Green(ish) dragon party

My eldest son was about to turn six and really wanted a Dragon party. We've always done parties at the house, and it somehow seemed even more important to carry on that tradition as we continue the process of settling into our new home, it also gave us more control over our plastic use and sustainable choices. Okay a party is a bit of an extravagance, but we did a range of things to try to be as green as possible.

How to Train Your Dragon really captured my son's imagination. We went to see the film back in February 2019 and since then we have been reading Cressida Cowell's books, which are quite different from the film. The party needed to reflect that rather than simply focus on the film version of Toothless.

I have to say I have been really impressed with the books, the way they handle bullying and being different. There was a great moment when Hiccup suddenly discovers that rather than being rather useless at sword fighting, he's actually rather good - he was just using the wrong hand. Our son is left-handed and he was just going through a phase of wanting to be right handed like everyone else, this helped him to embrace his difference and feel more positive about it. There's also plenty of humour so the books are enjoyable for adults to read aloud, which is just as well as there are 12 of them and they have been our bedtime reading for rather a long time now.

The books also feature the Pirate training programme as well as the vikings and dragons, so we included that on the invitations, widening the scope for fancy dress as well as enabling us to reuse some decorations from a pirate party we'd held for our son's third birthday. For the invitations I drew a Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus from the books which we photocopied and stuck to folded card and we invited vikings, dragons and pirates to join us. Rather scarily our son had a huge list of invitees, which we limited rather meanly perhaps, but in the interests of our sanity, to 20.

When holding a party in the house I think it is important to have a few key activities. I admit I tend to go overboard with these sometimes, but I do love a bit of craft and something to get the kids running around - preferably outside, which as luck would have it was possible this year.

1. The cake

Why I ever got into the habit of making my son's cakes I'll never know as it's always a heap of work, but there is a great satisfaction in producing the finished product, plus I have much more control over the ingredients. A friend pointed me to a simple outline for a dinosaur/dragon cake made out of a standard round sponge cake cut up. Once I had the basic shape it was easier than you might think to turn it into a dragon, the fact that his skin could have textures a bonus as that hid lots of imperfections. This was loosely based on the Toothless character from he book (in which he is green and small rather than black as he is in the film).

I was able to use pretty much all organic ingredients, the flour and baking powder were both from the local refillery shop. Used local organic eggs and milk (in glass refillable bottles from a local farm) and pick and mix sweets in a paper bag to decorate.

2. Craft

We had two activities; sword decorating and also little viking longship packs which they decorated and assembled. The swords we made out of cardboard boxes and painted white. The longships were more of an extravagance; kits from Baker Ross, but they pretty much made the party. I decided against paints as we simply had too many kids coming, so we used pens and some sequins we already had for jewel decoration. Paints would have been better, but would have needed a bit more space and definitely would have caused more mess.

3. Dragon hunt

How to have a treasure hunt that didn't break the bank and was sustainable option? Initially I thought I'd draw/paint them on card, but I really wanted to do something so the kids could take a dragon away with them in their party bags.

I didn't want to buy new, so I hit the charity shops, Banardos proved to be particularly good. It's amazing how many almost new soft toys you can easily pick up, and the different animals fitted in well with the books where you have dragons like the Gatordragons (basically alligator dragons) and the Hogfly (described as a pig in dragon form). I simply used some felt to make wings for various animals and hey presto we had a multitude of species from Ping dragons to Ugly Pug dragons - where they looked vaguely like a dragon breed from the book we gave them that name, otherwise we simply made the names up.

I drew a map of the house and garden with red Xs where the dragons were hiding, and an identification chart with tick boxes for them fill in. We hid the dragons around the garden, encouraging the children to team up to find them all. After the hunt, while the kids were eating, we gathered them in ready for the party bags.

4. Party bags

I got some lovely personalised seed packs from Ways to Say Thankyou, so no plastic and hopefully more flowers for the bees. Found some twig pencils that were used for the dragon hunt, little cutout wooden dragons and Divine paper-wrapped chocolates. I stamped dragons on plain paper bags and popped a dragon from the hunt inside each bag as well - these went down a storm, although people did have their favourites.

What I'd have liked to have done better

- Made my son's Hiccup costume rather than bought one.
- Made the sausage rolls rather than bought.
- Set out more space for the craft.
- Used old fabric and corks for the boats instead of buying kits.
- We had planned to do a couple of games like pass the parcel but ran out of time to prepare for them.

Recycled curtains for the camper van

This project showed me how with a bit of creativity you can cut right down on your consumption and waste, while getting something new at the same time.

I had a lovely pair of bedroom curtains that had sadly got stained in the course of our house move last year, and didn’t fit any of our new rooms any case. Meanwhile our camper van had tired old curtains that cried out for a facelift. It was a perfect fit.

Using a seam ripper to unpick the seams on the stained curtains.

 As I took the old curtains down and double checked measurements and fitting to see if I could make any improvements ready to make the ‘new’ ones, my first thought was ‘I need some blackout lining and heading tape’ but that would delay me. Inspiration struck, so instead of getting into the car and going to get said supplies, I set to with some scissors and a seam ripper and removed the old tape and linings. Not only did it make the making-up a lot easier as I could use the old linings as a template, both the lining and heading tape were plastic-based so I saved money and landfill. Okay it took time to unpick the linings, but I even managed to do that while feeding my little one and it’s definitely the sort of task you can do while watching tv, plus I saved my time driving out to get the bits as well as saving my fuel, quite aside from the cost of the materials.

New curtains for free - I used blue fabric for the tie-backs in this part of the van. The bunting we were given five years ago when my son was born.

I used red for the tiebacks on the back window to tie in with the bunting.

I hope you agree the result is lovely (sorry I didn't do a 'before' pic but I'll just say Laura Ashley white, pink and yellow). The fabric used is actually called 'Swing' and is still available new from The Stripes Company.

The tie-backs were made with scraps of fabric I had in my sewing basket and the touches of red really help bring together the colour theme in the van. Didn’t cost a penny and meant I could feel happy that I’d reused rather than bought new, win win.

The new look gets the thumbs up - our seat cover doubles as a picnic mat.

Struggling for new ideas? Get out of the office!

I had an eureka moment a few weeks ago. I realised just why working with the teams I do, in the way I do is so rich, so creative and so productive. I realised why I never seem to run out of fresh ideas. I realised why my enthusiasm and my drive can seem endless. I realised what satisfies me and how I have made a success of my life... and it's all down to the the magic that happens when ideas have sex! 

It was a video talk by Matt Ridley (When Ideas Have Sex) that, for me, clarified just why I have found such inspiration in looking outside whatever organisation I'm in. Why I've sought to find out more; see new things, meet new people, hear new experiences. Why I never feel I know enough, and constantly feel like I can learn from others. And why that has enabled me to achieve more.

It's how I have always run my professional life and how I run my business.

Using the best people
Some five years ago I moved from a salaried position, to working as a sub-contractor. It was a daunting prospect, but once I started thinking in a new way, the possibilities opened up. First I could tailor people's jobs far better than I'd been able to before. I wasn't stuck with a certain team for everything I wanted to do. I could use the best people for the things they were best suited to. If a member of my team wasn't so good at one task that needed doing, well then I could use someone else, instead of having to use them simply because they were on the payroll.

Un-used talent
There was another bonus: I could tap into talent that was being unused, parents who were at home looking after children. I didn't mind when they did their hours, it gave me access to some very skilled people who were delighted to have a position that they could work around their childcare needs. I got highly experienced and dedicated people that proved a real asset. My team was stronger. No longer was I stuck with appointing someone willing to work in a particular location, I could simply find the best people, regardless of where they lived.

And so the team was built... where you might have four full time staff, I had seven, all working part time. I had a wider team of freelance writers and photographers as well - again, rather than filling the hours of a core team with things that didn't suit their skills, I would use them for the bits that suited them.

The input of new ideas
As much as we worked as a team, we all worked on other projects, and this proved to be an added bonus, the true value of which took me a few years to appreciate.

Because we were all working with other clients, on other publications, other websites, or writing or taking photographs in other areas, we were all learning. Coming across new systems, different ways of organising things. Our experience working on the magazine together fed into our approach with those new projects, but in turn the new experiences fed fresh ideas back. New systems for communicating, for running meetings, for handling content. Ideas, ideas, ideas. We were in different parts of the country, working on other projects with different teams, and when we came back together, these experiences went into the pot, helping us to improve on what we were doing.

We were stronger for the time spent apart, fresher, and whenever we met up again, our new ideas met as well, joined together, interacted with one another, and produced new ideas of their own, resulting in improvements in the way we were doing things as well as injecting a fresh shot of inspiration.

It's when ideas meet in this way that your work, your business, your life moves forwards. Shut yourself away in your office, with the same people, the same processes, the same way of doing things and you'll stand still... get out there, harness the diverse ideas and input of others, and your business will move forwards, faster. You can become more efficient and better at what you do. I've valued the input of others for years... now I have a better understanding of just why it's so valuable.