Healthy Green Birthday Parties- Part 2

My baby girl turned 1 in May.  Time sure flies:)  I can`t say the party was a totally green affair, but there were a few touches that I enjoyed creating and helped me enjoy all the other work that tends to surround birthdays.
We invited everyone in our usual way, with an evite invitation.  This site allows us to personalize the card with a picture, if desired, and gives reminders to guests and also RSVP updates.  We decided to have the guests bring donations for a local charity, instead of gifts for the birthday girl.  Our house is filled with so many things, that adding more is definitely not necessary.  We chose the Wildlife Rescue Association for a few reasons.  My husband and I have done volunteer work with the Association, it is local and we love animals.  Our choice of a charity was narrowed down by using the Canadahelps site.  The weather was not cooperating, so we ended up going to an indoor play place.  It was perfect for the 1 year olds and still great for the 4 year olds.  It was a 2 hour time-limit in which the kids played and ate cake and snacks and weren't required to sit and watch the guest open up each of their gifts.  It's tough to sit still when you are a kid and there are so many activities to do.  We served meat, cheese, veggies, fruit, chips, pretzels, cheerios and other baby snacks.

I was very proud of the cake we made for our daughter.   If you can't tell, it is a ladybug. 

I do not like to use food colouring, so I decorated the cake using jumbo chocolate chips, strawberries and cocoa in the icing.  I made a yummy banana cake and frosted it with cream cheese icing, adding cocoa to the dark icing.  I made cupcakes to give to the kids so they could easily devour them:)

I also worked very hard on the party favours.  We decided to give out sunflowers, but the weather didn't allow them to grow as quickly as we thought they would.  I wanted something else as a backup, so I made up cookies in a jar (not healthy ones) and decorated the jar with ladybug ribbon.  I did make a gluten-free batch for a friend who has wheat allergies.  We ended up giving out a sunflower to each child (they were just starting to sprout) and a cookie jar to each family.

The party ended up being very easy, inexpensive and I appreciated the green touches to it.  We had no toys given or received that break and end up in the landfills.  My daughter had 2 hummingbirds and a Douglas Squirrel adopted in her name.  The 2 species of hummingbirds and the squirrel are all local to our area and native species.  Best of all, I got to sit, chat and relax and didn't have a big clean-up to do:)