Green Party

Today we had a birthday party to attend for one of Ryan's very old friends. His daughter was turning 1. It was of course a kids fest! One of the little munchkins there was just about Jude's age. She was born about a week and a half before Jude and is a monster of a little girl! The two of them made googley eyes at one another. Ryan socialized with his old friends and I chit chatted with the other ladies there.

At one point we went down in the basement to check out the kid zone and it was chaos! Kids and toys strewn about the living room. I swear that the second we walked down the steps one little boy began beating Ryan with a plastic golf club (and this kid had some force). When the kid realized that Ryan wasn't yelling at him for hitting him with the stick he began picking up little pieces of toys and throwing them at Ryan. Slowly the toys got larger, heavier and were thrown faster. I of course had to run and leave Ryan in the trenches.

Which brings me to my shopping experience for this birthday party...

When rooting through toys 'r us for a gift earlier in the day, I didn't know exactly what to get a 1 year old little girl so did a little browsing. I wanted to avoid the basic fisher price toys that you see in every house hold (assuming they already had most of them from their first child). I usually like to go in the direction of educational toys (always a hit - sike). I ended up coming across a little end cap of 100% recycled toys. I think I stopped initially because there was a truck I saw and wanted for Jude made from recycled wood (the closest thing to a solid tonka truck I've been able to find!).

But they also had this cute little tea party set made from 100% recycled milk jugs (all picked up from curb side recycling!). I went for it. In addition I got a little shape sorter ( you know, the box with holes in different shapes and you need to fit the correct shaped block into the correct hole) for her which was just super adorable. Surprisingly these 100% recycled, solid/sturdy looking toys were fairly cheap! Typically things that are "organic" or "100% recycled" (from what I've seen) are pricier anymore because there are so many people 'going green' but not so much in this case! (the tea set was about 20 and the shape sorter was 9.99)

To complete my left wing, liberal, hippie gift I bought two of those reusable shopping bags to wrap the gift in as opposed to the typical gift bag (1.50 for the reusable vs. 3+ dollars for the gift bags). I felt like I should put flowers in my hair and name my next child "sunshine" while making hemp bracelets on the side of the road somewhere, but all in all was proud of my eco-friendly present!