Homemade Baby Food Jar Snow Globes and Christmas Goody Bag Ideas

I'm a Kindergarten room mom this year and I'm in charge of party planning. I have a small budget to work with and I was trying to think of some inexpensive but cool gifts to put in goody bags for the children. I was able to "go green" a bit by recycling some baby food jars that were given to me. The friend who gave me the jars also gave me the idea to make snow globes with them (thanks Carrie!). To prep the jars, I soaked them in hot soapy water and the labels came off quite easily. I dried each jar and lid and then got to work on my project.

I bought some small evergreen trees to stick in each jar. I had envisioned using snowmen but the craft store didn't have any on the day I went so I went with the trees as they were only $1.99 for 12 count packages. I used floral clay to stick the trees to the inside of each lid. The finished snow globes will sit lid side down. Next, I filled the jars with about two teaspoons of glitter. Then I filled the jars with cold tap water stopping about a 1/2 inch from the top. I used a hot glue gun to seal the lids. I put the glue around the inside rim of the lid and then twisted it back onto the jar. Once this is done, let the jars dry lid side up overnight. Resist the urge to shake them or turn them over before they are dry. I did not resist the urge (I'm very impatient sometimes!) and as a result I ended up having to redo the seals on about 75% of my jars due to leakage. Not fun and quite messy! The finished product turned out cute and I think the kids are really going to enjoy these. I will wrap them in newspaper (another "green" move) to help prevent breakage.

I will be putting the snow globes and Reindeer Food from my previous post in the goody bags along with a few dollar store finds (Christmas Pencils and Christmas Erasers), a candy cane and homemade cookie treats. I'm pleased with my budget friendly goody bags. The goody bags themselves are also going to be homemade. The kids will each decorate their own goody bags ahead of time using a plain paper lunch bag and some Christmas cut-outs, crayons, markers and glue.