Wendolonia

The Week in Bentos: May 20-24, 2013

by Wendy on May 24, 2013

This weeks’ lunches had a color coordinated box, a special dinosaur lunch and a brand spankin’ new lunch box to play with. Read on:

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Monday

On Monday I accidentally packed Wyatt an all red and orange lunch. I just started putting stuff in the box and when I finished it was perfectly color coordinated. Ha! He had pepperoni, carrots, radishes, a pesto and cheddar sandwich, strawberries and two gummy fish. This was packed in the PlanetBox and I used the included inner container to cut the bread into circles so that it would fit perfectly in the largest section of the box.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I packed Augie’s lunch in our Lock & Lock 4-up bento box: grapes, peanut butter sandwiches that I cut into circle shapes and decorated with a fruit leather star, cucumber slices, and grape tomatoes.

Wyatt’s lunch was packed in one of the Laptop Lunches boxes: blue and white goldfish, grapes, sesame seaweed sheets, pepperoni, and another pesto and cheddar sandwich.

The seaweed was from a package of samples I received in the mail the day before and both kids were totally nuts for it. The brand is gimMe and their products will be hitting store shelves in June. They are unique because they are the only seaweed products in the world to be certified organic and non-GMO which I thought was pretty cool. Of course the boys didn’t care about that like I do — they just liked the sesame flavor which neither had ever had before.

Wednesday

I pulled the Lock & Lock right back out of the dishwasher on Wednesday morning and used it again for Augie’s lunch. He had grape tomatoes, turkey meatballs decorated with circus picks, strawberries, grapes and fried rice leftover from dinner the night before.

Wyatt had school lunch.

Thursday

This is dinosaur week at Augie’s school and Thursday was the super exciting Dino Day! The teachers buried bones in the yard, along with tiny dinosaur toys that they’d baked into a flour and water mixture to make eggs and the children got to dig them up. They also got to decorate dinosaur cookies at cooking time so it’s fair to say there was just a little bit of dinosaur fever in our house in the morning. I asked Augie if he wanted a dinosaur lunch and he went completely giddy with happiness. I didn’t actually do that much differently than I normally do, but I came up with fun names for everything in the lunch box and he was so thrilled that he threw his arms around my neck and shouted “Thank you, Mommy!” I can assure you that doesn’t happen very often!

So what was in this magical dinosaur lunch box? Well, there was a dinosaur sandwich, of course. It was filled with peanut butter and decorated with an icing googly eye. I put a few silicone leaves behind it too to make it look like it was out in the woods or something. Other people would probably use a real lettuce leave for that, but Augie hates salad and would freak if I put it in his lunch box, so I go with the fake stuff. I also packed dinosaur eggs (grapes), dinosaur food (cucumbers and sugar snap peas), hummus (dirt), lava rocks (tomatoes) and a shooting star cookie that destroyed all life on earth

Wyatt made his own sandwich for lunch. I’d been packing him these pesto and cheese sandwiches all week and he hadn’t been eating them, so I finally made him take a bite of one after school. Of course he loved it (which is why I was making them) and he totally went to town making one after school for a snack on Wednesday, switching up the bread and adding a few more items. The one in this lunch is the same kind: garlic naan, pesto, mayo, cheddar cheese and pepperoni. I had a bite of the one he made for his snack and it was yummy. He also had blue and white goldfish, vanilla wafers, grapes and radishes. This was packed in an EasyLunchboxes box.

Friday

The people at Yumbox sent me one of their lunch boxes to try out this week too. And today I took it out for a spin for the first time. I’ll try to write a little more about this box after I’ve used it a few times, but my initial impressions of it are good. The box is designed to encourage kids to eat from all the different food groups and the different sections are sized according to healthy eating guideline. Augie particularly liked this feature and when he saw the box on the table after school yesterday he insisted that I make him a snack with a serving of each kind of food. Ha ha! Sure Buddy!

He wanted his lunch packed in it today (Wyatt has dibs on it on Monday) so this is what I put in it: berry yogurt, strawberries, cucumbers, snap peas and carrots, hummus, Triscuits and deli ham roll-ups on rocket and soccer ball picks.

Wyatt had a Star Wars lunch: vanilla wafers, blue and white goldfish in an R2-D2 “Easter egg”, leftover roasted potatoes, strawberries with a Stormtrooper, and Darth Vader and Yoda sandwiches filled with — you guessed it! — pesto and cheese. We were out of sliced cheese this morning and I had to use shredded cheese. That’s why Yoda’s ears look so hairy.

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Jungle in a Box

by Wendy on May 22, 2013

How to Make a Jungle in a Box

I received a Jo-Ann gift card to purchase supplies for this project and share the process with you.

Summer vacation is almost here and I find I am constantly on the look-out for activities I will be able to use to occupy my boys in the afternoons. I’m browsing Pinterest, reading everyone’s summer fun lists and restocking our art supplies. We like to do things outside of course, but in the SF Bay Area summers are often kind of chilly so I’m looking for inside activities too. When the folks at Jo-Ann invited me to try a project from their Cape-Discovery catalog, I was excited to pick a project and recreate it with Wyatt and Augie at home. The three of us flipped through the catalog together and the jungle diorama project was the clear favorite with both kids so we checked to see what supplies we had on hand and then headed to our local Jo-Ann to get the rest of the things we needed.

These are the materials we used:

Storage boxes — we chose a green floral pattern because it was king of jungle-y
Toob Animals — we bought the “Wild” and “Rainforest” sets and we already had some plastic dinosaurs that Augie wanted to use
Plastic trees — we pulled ours out of the toy box
Dried ferns
Large polished river rocks
Small rocks — we got ours from our yard
Moss assortment
Sticks from the yard
Acrylic paints — I bought a bottle of light blue and then supplemented with some brown and green paint I had on hand
Paint brushes
Hot glue gun & glue
Scissors
Wire cutters

Here’s how we put the dioramas together:

First we painted the interiors of the boxes light blue. Augie and I did both boxes while Wyatt was at school so we could start working on the rest of the project as soon as he got home.

To make the boxes stand upright, you lay them on their sides in their lids. When Wyatt saw the plain white box lid, he decided it was way too boring and asked if he could paint his lid to look like a river.

Well, yeah! Of course! I got a few bottles of brown and green paint out of the craft cupboard and the boys decorated the insides of their box lids too.

Next, we glued the ferns on back of the box to look like a trees in the distance. I ran the hot glue gun and the kids cut the ferns and told me where to put them. At four, Augie is too young to run the hot glue gun (though he really wants too), and while Wyatt is old enough and competent enough at age 8, he’s too nervous to do it.

Next, we glued the large river rocks onto the base portion, then filled in the smaller spaces with smaller rocks, sticks and plastic trees. (Yeah, we used plastic pine trees in our jungle scene — wanna make something of it? We have a grizzly bear and an iguanadon in there too.) We added moss to the empty spaces between the rocks to make the scene look more lush, too.

The kids also took great delight in gluing rocks and moss and a monkey to the sides and roof of the box.

The instructions for this project instructed us to glue the animals into the scene, but the kids both wanted to keep their animals un-glued so they could play with them.

Once we were done with all the gluing, I asked the kids to arrange their boxes just the way they like it so I could take a photo for this post.

Here is Wyatt’s:

I love how he incorporated the river into this scene and how he arranged the bear to drink from it and the alligator to swim in it.

And here is Augie’s box:

It may not look like it, but he spent a good five minutes carefully piling his animals on top of the rocks. He explained that they are a big family and that the brothers all like to sleep together in a pile. Gotcha!

This is what his box looks like with a more judicious number of animals included in the scene.

There are two things I really loved about this project:

In addition to the fun we had making these, the finished boxes are really fun to play with. The kids — especially Augie — have played with them several times since we initially put them together and they enjoy making up stories and creating adventures for the animals. One afternoon of construction, many afternoons of play!
The boxes are easy to store. Often we make craft projects and then there’s no good place to put them besides on an already cluttered display shelf. These boxes can be displayed, of course, but I also like that we can toss all the animals inside, put on the lid and stack them in a toy cubby in the kids’ room.

Do you ever make home made play sets with your kids?

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Kid Lunch, Mom Lunch

by Wendy on May 20, 2013

On Mondays Augie stays home from preschool and we hang out together. Sometimes we hang out around the house, sometimes we run errands and sometimes we go out on adventures, but we always eat lunch together. We usually eat pretty much the same thing, but I often vary the preparation a little bit to suit each of our tastes. Today I thought it would be fun to show you our two lunches side by side.

Here is Augie’s lunch:

I kept this lunch very plain because I was making it in a hurry. We had been out shopping and by the time we got home Augie was cranky and grabbing stuff from the fridge so I put it together with no fancy stuff. I served it in a 6 cup muffin tin because it is Muffin Tin Monday, after all. He had Fiddle Faddle, carrtots, hummus, sweet pickles, tuna (straight-up, no mayo) and cucumber slices.

And here is my lunch:

I also had a pickle, carrots, cukes and hummus but I added in half an avocado from the fridge and I turned my half of the tuna can into a tuna salad sandwich.

The same basic meal but it looks pretty different, right?

Do you eat the same thing as your kids for lunch? Or do you make different meals? Or do you do a mix?

I’m linking up to Muffin Tin Monday on Another Lunch. If you’d like to see more cute muffin tins you should head on over to check them out!

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The Week in Bentos: May 13-17, 2013

by Wendy on May 17, 2013

Another week, another batch of lunches! Let’s get to it:

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Monday

We kicked off the week with this lunch for Wyatt, packed in a Laptop Lunches box: grapes, star-shaped apricot jam sandwiches, a chocolate chip cookie, corn, meatballs and ketchup (in the little box).

The cookie was a sample I got when I attended the Help a Mother Out benefit tea on Saturday. It was made by Dr. Lucy’s Cookies who was one of the sponsors of the tea. Augie and I also tried the cookies when we ate lunch at home and they were delicious. So, yummy cookie — that’s a given — but what is notable about Dr. Lucy’s is that they are allergen free. No nuts, no dairy, no gluten, vegan, kosher and they’re made in a tested facility to ensure they’re safe. I know many Wendolonia readers are managing allergies and food sensitivities, so I though I would highlight this product and company because they are safe, but also really tasty! (The kids had no idea!)

Tuesday

Augie’s lunch was packed in the super cute school bus bento box: Triscuits, grapes, apple chunks, turkey meatballs, and ketchup in a little box.

Wyatt had school lunch.

Wednesday

I went to the farmer’s market and loaded up on fresh fruit Tuesday afternoon, so the kids had awesome lunches on Wednesday. Augie had cukes, nectarine chunks, blackberries, dried cranberries, a ham sandwich made on a half hamburger bun and decorated with icing googly eyes, and a little star cookie. This lunch was packed in our PlanetBox.

After I had everything packed, I started to get worried about the juicy nectarine getting all over the rest of the lunch, so I whipped out a little Glad press and seal and put it over the nectarine compartment to keep it in contained. It worked fabulously! Hat tip to Melissa over at Another Lunch for this great tip! I’m not sure how she got hers to look so neat and tidy and mine looks like I ripped it off the roll with my teeth. Maybe I need to check in with her on that!

Wyatt also had a half ham sandwich (no google eyes) along with tortilla chips, cherries, blackberries and a nectarine. I should also mention that I sprinkled both boys’ nectarines with Fruit Fresh to keep them from going brown.

Thursday

Another fruity lunch for Augie: snap peas, cucumbers, nectarine, strawberries, deli ham roll-ups and a slice of sourdough batard that I decorated with soy cheese suns. I used these cutters to make the suns.

Wyatt had pepperoni slices, strawberries, nectarine, sugar snap peas, roasted pepper dip (in the blue box), and a slice of buttered bread. We had the dip the night before and to my surprise Wyatt ate it with quite a few snap peas, so it made an appearance in his lunch the next day. Good stuff!

Friday

Today Augie asked for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so I made him one and cut and stamped it to look like a pig with my CuteZcute cutter set. I also packed grapes, weird blue and white goldfish crackers that I found at Target and cucumber slices. The crackers are in a star-shaped silicone cup and I included some cute animal baran between the sandwich and the rest of the lunch to keep it from getting soggy.

Wyatt had tortilla chips, pineapple salsa, turkey meatballs and corn.

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Review: OliveBox

May 16, 2013

Though this post contains affiliate links, I haven’t received compensation or product in exchange for this review. All opinions expressed are my own. A couple months ago I mentioned my love for my OliveBox subscription. Now that I’ve received my last shipment I thought it would be a good time to do a full review. [...]

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Baked Lemon Buttermilk Doughnuts and a Boatload of Donut Memories

May 14, 2013

This post contains affiliate links. My first real job (ie: not babysitting) was working as a cashier at Donutland. I got up early every Saturday and Sunday morning my junior year of high school, drove my parents’ Chevette to work and spent the mornings selling donuts to sleepy families, a few cops and the old [...]