Hey guys! Here are last week’s lunches. I’m feeling really uninspired these days and I just keep sending the same stuff over and over.  I’m feeling like I need to shake things up a bit, but Wyatt’s been so picky lately that I don’t dare send anything new with him for fear he won’t eat anything in his lunch.

Tuesday Wyatt got a gigundo strawberry, some ham roll-ups and a bun.

Wednesday he had some strawberries and a few blackberries to shake things up. He also got some baked tofu and a Laughing Cow cheese wedge. The tofu looks like it’s in one big block, but I’ve really only cut a thin sheet off the top to make the decorative teddy bear. Underneath, it’s cut into easy to manage strips.

I didn’t take a picture on Thursday. I sent Wyatt’s lunch in a thermos and I totally forgot to take a picture again. For some reason I can never remember to take a picture when I send the hot stuff. Really it’s no big loss though because the stuff I stick in the thermos tends to be kind of smooshed together and a little unattractive. So anyway, I gave Wyatt rice mixed with chicken and broccoli casserole with all the chicken picked out and a small container of berries.  I forgot to send a spoon for his hot lunch (doh!), but even though they gave him a plastic spoon at school, I don’t think he ate even a single bite. Over all, lunch FAIL.

Does Friday’s lunch look familiar? Sheesh! Berries, ham and a bun. But do you see that strawberry?? Oh, do you think that’s more than one strawberry? I’m sorry to say that you are wrong. Check this out:

That’s all one strawberry! It looked like it was five strawberries all grown together. I put a blackberry in the photo so you could see how big it was.  Dang!

March 19, 2009: Catching up on laundry after our trip.

March 20, 2009: Wyatt made this awesome sculpture at preschool.

March 21, 2009: Setting up a production line for my Project 365 scrapbook.

March 22, 2009: Letterboxing

March 23, 2009: Augie has really been enjoying the pureed sweet potatoes I made him. Definitely his favorite new food.

March 24, 2009: Just me and my boy playing around on the couch. Note the lovely pile of (clean!) laundry over his shoulder. Nice.

March 25, 2009: I’ve got two boys and they have matching robot pajamas. I’m a lucky lady.

The other night I had a dream I was making a super cute stuffed monster for Augie. The dream was one of those super realistic ones, where you wake up and you’re not sure if you actually lived it or not. I made the monster out of actual materials in my stash and it was a combination of two different projects I’ve been meaning to put together for a while — a taggie blanket and a stuffed monster kit that I picked up at the Maker Faire last year. The project came out really cute in my dream and when I woke up in the morning, I knew I wanted to make one just like it!

This is what the taggie monster doll looked like in my mind’s eye. Wouldn’t you want to make one too? Man, I have a good imagination.

I assembled all the materials I would need. From the top you see: polyfill (I had to use the nasty plastic stuff because they were out of the nice bamboo kind at the craft store), a sheet each of white and black felt, my Craft monster kit (I used the instructions from the kit as a basic guideline for my monster, but I made several modifications), super-soft purple fleece, cupcake fabric and polka-dot fabric. I also used, but forgot to photograph, embroidery floss and lots of small pieces of ribbon. Tools I used included: a sewing machine, cardstock, scissors, needle and thread.

I started off by drawing a free-form, amorphous blob on a 12×12 piece of cardstock. I included an ill-defined head, along with stumpy arms and legs.

I decided to make a non-taggie monster of Wyatt while I was at it. He told me he wanted it to have seven eyes so I gave it a really big head to make sure they’d all fit.

Next, I cut the monsters out of the paper. These guys are going to be the patterns.

Next, I pinned the pattern pieces to the fleece and cut them out. I was planning on using the contrasting polka-dot pattern on the back of Augie’s monster so I only put them down on a single layer of fabric. If you were using the same fabric for both the front and the back, you would double up the fabric and cut them both at once.

When I cut the pieces out, I added about a half inch seam allowance around the pattern piece so the finished project wouldn’t be too much smaller than the pattern. I just eye-balled this because this is one of those fun projects where you don’t have to be an exacting Virgo (which is what I usually am).

I then put the pattern piece and the fleece down on top of the polka dot pattern (right sides together) and cut the shape out of the dot fabric. Are you sick of this polka dot fabric yet? I’m not! I totally love this fabric. I’ve used it on two other projects: the camera cozy and the bean bags. You’d never know it from my blog, but I actually do have other fabrics.

OK, so next I cut the eyes out of felt. Nine white circles (2 for Augie’s monster, 7 for Wyatt’s) and nine smaller black circles. I just free-handed these too because I wanted them to be monster-y.

I sewed the pupils to the eyeballs with the machine. You could hand sew these, or even glue them on with fabric glue, but I’m making this for a baby and these suckers are a perfect choking size so I didn’t want there to be any chance that they will come off the doll.

I went around the pupils twice to make sure they were very firmly affixed. Hmmmm…it’s hard to see that in this photo.

Here’s the back. See how well that bad boy is fastened on there? My baby is safe!

Once all the pupils were sewed onto the whites, I sewed the eyes onto the right side of the fabric. Again, I went around the circle twice to make sure they were on there really good.

Now, I attached the ribbon. I have a bunch of ribbon for scrapbooking, but I also bought a bag of ribbon remnants for $1 at the craft store. I tried to use a mix of satin and grosgrain ribbons in different widths and lengths. I cut the pieces about 2 to 2 1/2 inches long. I folded each piece in half and then pinned them onto the right side of the backing fabric with the ribbon ends along the edge of the fabric and the looped end pointing toward the middle.

Here’s a little bit more of a close-up.

Next, I pinned the two pieces of fabric together, right sides facing each other.

Then I sewed around the edge of the sandwich, leaving about a half-inch seam allowance. I wasn’t super precise about this, because that makes it more monster-y. I also left about a two inch gap for turning the monster right side out.

Next, I trimmed the excess ribbon to match the length of the seam allowance. I also ran an extra line of stitches along the part of the seam allowance where the ribbons were. Again, I did this because it’s for a baby. I wanted an extra line on security to prevent a choke-able ribbon from coming loose in case he somehow managed to rip out the main seam.

Then I turned the monster skin outside out. Starting to look more monster-y and less sewing project-y, huh?

Then I stuffed that bad boy full of poly-fill and sewed the gap shut. I hadn’t planned on putting a mouth on it, but after it sat a few hours the lack of a mouth really started to bug me, so I embroidered one on. If you want a mouth too, you should put it on after you sew on the eyes so it’s finished nicely.

And here’s the finished monster! Doesn’t he look amazingly similar to what I dreamed about? Go back up to the top and check it out. It’s amazing how close I got!

And here is the taggy monster with Wyatt’s seven-eyed monster. They are friends.

Here’s the back of the monsters. The back of the baby’s is bright, cheerful and stimulates his mind. Wyatt’s has a cupcake on it’s booty. I bet you were wondering why I had that cupcake fabric in the photo waaaaay back up there at the top, weren’t you? Well this is why. I cut one of the cupcackes out of the fabric and appliqued it to the backing piece on Wyatt’s monster. This is why his monster is named “Cupcake Butt.” We haven’t come up with a name for Augie’s monster yet. Anyone have any suggestions?

March 12, 2009: Most of this day was spent traveling. Our house to SFO. Flight to Austin. Rental car to hotel. By the time we were checked into the hotel and settled into our room a little it was 9:00 pm and we were all starving. We asked for a BBQ recommendation at the front desk and they pointed us to the Green Mesquite. Yuuuuuuummmmm, BBQ! It was so good, we ended up eating there again on our last night in town.

March 13, 2009: This day was rainy and cold — in the 40’s! Cripes! Zach took off for the convention center and the kids and I headed over to the Austin Children’s Museum for the afternoon. Wyatt had a particularly great time playing in the grocery store and restaurant play areas. See that white tube in the upper left hand corner? That was a pneumatic tube that sucked milk bottles from one part of the play area to where Wyatt is standing. They popped out of the tube and dropped into a bin below and then the kids could load them up in baskets and put them on a conveyor belt to restock the shelves (on the right side of the photo).

March 14, 2009: Saturday was less rainy, but still cold. I wasn’t thrilled to be outside, but I knew there was more rain forecasted for the week so we chose an outdoor activity over an indoor one. We went to the Austin Nature and Science Center which was great! They had rescued animals to look at, a nice indoor area with microscopes and a huge sand pit full of dinosaur “fossils” for kids to dig up. Wyatt started out burying fossils, then changed his mind and decided to dig. Afterwards, when we were looking at the animals, he started playing with another little boy. I struck up a conversation with the parents and after chatting for 15 minutes discovered that their infant son was also named August. Weird.

March 15, 2009: Rainy and cold again so we went to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Not the best choice for a four year old, but I thought the museum was fun. Wyatt did enjoy the movie we saw there though. It was about the history of Texas (surprise!), but it was in one of those theaters where the seats can move and they do other effects inside the theater. Wyatt was very impressed that it rained inside and that if felt like a rattle snake bit our booties, but the main thing he took away from the museum were the stories of oil strikes and gushers. The main thing Augie took away was a stuffed longhorn bull.

March 16, 2009: This was the day the weather turned around. The temperature rose 35 degrees over night and we were treated to a sparkling, warm Texas day. The boys and I headed over to Zilker Park and played on the mammoth play structure there. Later in the afternoon we met up with Zach at the convention center and played in a giant pile of Legos while he attended some more sessions. Later, all four of us went to Stubb’s BBQ for dinner. Yum! (Though I thought the less famous Green Mesquite was better…) Zach toodled over to a nearby bar for the Dent Event he was hosting and I took the boys back to the hotel to watch Bolt on pay per view.

March 17, 2009: Zach got to spend a little time with us on our last day in Austin because SXSW was winding down. We met up with him in the afternoon and headed to the S. Congress area to do some shopping. Allen’s Boots was a highlight. Zach and Wyatt both got cowboy hats and Augie got some baby cowboy boots (so cute!). We also ate cupcakes sold out of an airstream trailor.

March 18, 2009: The iPhone has made flying with a 4 year oldso much more pleasant! Wyatt is actually a pretty patient flyer as it is. He usually sleeps for part of the flight and watches a movie on the phone for the rest. It makes it much easier to handle having Augie on our laps.

Wow! I’m so late with this post. Our trip to Austin was fun, but it’s amazing how a change in routine can upset the balance of  our household. Sheesh! Anyway, let’s do some catch-up:

The Tuesday before we left I made this wonderfully beige lunch. This is a good example of how not to make a lunch colorful and exciting. I did the best I could with the shades of brown at my disposal though. This lunch had pita crackers from Trader Joe’s (my new favorite cracker), baked tofu and a half banana.

OK, Wednesday’s lunch was a little better: Deli ham roll-ups, canned peaches with sprinkles, and garlic toast bunnies.

We made a quick run to the grocery store the night we got back from our trip, so I had some fresh foods to offer Wyatt in his lunch that Thursday. Here we have baked tofu cut up and arranged in a checkerboard pattern, strawberries, and frozen peas.

Friday’s lunch had a hot dog, canned peaches, catsup and a mini blueberry muffin I pulled out of the freezer. I also added a little fruit leather star for decoration.

I’ve had a few requests in the past couple of months to see how the bento boxes I make are assembled, what they look like when they’re closed up and about how big they are, so I took a few pictures to demonstrate those things. I will have a few more photos to share at the end of the week using a different style of box.

This box is one of the stacking style boxes I use regularly. It comes with enough pieces to make a double layer, but I’ve found that’s way to much food for Wyatt, so I just use the biggest, bottom layer. Here you see the lid, the silverware tray and the food container.

The silverware tray goes on top of the food container.

It provides a snug fit but it doesn’t seal.

Here it is next to my hand for size reference. The boxes are pretty small, but that allows the food to be packed tightly together which allows it to arrive at school without being jumbled together.

The lid goes on top of the silverware tray.

Next, the bento “belt” goes on. The belt is a strip of elastic. Sometimes it’s decorated like this one is, but sometimes it’s plain. I use both kinds regularly. Remember, the boxes aren’t self-sealing like a Rubbermaid or Tupperware box is so you need a belt to keep the box closed.

Here is the bento box next to Wyatt’s lunch “box”. It’s really a thermal bag meant for a six-pack. Wyatt doesn’t like this because it’s boring and doesn’t have any pictures of trucks or superheroes on it, but I won’t buy him a new one because this is perfectly functional. Mean mom!

Here’s the bento inside the lunch box.

And here’s the lunchbox after I’ve crammed in a freezer pack and a water bottle. This isn’t how I typically pack his lunch, so this isn’t the best photo to show. This was the first time I’ve ever put that particular water bottle in there. Usually I send Wyatt’s drink (almost always juice cut with water) in a Rubbermaid Litterless Juice Box, but he just got this new water bottle and was dying to take it to school because, you know — robots. I won’t be sending this again though. Wyatt couldn’t open and close it by himself and the teacher didn’t seal it back up tightly so it leaked all over his lunch box and soaked through to his back pack. (It was dumb of me not to check to see if he could do it himself without asking for help.) Needless to say, we are back to our old stand-by plastic boxes.

Today I was looking for something to do with the boys and I stumbled across letterboxing. “What is letterboxing?” you ask. Good question! Letterboxes are little caches that are hidden around the country (actually, around the world).  Each box contains a log book, a stamp and sometimes an ink pad or another treasure. Once a person hides a letterbox, they provide clues to find it. Letterbox hunters search out the boxes and when they find them, they use the stamp in the box to stamp their personal log books. They then take their personal stamp that they have brought along with them and stamp it in the box’s log book, along with any message they’d like to write. Need more info? Check out http://www.letterboxing.org or http://www.atlasquest.com.

So back to our story. The boys and I looked for some clues online and found two letterboxes that appeared to be located just a few blocks from out house. We bundled up in our warm clothes (with Wyatt in his adventure cowboy hat and Augie in his Harley-Davidson beanie) and set out on our walk!

The first box we tried to find was a bust. We located where the box was supposed to be with no troubles, but despite digging in some disgusting ivy for about a half hour, we never did find a letterbox.  I did, however, find numerous pieces of paper, several food wrappers, a Bartles and James bottle half-filled with stagnant water and a plastic bag filled with dog poop. This was pretty disappointing for us, but Wyatt was agreeable to more walking in order to continue our adventure, so we headed a few blocks further to follow the other clues we had. This time we were victorious! The letterbox was well-hidden in a clever way, but I’m not going to share that info because I don’t want to spoil the surprise for other hunters.

Here’s a picture of the outside of the box:

And here’s what the inside looked like. The stamp and the log book were both wrapped up in a baggie to keep them dry.

We used the stamp in our log book and I noted the location of the box (blurred to preserve the surprise), the date and that Wyatt and I were the ones who found it.

I didn’t take any pictures of the pages of the log book because I’m not sure if that’s OK, but there were entries going back two years and someone from as far away as Alaska had stamped her image in there. This is what we put into the log book. We used a store-bought stamp for today, but if we keep doing this — which I think we will — I’ll be carving a new stamp for us. Our team name is Kitty Pants.