Sesame Street Birthday - The Treat Bags

Making the bags:

It was so fun putting these treat bags together. I decided to do a different character for each child at the party so that the bags wouldn't get mixed up. The first thing I did was to spend some time on Google images looking for pictures I liked of the Sesame Street characters. Once I had ones I liked, I printed them off and brought them with me to the craft store to match them up with bags.

When I got home, I cut around the images and glued them on the bags. Then I went to my ribbon box and used scraps of a bunch of different ribbons in complimentary shades to pretty-up the handles a bit.

The bags were cute, but then I had an inspiration. I made tags for the bags that played off of the Sesame Street song, "C is for Cookie" but instead I used the letter of each guest's name and printed them off in the colour of their bags. I trimmed around with a scalloped edged scissor, mounted it on a little bit of card stock, and they were the perfect finishing touch.

Bags I made: Abby-Cadabby, The Count, Big Bird, Zoe, Cookie Monster

Grover, Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, and Elmo.

Filling the bags:

I was sure that this was going to be a breeze. It seems like for years there has been a flood of Sesame Street things in my local dollar stores. But when I went to collect things for the bags, it was as if I had missed my chance and the craze was over. I would find a couple of items, but not enough for the number of kids. After going to every dollar store in the city (seriously!) I got together enough for the nine kids, but even then, no two bags were the same.

Half the bags had a Big Bird ABC book, and half had Abby-Cadabby's Shapes book. Not because I liked the variety, but because there weren't enough of either one to keep it the same.

The same went for the colouring books. The kids got either an Elmo colouring book, or a Bert and Ernie numbers workbook.

The bags got one of these sets of cards too. Each set was cute, and I made sure that my own kids got different ones so we could have one of each. I'm a sneaky one!

I found these cute little containers at a dollar store and filled them with peanut M&Ms and put them in the bags.

That was what I had ready and waiting in the bags when the party began, but as we went on, the kids got to add a couple of things.

I had found these water bottles that we used instead of paper cups when it was time for treats, and the kids got to take theirs home after the party.

One of our games was about Ernie's rubber ducky, so after they caught their duck we added it to the bags.

The last item that they brought home was a small glass jar I filled with candy for a game. When the game was over, everyone had one to put into their bags.

By the end, the bags were really quite full, which was a relief because for a while I really didn't think I was going to come up with enough surprises for the loot bags. Looks like I was wrong!

The kids were all thrilled with their bags, and my own children have been having a good time reading their books, colouring in their colouring books, (or working on their number books, as the case may be) using their flash cards, and - most especially - eating their candies.