This year my boys wanted to make their own little mishloach manot bags for their friends. Adorable, you say. Oh, they're growing up so fast. And you're right. It is and they are. In an effort to keep costs down this year and still make bags for all the kids in their classes (and this totals 32 kids, by the way), we have opted to go the way of the brown paper bag.
I find paper bags, especially the small lunch sized ones, to be fascinating. There are just so many uses for these bags, besides for the obvious use of just holding things. Paper bags make great puppets, they make cute little crowns when cut and colored properly, they help your bananas ripen faster, the kids can make wrapping paper out of them, and my personal favorite, learned from my eighth grade science teacher, Mrs. Pincus, paper bags can and should be used as book covers. She even taught us how to do it. She was a creative one, that Mrs. Pincus. And an interesting one too. One afternoon, she walked into her science class and proceeded to unbutton her blouse (while dancing, I might add) to reveal a flesh-colored t-shirt underneath, adorned (silk-screened?) with a photo of the inside of a human chest - heart, lungs, intestines, the whole deal. Fun times, that eighth grade science class.
*So what to put into the goodie bags for the kids' friends? Whatever's on sale, that's what. So we packed juice boxes (10 for $2), mini fruit by the foots (feet?) (2 boxes for $4, and a 50cent coupon that was doubled!), chocolate bars (8 for a buck), and the most fun, playdough lollipop cookies. We made them. And they look like playdough. But I can't say more because then I will have nothing to report tomorrow. Oh, and fellow preschool mommies, if your kid is getting one of these bags, please don't show him this, my boys really want their bags to be a surprise.