SEED STARTING PARTY

Last week I organized a Seed Starting Party for the women of my church - and we had so much fun!  You could use this same idea for a fun girl's night.

Seed packet invitations.

 I started by finding these beautiful vintage looking printable seed packets here.  I used these (and a little help from Photoshop) to create the poster (above), and invitations. I think the invitations were my favorite detail.  The seed packets print kind of small, so I enlarged them as big as I could while still fitting on one page.  Then we assembled the seed packets (just cut, fold and glue), and inserted a page with the party details into the packet.  If I had more budget, I would have printed the information on the back of the seed packet, and filled them with something like chocolate covered sunflower seeds.  But they turned out cute nonetheless.  We had some extra invitations, so I sewed those together across the top 1/4" to make a quick and cute banner.

We began the night by inviting several avid gardeners to talk about their gardens and answer any gardening questions people might have.  I learned a ton - have you ever heard that you can use a bug zapper to get rid of those icky bugs that destroy your fruit trees instead of spraying them (I'm excited to try this, hopefully it will work!).  They talked and answered questions for about 45 minutes, and then the real fun began! 

Our seed starts.

I found a tutorial for making newspaper pots here.  I tested their method at home and found that using a half sheet of newspaper (instead of a whole sheet), and then taping the sides and bottom worked a lot better for me.  The great thing about these little pots is that they are free (which was fabulous for our budget!), and if you take the tape off you can plant them directly in the ground.  After a quick demonstration, everyone made their own pots and filled them with seed starting mix.  It is important to use seed starting mix, and not potting soil or dirt.  You will need about 2 cups (or half a quart) for each person to fill 4 pots.  We provided plastic plates (from the dollar store) to use as trays to hold the pots.  Everyone was asked to bring one packet of any type of seed to share, so once the pots were ready we planted whatever we liked.  We provided popsicle sticks to label the pots with what type of seed was planted, but the pots are so short they didn't work very well.  In the future I would just provide sharpies and have people write directly on the newspaper pots.  Then we misted everything with squirt bottles, and cover the plate with plastic wrap.  This took about 30 minutes  for everyone to finish.  We also sent everyone home with instructions on how to care for their seedlings and harden them off before planting.

Brownie bites.

Now for the most important part - refreshments!  I had seen these cute little brownie bites with sprigs of mint in them in a magazine and thought they would be perfect for a seed starting party!  I asked a member of our comittee to take this on, and she went above and beyond!  The brownies are bake in the little mini-muffin tins, and she used frosting to hold the mint on.  Then she put them all on a bed of crushed up cookie crumbs and added the gummy worms for effect.  So cute! 

If you are planning on throwing your own seed starting party, here is link with lots of helpful information on the technicalities of starting seeds.  Let me know how your party goes!