I thought I’d share something that works really well for our twins (who are 3 now, but we’ve been using this idea for well over a year).
We don’t always like to only eat out at kid-friendly places because quite honestly, 90% of the food is terrible at those places and I don’t enjoy eating junk.
So we had to come up with a way to go to occasional nice places AND keep those bottoms in their seats while ordering and then waiting for the food to arrive.
Enter the out and about bag.
our out and about bags currently have:
- stacking cups (my kids LOVE stacking cups)
- mini photo albums (my kids like random pics (the ones you’d toss) so I keep them all and they each have albums
- a tiny stuffed animal
- notebook
- crayons and a pencil
- stickers
Before the current version, we had these items in our bags
- notebook
- crayons
- stamps
- links
- small magnadoodle
- board book
The key to success with these bags :
- only let your kids play with the contents of the bags when you’re out – at a restaurant, church, dentist, doctor, etc – you want things to be like “new” every time
- Keep it fresh and keep changing the items
When I saw how well they work for us, I gave some to a number of sets of twins for their birthdays this year.
This was the latest set:
- small magnadoodle
- book
- notebooks
- pencil
(normally I put crayons too but these twins had just been to a party at my house and I gave them all crayons in a container for easy mobility)
this was for the girl twin…
I like to personalise the bags with laminated name tags and binder rings
and this is for her brother
Some other items I’ve put in the bags when I give them as gifts:
- mini scrapbook kits (mother is a big scrapbooker)
- little photo albums
- mini puzzles (up to 20-piece)
- little wooden block sets
- sticker books
- felt shapes with a plain sheet of felt
- little colouring books
(think easy for you to clear when your food arrives and you’ll be set :))
The bags work out to about R100 each depending on how much you fill them which, for my budget, is just perfect for party gifts.
Aren’t they easy?
PS we’ll be changing our bags again soon – I’ll post the contents of ours when I do 🙂
