for an hour straight.

Seedlings, originally uploaded by shellgreenier.

Our newest babies, a week and a half old.

The baby Powder Incident, originally uploaded by shellgreenier.

I was returning emails and smelled the faint odor of baby powder in the air. I called D.
S: please tell me you didn’t leave the bottle of baby powder where they could reach it.
D: ahhhh.
Door opens, two ghosts come out. I grabbed the camera. The bottle in the fifth image is empty, the particles were just in the air. Then it hits me…that can’t be good.

It’s all fun and games until Poison Control gets called. After 10 minutes of “what’s your name, you number, you waist size” I finally got my answer: watch eyes and breathing for an hour. Now that I am on “America’s Worst Parents” list…

Over and out.

Announcer: (on Russia leading the comp on first rotation tonight) America doesn’t really need to worry about where Russia is right now

Bryan: giggling* Yeah, they’re in Georgia.

P.s. did anyone else notice the “16″ year old Chinese member with the missing baby teeth, or were we the only ones?

I have about a week or so of blogs to catch you up on…including my trip to TN, the newest member to add to our family (cat, not baby), and the perils of air travel…or waiting. But tonight’s topic: I seem to have lost my boobs. I must have misplaced them in TN. Actually, I tried to keep up with pumping while I was gone but to no avail, and I figured maybe at least half of my new boobs would stick around. But I’m back to being Flat Stanley.

Izzy seems to be losing interest anyway. She stands up while attached and tries to flip around…much the way an alligator goes into a death role with a victim. It’s about the same.

So what it boils down to is my nursing days are over (with this one) but I am not sure if emotionally I am ready. I’m actually really, really heart broken. Izzy’s moving to the older side of infanthood and I’m losing my baby. I can feel baby fever growing again but then I look at how much work two is at this point and it quickly wains. Does anyone have any tips on how to just DEAL!?!

Imoms Meeting of the Moms is in full swing here in Knoxville, TN. A few highlights:

1. 4 Nipples.

You can find a lot out about a person from their responses to “2 Truths, 1 Lie”. (WHY DOES THE 2:1 Ratio always bring up nightmares of 2 Girls, 1 Cup…Cake

2. “Holy Sh*t, I Crashed my Blog” is NOT proper use of keywords in a title.

Last night I came home from 2.5 glasses of chardonnay (in mommy years that’s two bottles for all you college kiddos out there) to find my blog crashed. Stopped working. My bad. I was playing with new wiki software (wikipedia’s open source) and crashed it all! MUAHAHAHa. Or that’s my excuse. Really, some distraught dooce fan came along and sabotaged it in retribution of my MommyBlogger Groupie Comment. (P.S. Dooce: Still waiting for that signature!) Obviously I fixed it, much to their disdain. kind of.

3. Who the hell is Scott from Philly?

Trying to track down a previous post about setting up a wireless network while drunk (no luck) turned up a random post about some so-called “Scott from Philly” WHO I CAN’T REMEMBER!

4. Whhaaaa?

Sometimes small business owners scare me… I saw this want ad the other day on myspace (first mistake). Second mistake(S):

I am looking for someone part-time who may be willing to work for merchandise. The days and hours will be very sparatic. I am willing to pay in cash for some hours depending on how much I need you (s: really??? “Willing to pay in cash?” You’re swell!). I need someone who is outgoing and reliable (S: which you are sure to get). You must have worked in retail before and have a source of transportation (s: which you won’t be able to afford to use to get here, b/c I DON’T PAY YOU!). I expect a lot from my girls so if you aren’t a hard worker and detail oriented please do not apply. (S: wonders how the IRS works this one out).

“I expect a lot from my girls”… that you won’t pay them and can’t give them reliable hours? Sounds to me like you’ll catch a winner. AND THEN two months later she’ll be whining about how she “can’t get any good help”. YIKES.

5. B: I wonder if they can take a picture of me with my face torn off?

…for my horror movie resume?

I love Bryan. He’s been my brother for ages (just like siblings, we hated each other growing up). Now he is waiting to go in for surgery for a septum that hates him and, while frightened, is in good spirits about it all.

B: How kick ass of a myspace pic would THAT be?

6. Your Baby This Week: 9 months 4 weeks

She’s turning ten months soon? NOOOOO