Trail Mix Party Favor

I'm having a party to celebrate my birthday, but I have one problem.  Although I love living in the country, I love to look out my window and see trees and forests, I also happen to live very far away from my friends.  I don't mind driving to see them, but getting them all here for my party is a lot to ask.

So this year I decided to give them a little gift to show my appreciation for the long drive they all had to make.

I made little favors with my own trail mix all packaged up and ready to travel.

Here's how I did it.

Supplies:
dried fruits and nuts
popcorn
various colors of card stock
decorative trim punch
glue
scissors
plastic treat bag
stappler

There is really two parts to this whole process.  The first part is making the bag toppers and the second part is making the trail mix.

To Make the bag Toppers:
I started by looking for templates online, and just when I thought I had it all figured out I realized a) they were way too small and b) I didn't have enough off white cardstock.  My seemingly endless supply of off white cardstock was depleted (I only had four sheets left).  I didn't have ennough for ten trail mix favors.

So I made my own.  I don't have any photos of this because it was late last night and in my late night reasoning I figured I didn't need to explain how to make these.

Here are some closeups of the toppers so get an idea:

See the trim cutter (I love these Martha decorative trim things, they make me happy)

I tend to add slightly strange captions (I guess I'm just strange).

Basically I just cut the brown cardstock (I have plenty of brown) to size, cut a decorative trim on the edge, and glued my little message.  I messed up a couple of times, but overall it was pretty straight forward.

This morning I made the trail mix.

Step 1: Poor all ingredients into bowl (I left out the popcorn till the end, I also forgot the M&Ms).

Step 2: Mix- I used a wooden spoon (I don't know why).  I added the popcron after mixing the nuts and dried fruit, but it was very hard to mix.  Your best bet if you are going to use pocorn is to add it to each bag and then put the heaver nuts and fruit on top.  They mix on their own.

Step 3: 
Poor trail mix into bags.  I used a big serving spoon (metal this time), and as I said it is better to add the popcorn at this point than to try to mix it in the bowl.

Step 4:Fold down top of bag.  I folded the bag over twice so it would be fairly air tight (I don't want my trail mix to get stale).

Step 5:Add bag topper.  I just stapled mine on.  The topper was folded so that it encased the top of the bag.  When I stapled it the bag was then sealed by the topper.  I thought about adding a ribbon to hide the staple marks but I decided it was too much.  I wanted to keep my favors pretty casual.

Cost:
Raisens........1.79
Dried sweetened cranberries..........3.90
Bulk almonds...........4.95
Bulk cashews..........5.45 (these are expensive, but I just love them)
Smart Food popcorn.........3.99
Bag topper supplies....free (I had all the supplies needed)
Total Cost.....................20.08
Cost per favor bag....$2.01 (I rounded up the last digit)

That's it.  Not too hard.  The possibilities are endless, you could use any color or design and make them as facy or low key as you want.

If anybody does try this please send me some pictures I would love to see how you interpret my trail mix idea.