As I said in a recent post, I love Liz at Hoosier Homemade’s New Year’s Eve countdown goodie bags. The idea is to give your children a goodie bag on the hour leading up til “midnight” (or 8pm as it will be here for our tired kiddies). We are starting the bags at 12 pm so there will be 9 altogether.
Here is a picture of our bags – if you would like the clock face picture you can use it for free from here. I just hand drew on the relevant hours after I had printed off the 9 copies I required. 
Here is what we’ve decided to include in our bags:-
1. Get creating with a party hat station @ 12pm. Inspired by this idea from the ladies at Hostess with the Mostess.We don’t have party hats in the house and instead of buying some I thought we could add to the fun by making our own from newspaper. We will be guided by the faithful hand of Cindy from Skip To My Lou.
2. New Year’s Garland @ 1pm- everything the kids will need to make a sparkly new year’s garland – we’re using left-over sparkly christmas tinsel and black cardboard for a striking sparkly look.
3. Fun with word searches, puzzles and colouring-in printables @ 2pm – all 2013 themed and all from activity village – we love activity village around here, they will save you on a rainy day, guaranteed!
Following on from there we have:
4. Decorate a memory jar @ 3pm – the girls can choose a 2013 outline to colour, then cut out and stick to the jar and then decorate with star stickers. The jar is for writing special memories and events that happen throughout 2013. And then we will all open the jar and read them out next New Year’s Eve.
5. Making some fun resolutions @ 4pm – Activity Village have a fun resolution story to fill out and also a sweet star print out for new year’s wishes. I’m not sure the girls are old enough to make year long promises just yet so these are a great alternative!
6. Whipped Cream Fun @ 5pm – Whipped cream in a bottle is a great novelty item and my kids love it! So we are having whipped cream & strawberries and whipped cream in a spider (which is a kids drink that combines fizzy drink and icecream). I plan to let the girls add whipped cream to the top and then sprinkle with sprinkles!.
7. Open ended 2013 Creation @ 6pm – each of the girls will get one part of the huge 2013 outline I drew on construction paper. They can choose whether they want to paint, colour, make a collage or all three! At the end we will stick it together and display it.
8. Create some noise makers @ 7pm – there are so many ways to create your own noise makers. I thought we could use some of tin cans from our stockpile. We will fill them with colourful beads and decorate them. To add to the cacophany we will probably get out some pots and pans as well:)
9. Woohoo! Sparklers and crazy photos @ 8pm - both of the girls have robust little digital cameras and love using them. They also love sparklers so this is a perfect fun way for us to help the girls celebrate the new year. We will also be wearing the neon bracelets that are sold in the party section at the supermarket.
There was some talk of us putting a lolly or two is 9 blown up balloons and adding them to the countdown but no-one is quite sure if that is definitely happening (=none of the grown ups wants that job!). Counting down by popping balloons instead of using the goodie bag is another option which I discovered over at HowDoesShe. Great idea which we wanted to tweak and use lollies in addition to the bags.
A special note to make here :- most of the activities won’t fit into the brown lunch bags of course so I am writing the activity on paper and having the activities ready to go “behind the scenes”. As the girls read the activity out I will be ready with a “tah-dah”!!
I hope your visit here has inspired you to incorporate some DIY craft fun in to New Year’s Eve. I also have a huge round up of news year’s craft ideas over at pinterest. If you are featured and would like to grab a Mudpies and Sunshine button you will find them here. I wish you all health, happiness and peace for the new year. Thank you very much for visiting and supporting my blog. Best new year’s wishes Nicole x
