I am facing the ballooning expenses of my daughter's birthday party, which we're having at an indoor playspace. 20+ kids (boys and girls) are coming! The playspace itself is expensive, the cake we need for the amount of kids and parents coming is more than we had planned, and now I'm looking at buying a bunch of plastic crap to put in a bag for the kids to take home. It kills me to spend $60 on this stuff, which I know will end up in the trash because that's always where my daughter's favors end up.
Does anyone have an alternate idea for goody bag contents that a) is more useful or fun than the typical goody bag loot, b) does not cost more than the typical loot, and c) does not require a lot of creativity and effort on my part? Is this a pipe dream? I think it might be! If you have a brilliant idea, I would love to hear it!
Instead of goody bags, we started actually wrapping a small gift for each child. We've found great stuff at Target in the dollar bins at the front of the store. You can usually find jumpropes, coloring books, stickers, etc for $1 each. If you're going to spend $2-$3 dollars per goody bag for a bunch of junk you might as well spend $2 on a single gift that they might actually use.
What about taking some pictures at the party and then sending a few prints to each child afterward...maybe one of them with the birthday girl or sliding down some amazing slide or something, or maybe one of your daughter opening their present. It's easy and you'd be taking pictures anyway, right? It'll cost a few cents for the picture and the price of a stamp!
You can ask the parents to fill out their child's address (because what 4 year old wouldn't love getting mail for themselves!) on a cute form you type up or just a plain notecard as they leave and inform them that their favor will arrive in a week!
If you're feeling more creative (and I know you said you maybe weren't ;) you can also check out walgreens.com b/c they have an option to make collage prints. I think you can make them as small as 4x6 or 5x7 and just do a collage of pics from the whole party and send the entire thing to each child. They are SUPER easy and fun to do and maybe your daughter could even help you pick which pictures to send. You order them online and then pick them up right in the store in an hour! The end product is really fun and I promise, they are easy peasy!
the standards that kids seem to like in my son's age (3.5) are tatoos, stickers, bouncy balls, cars.
He got a goody bag the other day that had a stencil in it (alphabet) - I can't imagine it was expensive, and he loved it.
He also received a goody bag for a 3 year old's birthday party for which the Mom had gone to a website and printed downloadable coloring pages of Diego. He LOVED that. I think they put a small pack of crayons in there as well.
You can also buy small Play-Doh's at Walmart/Target (10 packs for ~$4).
Find cheap coloring books (like at the dollar store, or you may be able to find a pack of them somewhere cheaper than $1 each) and wrap a few crayons in a rubber band
Or sometimes you can find sticker books at the dollar store
Try the dollar store or Target's dollar spot. I think $1 per kid is reasonable if you can find one good item instead of a bag full of trinkets they'll throw away
Also, have you considered baking your own cake? You can bake a couple of smaller cakes and decorate them with action figures on top for WAYYYYYYYYYYY cheaper than store bought fancy cake. I promise you the kids won't care!
Hello, my name is Denise and I am a Goody Bag HATER! I hate the goody bag. I cringe at the idea od assembling the goody bag.
My son is almost 7 and he has NEVER played with one piece of crud from a birthday goody bag.
The dollar store is NOT your friend...by the time you leave, you'll blow fifty bucks+!
Here's what I have done (I remember two--the others I must have blocked out and/or did the dreaded Goody Bag). One birthday, I bought all of the boys paddle ball games. And on one birthday, I bought 15 gigundo-sized Hershey bars and printed out wrappers from my computer saying "Thanks for Coming, Your friend, XYZ" with balloons on them, etc. I'd rather spend 1-2 bucks per kid on something that might actually picked up and played with/eaten/etc. than the same amount on stuff their moms will throw away in a week. Seriously, how many pencils, stickers, bouncy balls can a kid get? LOL
I've always hated the crap that comes in standard goody bags. What a waste of money!
My daughter loves art, so we've often gone the art route. Buy little play-doh packs and packs of tools and divide them up. Packs of markers, glitter paint, stickers. Divide these up and combine them to make art goody bags. Try someplace like Michael's for packs and look in a Sunday paper. They usually have coupons for 40-50% off an item.
I too, HATE goody bags. They are usually full of crap that the kids leave in the floorboard of the car. Little pieces of plastic JUNK. Such a waste. I admit, that I have made and given some too, but my preference, is to have helium filled balloons and give each child a balloon as they leave. It is a nice memory and will last a day or two at home before it needs to be tossed. Some kids even choose to let them go and watch them float away.
You could even get a marker and write their names on them if you like (in advance).
Not a lot of $$ and adds decoration for the party. Its also easy to have a few extras in case someone unexpectedly brings a sibling, or has a younger/older sibling there at pickup time that is having a difficult time b/c they didn't get to participate in the party.
Wow, I feel for you on the expenses. I found a way to do my daughters 4th birthday party this weekend for under $100, ($80.06) which includes lunch for over 60 people, face painting, balloon volleyball, pin the tale in the whale, pinata, goodie bags and so much more. If you can make it over to a dollar store I suggest finding candy and stuff there to put in the goodie bags. You can also go online and print out templates for them to color. Just roll up and tie with ribbons. Hand out as they leave. Good luck and if you ever want cheap party ideas e-mail me. I have a ton of online links that have saved us thousands over the years.
Don't know if there is a set "theme" to the party (i.e. princess, Strawberry Shortcake, etc) but what I have always done is pick a book that matches the theme of the party. One year my daughter had a ladybug party so I gave everyone a copy of The Grouchy Ladybug which I got through Scholastic for 1.00 per book. I've done several parties this way.
In the past I have given a book to each child or a coloring book or a hula hoop. Whatever I can find that is inexpensive at the time. You could also do homemade cookies in little cellophane bags tied with ribbon. My daughter's birthday this year was starting out to be so expensive. We had the place reserved for $175, the cake for $75 and 22 kids on the guest list to buy for. Once I took a minute to slow down and think, I decided this was ridiculous. I'm also aware that most of her classmates this year aren't having parties at all. I completely changed gears, cancelled the venue and cake and had a party at home with 12 guests and gave little Christmas lotions in a 22 cent bag from Christmas Tree Shop. For my other daughter we made a trip to Michaels and found some little mosaic crafts for $1 each to send home with each kid (along with $1 clipboards, notebooks and pens from Targets $1 bin - but that's only for 7 guests). You won't regret it if you scale back and tone down if it's getting out of control.
You can also check out OrientalTrading.Com. They sell stuff in bulk for chaep. Lots of cute things and if you have a theme you are looking at you can type that in and all items associated with that will come up. For my son's 2nd birthday in October he was having a Disney Car's themed party. I went to the Disney store to see if they had anything by way of goody bag toys and found they were having a sale of Car's Snack containers. I filled the container with candy corn and put a sheet of Car's themed stickers on the top. The whole thing cost $5.00 per kid and everyone loved them. Who can't reuse a snack container, especially at his age. :) Good luck!!!
A few things that we have gotten at parties that have been better than the usual goodie bag crap is little pails of sidewalk chalk, or beach pails with shovels, or each child is given a paper bag to decorate and then there is a scavenger hunt for "treasure" which is usually some chocolates or something edible. I have also seen people do a pinata and then get cool containers for the kids to pout their candy in when the pinata is broken. But also, a few of my friends and I have tried to veer away from goody bags at all. Like you said it is useless crap that ends up in the trash anyways. Good luck!
I think us moms should band together and rally against the plastic junk and cheap candy filled goody bag phenomenon!
One of our favorite party favors to give and receive is a CD with party themed songs, or your child's favorites. It doesn't take long to put together on the computer, burn a bunch of copies and slap on a cute label. We've done a Disney Princess CD and it's still a big hit! You can save even more money if you limit to one per family, since it's something everyone in the family can enjoy together.
Also, I highly recommend that you cancel the cake. Store bought cakes are overpriced, and bakery cakes even more so. Buy a couple of boxed mixes for $1 a piece, and make cupcakes instead. You'll have far less mess with serving, save on paper goods, and the guests will still be happy.
I love that CD idea I think I will do that for my little guy's birthday this spring. I also hate goody bags! My youngest is a spring baby and we did pails and shovels last year with a squirt guns, chalk, and bubbles but we never have small parties. My oldest is a winter baby and it snowed around his birthday so we put stuff to decorate a snowman inside the goody bags, a bottle of water and food coloring to write in the snow with, and we decorated christmas ornamnets. You could get the huge box of crayola side walk chalk and give each child a few pieces, some small playdough tubs, stickers/tattoos, etc
I did a book that matched the theme of my sons first birthday part and packaged up home baked zweiback cookies. How about a giant lollipop for each child. You can decorate each one with pretty ribbons and put their name on it to designate where they are sitting at the table.
i agree about all the plastic stuff. My little guy is turning 4 in 2 weeks and I plan to buy things in bulk (some ideas that I have in my head right now are dum dum lollipops, maybe some small play dohs, glitter pens, McDonald's has $1 books of coupons for kids right now, stickers, snack size treats like gold fish) - I definitely won't do all of them but probably will pick 3. Hope that was helpful. Good luck!
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i agree about all the plastic stuff. My little guy is turning 4 in 2 weeks and I plan to buy things in bulk (some ideas that I have in my head right now are dum dum lollipops, maybe some small play dohs, glitter pens, McDonald's has $1 books of coupons for kids right now, stickers, snack size treats like gold fish) - I definitely won't do all of them but probably will pick 3. Hope that was helpful. Good luck!
How about some homemade play dough, packed in small zip bags for each child. And send along the recipe so the children can make it at home with their parents. Some educational dollar-store things. Some homemade popcorn, again packed in small zip bags for each child. Everyone loves popcorn. Who says it has to be toys inside the goodie bag?
good luck. It's frustrating how much it costs to put together birthday parties anymore, wherever you can cut costs, go for it!
We just faced this same dilemma for my daughter's 4th birthday. I went to Kohls and bought each child one of the $5 Kohls for Kids books. I then made bookmarks on the computer for each child (It was a princess birthday party, so each bookmark said "This book belongs to Prince/Princess and each child's name). I also found some pictures from the Little Mermaid and put them on the bookmarks since that was the theme. The kids loved it, the parents loved it even more, and the money went to a good cause (all profits are donated to their charity).
What about those metal water bottle containers that are so popular right now. All the kids will be running around and will need extra fluid. You can write their names on them and send those home at the end of the party. They're great to reuse and useful. Keep it simple. Good Luck.