Save Money & Make Your Own Disney Themed Treat Bags

 

Earlier this year my family and I had a wonderful time on our vacation to Walt Disney World. My husband Doug, daughter Emily and I have been before, but it was my son William’s first time visiting the World. I was beyond excited to share this most magical of places with him.  As with any vacation I did a lot of prep work ahead of time, but because William suffers from food allergies to peanuts and all tree nuts, I knew this trip would require a lot more planning. (You can read how we prepared for Traveling With Food Allergies here.)

One of the things that concerned me most was how to direct William’s attention away from the multitude of treats that are all over Disney World. William is very aware that we can not just buy any old candy bar off the shelf for him and even though he understands this it can still be upsetting. At home these situations are easy to avoid, but Disney was going to be a whole other story.

I knew one of the biggest problems was going to be the packaging. Sounds silly, but a display case full of candy wrapped in eye catching Disney magic is a lot harder to hide than a regular display. I mean candy has to taste better if Mickey and friends are plastered all over it, right? My solution for this problem was to make my own Disney themed treat bags. My daughter and I had fun shopping for the supplies and putting it all together.  This is what we did:

Step One: Shop for candy!

A few days before our trip I hit up Walmart and purchased several bags of candy and treats I knew were safe for William. A couple he had had before and a couple were new for him. My daughter and I diligently checked the labels, as we always do so I was happy with our selection.

Step Two: Shop for stickers and baggies!

This time I hit up the nearest dollar store for supplies. I purchased the sandwich size baggies that zip close so they could be resealed. The dollar store always has tons of stickers of every conceivable character and show out there so we had to weed through them carefully. I chose a selection of stickers that were aimed at both girls and boys because the idea was for both Emily and William to have these treat bags.

You can see from our photos I bought Disney Princesses, Monsters Inc., Doc McStuffins (my son loves this show) and more.

 

Step Three: Decorate your baggies!

When all was said and done my daughter and I may have gone a little overboard with our treat bag creations, but we had fun doing it. We divided up the stickers and made each bag a different theme. I put stickers on both sides to try and conceal the generic look of the baggies (store packaging is definitely fancier, but we did a pretty good job of making ours look cool.) The only thing left was to fill them!

Step Four: Fill your treat bags!

By counting out the treats we made sure to put the same amount into each bag. If you have more than one child you know how important this is. The bags were plenty full and the idea was that I would take a selection of candy with us each day when we left our resort.  We had enough variety that the kids would have something to look forward to each day.

All in all the homemade Disney themed treat bags were a success! My son never questioned where they came from and he was happily surprised each day.  We ended up bringing some home with us to share long after our trip was over. Many people buy pre-packaged Disney treats as souvenirs to help prolong the magic and I think we did a great job of creating our own version.

What is your favourite type of sweet treat?

Traveling with kids this summer? Check out my post “11 Tips For Flying With Children!”

FT&PD

Suz