With only two weeks left for preparations my excitement is growing rapidly about London Aware, which is to be held at the Barbican on 10th and 11th May 2008. You may already know this, but Little Cherryhave partnered with UK Aware to run the interactive children’s area on Sunday 11th May - and I can’t wait!

 We started by getting together to bash some ideas out about what activities the kids could enjoy, but would also hold an important lesson about caring for or being mindful of the environment and what materials we could use from the eco-friendly party supplies I stock. With three teachers in my family, this part was great fun! We came up with the following fun activities:

Sunflower Seed Potting - we will be making pots from newspaper, filling them with peat and planting a seed, which the children can take away with them.

Bag making - we thought we could make bags from recycled newspaper, and scraps of natural hessian (sacking). I have been around all the local charity shops and bought piles of wonderful, colourful wool ready for the children to sew the bags together.

Wishing Tree - we are making a tree from natural materials and asking the children to make a wish and attach it to the tree.

Recycled Playhouse - Eco-Products have kindly donated a playhouse made from recycled card. We thought it might be fun for the children to collect scrap materials and add solar panels and a wind turbine to the house! We have sustainable wooden crayons,  biodegradable ribbons and a load of other ‘junk’ to play with!

Boat Race - We have comissioned someone to make us some wooden boats from branches collected in Liss forest, we thought that we could attach a compostable sail to our reclaimed wooden boats and have races!

Wormery - Worm City have kindly donated a fantastic executive wormery to the event - the kids will be able to have a great dig around with the worms and learn some facts about composting.

We also have an eco-quiz, where the children can work out their carbon footprint, and I will of course have lots of party bags and fun eco-friendly party bag toys on sale, I am taking along some fridge magnets made from recycled plastic cups for the children and am hoping the day will be a blast!!

I love getting involved and supporting local business and events and I think this is a great way of getting people together with a community spirit, and teaching our children to be responsible about the choices they make. After all, in my opinion, if children are brought up in an eco-friendly way, they are naturally more likely to make eco-friendly choices as they grow up and then become more consious of their choices as adults.

At a grass roots level, we as grown ups should take the responsibility to teach children these valuable lessons and in turn start to look after their future. I know that when we were growing up we showered in buckets and used the water to flush the loo or on the garden, we made lots of our own clothes and played games in the garden - we got hours of enjoyment looking for pine cones!

I hope to see you at London Awareon 10th and 11th May at the Barbican. x

I found this great website today, which is full of fun recipies for children’s parties from penguin tuna sandwiches to dogs in blankets!

http://www.creativegirlsclub.com/edu/pt7foodfun.html

With so many great ideas your party food is bound to be amazing!

I have decided to have a big spring clear out at Little Cherry and put all our themed party supplies on SALE!

You will find all our themed party supplies are offered at massively reduced prices, so get shopping and buy them for your themed birthday party at these low prices while you can!

Choose your birthday party theme from our range of popular party themes which include Barnyard 1st Birthday party supplies, Winnie the Pooh party supplies, Barbie party supplies, Charlie and Lola party supplies, Disney Princess party supplies, Dora the Explorer party supplies, Fifi and the Flowertots party supplies, Barbie Fairytopia party supplies, Bratz party supplies, Batman party supplies, Bob the Builder party supplies, Cars party supplies, Football party supplies, Thomas the Tank Engine party supplies, Postman Pat party supplies, Spiderman 3 party supplies, Pirates party supplies, Jungle party supplies and Doctor Who party supplies.

Compliment them with our eco-friendly accessories such as biodegradable latex balloons and recyclable crepe paper streamers for a bright and fun themed birthday party!

Ps. don’t forget your loot bags! We offer some lovely eco-friendly party bags which are available as pre-filled party bags or as separate party bag fillers and hand made party bags or paper party bags so you can choose to make your own party bag.

I often have lots of requests from my lovely customers for more ideas for eco-friendly birthday parties and ethical celebrations, which makes me think there are lots of other eco-friendly people (green beans!) out there with some great ideas - so I have created this blog called Little Green Bean, and would like to invite you all to contribute with your last party experiance, your handy time-saving tips, and any party recipes that went down a storm!

Perhaps you have the best birthday cake idea on the block or a great idea for a party activity to keep the kids entertained? Maybe your sausage rolls are legendary or your treasure hunt had the best prizes? Don’t keep it to yourself, lets all get together and help each other put on the best birthday party ever!

Please email me with your ideas at lucy@littlecherry.co.uk or submit your ideas through this blog, and of course please visit us often for eco-friendly party ideas!

Party in the Park 2008 will will be taking place on Saturday 28th June 2008 between 1.30pm and 4.30pm at Fassnidge Park in Uxbridge.

Party in the Park is a free local community event, which is sponsered by the Families Information Service (FIS) at Hillingdon council and the Mall Pavillions, as part of the celebrations for childcare month. It is also sponsered by the Green Spaces team at Hillingdon council.

Local business are getting together to run a free activity for families to take part in on the day, and I think its a simply wonderful example of moving back to traditional community spirit! Companies invlved in previous party in the parks include British Airways, Nestle, Hasbro, The Mall Pavillions, Timberland, Hillingdon Council, Coca Cola, General Mills, Healthy Hillingdon, London Fire Brigade, Pre-School Learning Alliance, Beck Theatre, Barnardo’s and many other local organisations and companies. This all makes for a fabuous day out for families, which is lots of fun and has loads of giveaways and activities for the kids, completely free of charge.

There will be traditional fete activities such as face painting, craft activities, entertainers and lots more!

I am delighted to say that I will be going along with my small business, Little Cherry (eco-friendly parties) to run our activity for the children - we will be making children’s party bags from newspaper and other natural environmentally friendly materials - teaching the children to make something useful from waste materials, which is not only lots of fun, but also holds an important environmental message.

The event is organised by Sunshine Magazine, which is a free local community magazine, and personally I think the idea is inspired! I wish every community could get together in this way to meet the people behind local businesses and raise money for charity.

If you are local to Uxbridge, please do come along for a great day out!