For weeks, I saved toilet paper and paper towel rolls and even got my mother in on the act to help me get enough of them to make party favors. I read about this somewhere and loved the idea of recycling and making the favors from scratch. I was not going to buy into the kids birthday party industry! I was determined to use recycled materials — hence not expensive — to make party favors for O’s birthday party.

While looking for a flask at a cigar shop one day, I accidentally ended up at an educational store where I found pencils and stickers to include in the favors. When I came home and excitedly told DH all about it, he may have wondered what was wrong with me and why I was so excited about party favors when, really, could I not have just bought him a flask like he wanted? He just could not see the big picture. I mean, for what other reason would he not share my excitement about favors?

The time came to put the pieces all together. Of course, I left this until the night before the party, because I’m a busy working mother who had made three casseroles, cooked 48 cupcakes, chopped a pineapple, carved a watermelon into a whale and cleaned my entire house (except for the part DH cleaned). I asked DH to help, and we ended up wrapping each roll with tissue paper — I confess to buying the tissue paper new — and then tying off the ends like little sausages with ribbon recycled from a birthday present. Voila! I lined them all up and was pleased.

O’s friend G. opened his party favor, looked at all the goodies inside, and exclaimed, “Oh, it even has a toilet paper roll!”

See, I deliver.