Even baby showers can be environment friendly, too. As a party planner or the expectant parents, here are some baby shower party ideas to help celebrate the occasion with a green theme.1. Set a sustainable venue.
In line with your intention, choose the perfect setting. If weather permits, an outdoor potluck picnic is a relaxed way to enjoy the party. Remember also to bring containers where guests can carry home leftovers, reducing food waste. Another fun way to eliminate the use of disposable plastic ware in a party is to host an afternoon tea, where you could ask the guests to bring their favorite tea cup and saucer.
2. The seasoned menu
Make the most out of the available seasonal organic products by including these in your menu. Banish excess by managing the menu well. Consider the amount of expected guests. Focus on a single high quality entreé and include some locally baked bread and sandwiches or side dishes made up of vegetables and fruits in season.
3. Gifts of green
To go with the theme, give the guests a list of suggested gifts with the invitation. Here are some suggestions:
- A frozen meal for the expectant parents to rely upon during the first weeks of sleepless nights
- rarely used or worn-once clothes or shoes for the baby
- barely used toys
- cloth diapers or reusable diapers (make sure you include the details of the store where they can buy these)
4. Sustainable wrapping
Encourage the guests to bring out their creativity in wrapping the gifts with sustainable gift wrappers. Instead of traditional gift wrapping paper, they may use receiving blankets, a beautiful scarf, old paper maps, etc. Bows and ribbons can be substituted with pine cones or wooden teething rings.
5. Pass it on
Make the event personalized both for the receiver and the giver by asking the guests to bring along something they can pass on to the new parents, such as a book they have read to their baby, a framed picture of the mom when she was a baby, and many other ideas that have a personal touch to it.
6. Invitations
Online invitations are very popular now, but if you should choose to give out printed invites, use recycled paper which can also be personally decorated with environmentally friendly materials.
7. Gather and immortalize wishes
Pass around a journal-type book where guests can write simple yet poignant messages for the mom. This can later serve as her coffee table book of wisdom. Well- wishes, poems, or messages like, “What I wish most for you is…” or “Looking back, I wish I would have known…” Along with recycling, reusing, and reducing, going green is also a spiritually uplifting practice.
8. A beautiful remembranceMark the occasion with a lovely, one-of-a-kind gift for the baby. Ask the family and friends to leave a painted handprint of their palm on an oversized plant pot to be kept in the nursery. Gather pieces of fabric and invite the guests to cut out a heart shape, write their name on it and, with a fabric glue, adhere it to a pillowcase, that the baby can use to rest on. Don’t worry if the project looks a bit crude or imperfect, the intention already is.
9. Lifelong tokens
As party favors for the guests to take home, give out packets of seeds for spring. Better than any token will be the memories that family and friends take with them long after the party is over.
10. Thanking them
To make your appreciation remembered, print out pictures of the party. Cut and glue a photo to a discarded tough cardboard and “laminate” with wide transparent tape, then attach a craft magnet to the back. Insert this in an envelope and write “Thank you for making this day “picture-perfect.” This personal remembrance helps preserve memories as well as the environment.
