If you do not like your options, make your own!
I love all inclusive birthday places that include the food, decorations and gift bags, but the crafter in me screams it more fun to make the gift bags. Recently, we threw a birthday party at a local business and completely unaware that the children would receive a gift bag from the business, I made a gift bag for each child. I always find the challenge fun, partly because I get to go shopping on my own or I end up digging in the craft room for paint, markers and string. On occasions like the most recent gift bags excursion, I did both.
I do not always have a game plan, but this time I did. Lucky for my community our dollar store, discount supermarket and the chain craft store all in the same plaza. I was going to make my way from one end of the plaza to the other to find what first graders enjoy for a reasonable price. The first trip was to the dollar store where I picked up lunch bags, lollipops shaped like jewelry, a certain cartoon character’s gummy burgers, other candy, pencils, gel pens, noise makers and hopping frogs. The discount supermarket had toy figurines from a recent movie that was in theaters most of the summer as well cookie packets. Between the purchases at the dollar store and the supermarket, I was quite pleased with the amount of goodies that I had. The dollar store was $17.23 and the discount supermarket came out to be $14.84, making the total come out to $32.07 or $2.67 per bag for twelve children.
When I got home and saw that my kids were still out with Daddy, I began working on making the bags. With markers in the craft room, words were written on the bags and bingo dabbers filled the empty space. Unused scrapbook stickers wrapped up the decoration to the outside of the bags. Once everything dried, the bags were lined up in production line. Each item was placed in each bag and with exactly twelve items left over, every bag got a duplicate item. My daughter loved the bags and enjoyed handing each one out at her party. Bigger than most gift bags, they were almost filled to the brim!
