Farm Animals

For our farm birthday party, we decided to have actual animals for the birthday. The celebration venue was Dubai City Stable in heart of Dubai in Safa 2 area, so there were lots of horses. They also have a larger stable and animal farm on the outskirts of Dubai called Al Dhabi Farm, which I loved even more. But for convenience reason, we picked the one in Al Safa area.

A pony was available for pony-ride for kids and in the petting farm, there were animals like Chameleon, snake, duck, rabbit, turtle, dog. It was a great enjoyment for not only Ruhaan and all the kids but also their parents. Everyone at the party touched, cuddled and fed the animals. Many of the guests told me that they or their kids never experienced something like this before. To have this kind of interaction with animals in Dubai is a rare thing and I am happy we could have it for our farm party.

I still remember when a few weeks before the actual birthday when we visited this venue the first time, Ruhaan heard a rooster’s ‘cock a doodle’ do for the first time in his life, first he was startled but when he could see who is making this sound, he immediately started to imitate the sound 🙂

Party Decorations

I wanted to make the party truly environment-friendly so I made party invite on Microsoft office and emailed it to everyone. We didn’t take a single print of it (I saved the digital copy in our digital birthday photo album for keepsake). We kept party decoration to minimal, it made decoration part of party greener. We used horse’s feeding hay cubes for decoration and reused wooden crates of fresh produce to store animal feed for the party like carrots, apples, and juices for kids. When I was looking for the farm style wooden carton to keep juices etc. I came to know from friends who are in the supermarket business, these wooden cartons, they just throw it away and then municipality people collect it. There must be a further system of reusing it, Why don’t vegetable suppliers just collect yesterday’s cartons of empty vehicles on the way back and reuse it directly? But I am glad we reused a few and I still have them at home, which I use for storing vegetables.

All the party banners I and my husband made at home. I also used some mini-blackboards, which I can and would love to reuse at home or for future parties. The venue itself was part of our farm theme and our minimal decoration blended well into the theme.

DIY Party Favours

The greenest part of the party was the return favors, which I made at home out of Ruhaan’s baby food jars! In a year I had a big collection of baby food jars, though I used baby food mainly during travels and going out. I used a few of these cute jars to store spices, my mother in law used to do the same and I liked the idea since I saw it. But I still left with a major number of jars, I thought why not to use them as Ruhaan’s birthday return favors, it is like Ruhaan himself is giving these gifts. When I googled, I could find a lot of ideas and it’s lovely to know that many people are already doing this.

To match the theme of birthday I bought tiny farm animals, stick each on every cover of the jar and then they were lying on top of a table for many days, as I was on a mission to find a less toxic paint for covers. But Ruhaan had big fun all these days, my hubby who can do amazing mimicry, used to show him every animal and used to make the sound of that animal. It was big entertainment at our home.

I specifically wanted this paint low VOC or less toxic firstly because I was going to apply them indoors and secondly we were giving these favors to kids. So I didn’t want Ruhaan and any of our friend’s kids to get exposed to toxins in the paints.
At the start I tried to spray paint, which is generally used in this kind of DIY; but they were way too toxic and you can smell the toxins even after weeks. So finally with a lot of discussions with hardware sales guys I could find the exact paint, less toxic, can be used on metal and I got the exact color I needed; just one small bottle, but that was enough for me. This paint is recommended for toys by its manufacturer.

The simple stickers on our gift bottle with handwritten thank you message added a personal touch to the return favors. I kept stone chocolates inside jars for a more authentic look! Not just Kids but all guests loved these farm party favors!

What I loved the most about our party was Ruhaan had great fun riding pony and touching and cuddling most of the farm animals! I hope when Ruhaan grows up and looks back at his first birthday party photos I will tell him all the fun stories and how we made his first birthday party so special. Such beautiful memories to cherish!

You can read here a complete guide to hosting an eco-friendly birthday party. If you are looking for some more birthday party ideas, read about our beach party and grow your own food-themed party.

Join our tribe here and get more tips about green parenting and sustainable lifestyle.