Thrifty, NO Tat Party Bags

 My big girl has only been to a few parties so far and in this time I have learnt to grab the party bag at the first opportunity and NEVER ever let her have it to herself in the back of the car by herself on the way home. I am going to come across like an ungrateful wretch but the contents of the bags we have had have sometimes been plastic toys suitable for older children or just packed full of sweets so I do prefer to go through it first and then let her have a few bits at a time. And the thing is I know that they cost a lot to put together and taken someone time to put together, so I do feel bad for being a bit anti-party bag.

Big Girl has just turned four herself and we had a little birthday tea party for her this weekend. Now my first advantage was that we only invited three friends so I didn't have many bags to make but I did also make bags for my two nephews for the outing we had with them to a farm the previous weekend. I really wanted to make nice, no tat party bags and still not spend too much. As always Pinterest obliged, together with a few of my own ideas this is what I came up with.

Boys:
A pack of colouring pencils (around 20p in Wilkinsons)
Easter chocolate coins (I bought two bags from Aldi to do all the party bags)
Dinosaur paper toy 
Felt car topped pencils
Bubbles (I happened to have these already and you can't beat bubbles, right?)
Easter bark egg (if I'm honest I just used the party as an excuse to have a go at this!) I wrapped my egg shapes in clingfilm to protect them in the bag. I guess you could use any cookie cutter, maybe use one that fits your party theme?

Girls: 
Wooden bead bracelets (I spent around £2 on beads from eBay and made bracelets with elastic I already had. Anyone can do this, it's just threading beads and tying a knot! You could even do it with an older child)
Stickers (Again eBay. I did kick myself though because I thought I was getting more stickers than I did. I have since discovered that our 99p shop does little boxes of stickers in packs of about 8.
A pack of colouring pencils
Easter chocolate coins
Butterfly paper toy intructions
Easter bark egg
Homemade hairclips (I bought a pack of about 20 clips from the £1 shop and cut small discs of colourful felt from my scraps box. Along with some teeny buttons I had I sewed it altogether onto the clip. I thought it would be a nice touch to print little ' thank you for coming to my party' notes on card that I could snap the clips onto.

The inspiration for a lot of these ideas came from this pin. There are lots of other ideas on there too.

The bags:
I was really lucky, in the £1 shops Easter product range they had packs of 20 cellophane bags with pretty spring images printed on them. They even came with  short lengths of organza ribbon to tie the bags up. I must admit I thought they were such a bargain I stockpilled, keeping some for other parties, other projects!


Oh and just in case you were wondering, here is Big Girl's cake