Party Bag Gift/Favor

I went to the party store and bought little watches that were filled with gum, and sunglasses, and fruit snacks. They were a hit. I had the same age range as you do.

For the goody bags, depending on age appropriateness, I like to put in a cute toothbrush (can sometimes find one that matches the theme), stickers or tattoos, bubbles, small board book or puzzle, maybe a coloring book and crayons (check out Target's dollar bin, it's great!)

also "Oriental Trading Company" has some great ideas. I bought 12 butterfly kites for $5 to put in my dd's garden themed party bags. They had a ton of tattoos and other little things for very cheap.

We just celebrated my son's first birthday and the cousins' ages ranged from 3 mos to 8 yrs. It wasn't a huge themed party - for the invitation I took a picture of my son holding 2 huge cookies and wrote "my parents survived my first year, they're 2 tough cookies". So I incorporated the "cookie theme" into the goodie bags and got all of the kids a book with "cookie" in the title from overstock.com. I ordered 4 different books depending on the age of the child. I also just threw in some little oreo and chips ahoy packages of cookies. It took about a week for the books to get shipped. There's also a Halftime Books store in Palatine that has an area of children's books.

I make a list of all kids who are coming, i put in 3 of the same things for all (like one tatoo, some candy (just a few pieces), bubbles and then i pick out one personal item -- pretty much something from dollar store or the dollar bin at target). My daughter's 2nd bd is coming up and i've just stopped over at target, they have a lot of great halloween things (bracelets for girls, socks, spooky pencils, etc) in the dollar - 3.99 bin. That way you know that they will at least have something individual for them. Doesn't have to be a big thing, but it should be useful to them. Hope this helps!

Tough... I had the same issue.

I had a set of girls who were age 9 - 15. I actually didn't give them a goody bag. Based on advice from others, all suggested so. They didn't seem bothered and neither did the parent's. If you still want to give something, you could just maybe put some candy in bag for them or itunes certficate?

For the kiddies under 3, maybe if you can find them a really cheap long sleeved onsie (kohl's usually has some for 4 bucks each) I am sure parent's would appreciate it and would probably cost just as much if you bought the crazy littler stuff. I did that for the really tiny kiddies. And you could go to dollar section and pick up some age appropriate items...

For kiddies 3 and up... I would just hit dollar section and do the best that you can.

Good luck.

We have the same thing with family parties (15 cousins ranging from 3-11 right now) and also with daycare parties (we also invite big siblings, so we will have several 4 year olds and several 7 year olds at my younger son's next party.) We usually divide the favor bags into big kid/little kid, especially when the kids were at the choking-hazard age under 3. One year we gave all the little kids board books while the big kids got something else.

I also try to pick things that aren't age or gender-specific. For example, last summer we put pool splash toys in the bags along with other stuff. Art supplies are good - Michaels recently had sets of modeling clay for $1. And candy is popular for all ages!