Recycled Homemade New Year's Even Party Favors

Even if you are staying close to home to watch the ball drop on television with your family, you can have fun together on New Year's Eve. In fact, you can create some fun and simple homemade New Year's Eve party favors recycling items you already have around the house.

Party Hats

Make homemade New Year's party hats using newspapers that are already headed for the recycle bin. You will need a full-sized newspaper page for each hat you wish to make. Fold the paper in half from top to bottom and crease the fold well. Fold in half again, this time from right to left and crease the fold. Unfold the right to left fold only.

Fold the upper left corner down just until the edge of the page meets the crease in the middle of the paper and crease the fold. Repeat with the upper right corner. Your page should resemble the shape of a house. Fold one bottom flat up. Turn the paper over and fold up the other flap. Crease both sides. Tuck in the edges of the flaps and secure with clear tape.

If desired, you can decorate your hats with spray paint, stickers, markers or any other embellishments. You can also punch one hole in each side and thread with yarn or ribbon for chinstraps.

Noisemakers

For this homemade New Year's Eve party favor, you will need:

Craft sticks (or used, clean ice pop sticks)
Lids from metal food cans
Hammer and nail
Twine, fishing line or heavy thread
Buttons
Masking tape

Place two equal-sized can lids back to back. Slide a craft stick an inch or two between them. The stick will be the handle. Use masking tape to secure the lids together and the handle in place. Using the hammer and nail, puncture holes around the outer edge of the lids, about one inch apart. Thread a short piece of twine, fishing line or string through each hole. Thread a button through the other end of each piece of string.

To use, hold the noisemakers by the handle and shake or twist so that the buttons hit the lids and make noise.

Party Poppers

While these homemade New Year's Eve party favors do not make noise as some store-bought poppers do, your family will create a happy uproar when they use them. For this project, you will need:

Toilet paper or paper towel tubes
Shredded newspaper or any shredded paper
Small toys or candy
Leftover wrapping paper
Tape
Ribbon

If you are using paper towel tubes, cut them in half. Hold one tube upright with your palm cupping the open end. Fill the tube with small toys, candy and shredded paper. Wrap the tube with wrapping paper or tissue paper, leaving extra paper overhanging each end. Gather the ends and twist them, tying each one with a piece of ribbon so that the tube looks like a wrapped piece of candy.

To use the homemade party poppers, have two people each grab one end and pull so that the goodies and confetti fly out.

Consider other favors you might find on sale at the store and think about ways you might be able to recreate them at home using recycled items. Then, have a fun and green New Year's Eve!