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 deal with the guilt trip of tossed plate wear, busted balloons, and fondant cakes with more slide than an energy wasting inflatable slide.

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 friends to celebrate 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 Plate wear

I came across greenpartygoods.com a few weeks ago. From colorful plate wear made from corn to sustainable flatware made of bamboo, this store has it all. My favorite is their plate ware made of sugarcane which can be drawn on by the kids with edible markers (also available through their store). 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 plate wear, 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. For Izzie’s Birthday, we raided the local second hand stores for a whimsical hodge podge of plates and flatwear.

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 flowers are 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. If you do choose cut, be sure they are local and organic, the excess oil used in transporting and pesticides make this a sticky subject. To be safe, try growing your own cut flower garden.

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 from photos of 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 could work…but with all the VOCs and toxins associated with them, a better solution is to glue a strip of fabric around each one to make great silverware holders. It takes less time and they turn out way cuter in the end.

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!

American Beautyberry, originally uploaded by pellaea.

I blame you.

The American Beautyberries have come into…berry? Seed? Bloom? And I decided it would be AWESOME to venture out to the local berry picking haunts and pick some. Ever since the blogosphere ignited with stories of Freezer Jam and photos of perfectly ripened berries last month…I’ve been itching to try a new recipe I found for these gorgeous wild berries in our area (reprinted below). And now they were here! So I hit the tubes to find out how much I would need (1.5 quarts) along with a few other odd bits of information I didn’t think relevant at the time and off we went.

Mutant, Crazy Blood Sucking Zombies
So we got to the place, shut off the car and ventured off…all lathered in Skin So Soft and armed with baggies. To my dismay, the berries still weren’t completely ripe. So I snatched a cutting to see if I could grow it (yay foldable embroidery scissors…perfect for sneaky snipping) picked a few palmetto berries from a near by palm and headed back to the car. RAN back to the car make that. Sorry avon but your skin so soft might work on those Northern Skeeters, but we have super skeeters here. Mutant, crazy, super skeeters that followed us into the car.

After swatting the dozen that snuck into the closed car, D dug out the keys. Usually this is the point where the key…in the ignition starts the car. Ckick, click, click, click is NOT the sound of a car starting. The car wasn’t starting. Sitting in the middle of Mosquito Forest, in a dark car with no air conditioning, we realized the battery was dead. It was like a bad horror move…with ittsy-bittsy tiny Romero zombies with wings.

Existential Conversations
Iz and I sat in the car, trading the increasing temperatures for the potential West Nile virus as D waited for our designated jumper to arrive. Finally, soaking wet and on the verge of heat stroke I realized something I had read online today. American Beautyberries are a natural insect repellent. But which part? I couldn’t remember. Anything was better than this, so I hopped out of the car, grabbed a few handfuls of the berries and smooshed them into the baby after hesitating a second to convince myself they were safe:

Bad S: birds eat them…

Good S: but birds get drunk on fermented fruit too.

Bad S: Yeah, on college campuses. Everyone gets drunk in college.

Good S: Good point. Besides, the whole jelly thing. And you ate them a few times and didn’t get sick

So on to the smooshing.
Iz looked at me shocked. Shocked gave way to WTF which eventually gave way to a giant smile and feet flailing. After rubbing ourselves down with tiny purple balls we sat in the shade and waited. The mosquitoes never came. The berries actually worked. American Beautyberries are an excellent all natural insect repellent, and they smell great too! Now I might have used the wrong part of the plant, you might be sitting out there going “your doing it wrong”. But it worked…who knew?

American BeautyBerry Jelly
Found via Biosphere Buzz
via Florida’s Incredible Wild Edibles, by Dick Deuerling and Peggy Lantz (a book I’ve read from the library recently, but it’s here on amazon for 6 Bucks (p.s. affiliate link: support the madness, or freegan it from the library like us)

1 ½ qts. of beautyberries, washed
2 qts. water

Boil 20 minutes and strain to make infusion
Use 3 cups of the infusion, bring to boil, add 1 enve-
lope Sure-Jell and 4 ½ cups sugar. Bring to second boil
and boil 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand until
foam forms. Skim off foam, pour into sterilized jars, cap.

P.S. Check out this recipe for Beautyberrie Jelly Rolls…nom.

Googling today, I found I overlooked a small thing…just our FEATURE ON CRAFTZINE! Totally Rock! My bad, how did I miss that one? Click the pic below to see the feature.

I am super surprised that our little ole’ Urban Homestead has made such a splash the last few months. It’s so peaceful and does wonders for the spirit of the backyard.

P.S. I found a copy of Bartholomew’s book over at Amazon. This is a must add to your collection. Buy it. Now. (Affiliate link…help support the madness)

Juniata is stalking me. They want alumni donations…

This is amazing, if you don’t know me, because I never legally changed my name to my new “married-ish” name. In fact, I never really got married, just married-ish. We are abstaining from such jibberish until it is legal for all (and we are in negotiation right now if the California ruling has made it “legal for all” which it might). Until then it’s just a transfer of property and whatev, my husband-ish tells me my dowry wasn’t big enough. Joking, we had a beautiful soul binding down in Key West on October 14, 2006…that and the whole “happy family” thing has us pretty well chained together for ETERNITY! I didn’t wear white…

Baptismal. My maid of honors threw me in the ocean…the dry cleaner looked at me like I was retarded bringing in a moldy, fish smelling dress.

yeah, we look young…and dirty. dirty hippies in the keys. look out.

Our bachelor party at Margaritaville…after the ceremony. But just to unjinx, we had our “divorce” party two months after we met, we figured getting it out of the way would be…refreshing.

…you were being talked about?

Yeah, we be there.

Amy Butler Wide-Legged Lounge Pants, originally uploaded by Meryl CA.

In case you missed my bloglines addiction, I have one. And, thanks to the BlogHer conference going on last week, I have kept on top of my bloglines for a whole week…that’s right…ZERO outstanding posts. But I have noticed one thing…there is a flavr, and that flavr is:

- Amy Butler In Stitches Vintage Sheet Pants EVERYWHERE! (and here)(here)(here)(and don’t forget here)I would like a pair of these, really I would. They look so comfy, but I don’t have the time. I have 12 curtains and 4 quilts to finish before Christmas, preferably sooner. I could always buy them here.

- Freezer Jam. It’s strawberry season everywhere….but here. And so everyone is out at the Pick-your-own fields stocking their freezers and jammin’ in the kitchen. My kitchen is filled with the sounds… of crickets. No Strawberry Freezer Jam for you!

- Dooce @ Blogher… Dooce is talking about it (but only like “oh yeah, i was asked to speak at blogher, yawn, then I broke a nail and the dog dumped on the floor). Bossy is talking about it. Even this chick is talking about it. My goal next year is to get dooce to sign my chest. MOMMY BLOG GROUPIE! Wonder if I can drive there in a VW van. Sweet! OMG! It’s DOOOOOOOOCCCCEEEE! CAN I HAVE YOUR BABY?!?!?!?

- Renegade Craft Fair… Blog reading was so boring during the weeks following the renegade craft fair. It was like “look how cool we are to have this in our area…we walked here bringing our hip grocery carts in tow, right after we stopped at the neighborhood Whole Foods. What were you doing? Dodging old people in the street? Oh, on the sidewalk? LAME. Whatev.”

So everything cool happens in San Francisco, but you know what? I DON’T LIVE in SF. I live NEAR Miami, and this week we are going to Miami and I’m going to have Mojitos. AND MOJITOS…are so much cooler than hipsters. So whatever. SF has what? Fair Trade organic coffee? LAME. WE HAVE MOJITOS! WOHOOO!

So WHAT AM I blogging about?

My pee test. Yep. I got a pee test. They had to see what kind of goodies I’ve been pumping into my body. No weed? Good. But what is this? I think your caffeine intake is pushing “abuse”.

We got presents! The girls got matching vintage pillow case dresses from Grandma P, Webkins and a “I have SOL” outfit from Grandma L and Mimi brought mommy a fresh georgia peach this morning when she came to watch the girls for my out and abouts. Got that…FRESH GA PEACH. From like 70 miles away. Beat that with your freezer jam. YOU CAN’T! Oh no, you can’t!

swear. want.

So Holly, over at Decor8 is hosting this great give away…here is just a sneak of some of it all…AND I DROLLED ALL OVER THE SCREEN (but at least that is one way to get the baby prints off of it)

1. preparing…, 2. preparing…, 3. preparing…, 4. preparing…, 5. preparing…, 6. preparing…, 7. …still sorting, 8. …still sorting, 9. …still sorting, 10. …still sorting, 11. …still sorting, 12. …still sorting, 13. …still sorting, 14. i can’t even tell you how busy i’ve been…, 15. i can’t even tell you how busy i’ve been…, 16. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 17. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 18. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 19. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 20. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 21. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 22. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 23. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 24. decor8 “inspire me” giveaway, 25. IMG_4536, 26. IMG_4537, 27. IMG_4570, 28. IMG_4571, 29. IMG_4581, 30. IMG_4588, 31. IMG_4531, 32. IMG_4543, 33. IMG_4544, 34. IMG_4547, 35. IMG_4548, 36. IMG_4557

And P.S. Apparently Secret is strong enough for a man, David wore my lavender scent today b/c he couldn’t find his old spice. By the end of the day it smelt very boy like though, like I want to hide my face in your arm pit for a few hours (I love boy smell…good smelling boy smell, not rolling in poop and sweat smell). He told me not to blog about this, so I did.

Babble’s 14 Lies to stop telling your kids. Do people really do number 14? I’m not saying I would, but I can see why they would. There have been many a nights where by the time bedtime roles around, there is barely enough energy to crawl in the sack let alone roll in it.