At the risk of “trashing” my reputation as a party planner, I need to share one of my favorite parties. I will never, until my dying day, forget the conversation I had with my client as we discussed her son’s upcoming festivities. It went something like this…So tell me, what is your son into? Client: (In a slightly mortified whisper) My son is into garbage…Me: You mean the band? Client: (Pause followed by a small cough) No… I mean the substance. He loves trash. All sorts of trash. He likes recycling things, composting food scraps, sorting paper from plastic… And he’s obsessed with garbage trucks…
Me: Oh… what fun! We can invite people to come over to your house and “get trashed!”
A long pathway led from the driveway back to the party area, so we marked the path with fun little signs that shared facts and quotes about recycling. Freda painted giant cut outs of garbage (soup cans, coke bottles, paper fast food wrappers, etc.) to place on either side of the entryway, and made a trash truck bearing the birthday boy’s age.
I also created a personalized banner by cutting out letters in scrapbook paper, gluing them to brown paper lunch bags, and stringing them on a piece of colorful ribbon.
My favorite part of the event was the dining table. We wrapped the table in green plastic, then used duct tape to create a road and curbside straight down the middle. Each child received a juice box wrapped in a cover that made it look like a little house. We also used blue and green cups and placed little recycling stickers on each one, so that they looked like recycling bins. Each place setting also sported tiny little trash bags of treats (I simply took regular trash bags, cut them into 5-inch squares, placed treats in the center, then rubber banded the ends and trimmed the extra corners to make them look like a tiny trash bags), a set of plastic silverware wrapped in a napkin with a “please recycle” napkin ring, and a garbage truck plate.
We filled the piñata with little fabric drawstring bags with a leaf print on each one. Each bag was filled we a few sweet treats, and a mini garbage truck. I actually purchased the bags from Oriental Trading then using acrylic paint, I added a leaf print to each bag.
Finally, we brought down the house with our easy to make, and super fun to destroy paper bag piñata.