The Week in Lunches

This week I captured the fall season in each lunch.  I was also able to get a picture of every lunch this week.

Monday

On Monday the girls had a fall leaves lunch. They had PB & homemade apple butter leaf sandwiches, veggie sticks, yogurt with sprinkles and green grapes in the pumpkin cup. 

Tuesday

On Tuesday they had a fall sampler lunch.  My girls do not like lunch meat sandwiches. I have tried many times with them but they either pull it apart and eat it separately or just leave it untouched.  This is an easier way for me to get something besides peanut butter in them.   They had crackers, cucumbers cut into leaves, cheese cut with a squirrel cutter and salami slices.  They also have yogurt with sprinkles and more green grapes. 

Wednesday

I was in Target the other day and scored a really big leaf cookie cutter on clearance.  I used it on Wednesday to cut their PB & homemade apple butter sandwich.  I put in veggies sticks, yogurt with sprinkles, apple slices and apple straws.

Thursday

On Thursday the girls had a PB&J sandwich cut with a pumpkin cookie cutter, pretzels in the pumpkin cup, a pumpkin shaped homemade Oreo, yogurt with sprinkles and pear slices. 

Friday

The girls were so excited for today.  I told them earlier in the week that I had bought a new cutter for their lunch on Friday.  They spent all week try to figure out what it was.  Hannah guessed it this morning while they were eating breakfast but I made them wait until it was all done before they could see it.  So, today we have a PB & apple butter sandwich cut with the new Frankenstein cutter decorated with large candy eyes and fruit leather, Halloween chips, yogurt with bug sprinkles, 4 Halloween Joe Joe's Cookies from Trader Joe's, and a GoGo Squeez.  I think it came out really cute.

Enjoy your Friday, we are preparing for a hurricane Sandy just in case she decides to pay us a visit.  





A Work In Progress

There is a crazy woman that lives inside of me that wants everything to be neat, clean, and organized...perfect.  I told you she was crazy.  While doing my "rounds" yesterday picking up and straightening up this is the condition I found Hannah's desk.

It's not that bad and usually I would start cleaning it up but this time I didn't.  I stopped and stepped back to look at it all.  There is a partially colored owl picture, a song that she is writing, a drawing book and a couple of drawings. 

I was able to ignore the crazy lady and leave the desk just as I found it, just as she left it.  A work in progress.

The Week in Lunches

I don't take pictures of every lunch I make for the girls.  Some days I am just not creative enough or I am short on time.  I think posting them once a week will work out great.  I hope you will join me each week to see what the girls had for lunch. 

Monday

This lunch was puuuurrrrfect.  The girls had PB&J cat sandwiches with candy eyes and fruit leather decorations, goldfish crackers, yogurt with fish sprinkles and apples slices with letter picks.

Wednesday

On Wednesday the girls had creepy cat and spider PB&J sandwiches, Halloween chips, applesauce, a tube of yogurt and a spider cup full of Antioxidant Boost mix from our October Nature Box. 

Friday



This morning was a little bit hectic.  After getting the girls settled at the table with their breakfast I started packing their lunches as usual.  To my surprise there was not one slice of bread or the tiniest bit of yogurt in the house.  I promised the girls a Halloween lunch every Friday and I couldn't let them down.  I scoured the cabinets and found some Halloween pasta and put it to boil on the stove.  I always keep a jar of good spaghetti sauce for quick dinners but was out of that too.  (I think I need to go to the store.)  So, at 7:00 this morning I was sauteing shallots and garlic and making my own sauce.  It's not a smell I am used to at that time of day.  Nonetheless, the girls got a Halloween lunch.  I packed their Halloween pasta in their thermos and made them a piece of garlic ghost toast.  The also had a cereal bar, apple slices and a Halloween Homemade Oreo using this recipe from the Momables website.  The are made with whole wheat flour which tastes really nice with cocoa powder.  Friday Halloween lunch was saved and everyone was happy.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend! 

  

Lunches

I am a little behind in posting some of the girls lunches.  Here are a few lunches from last week.  I may start doing a weekly post just for lunches to make it easier. 

After our apple picking adventure I wanted to make the girls an apple lunch and this is what I came up with.

The girls had a pb&j apple shaped sandwich, pretzels, apple shaped cucumber slices and cheddar cheese slices.  They also had yogurt with fall leaves sprinkles and of course apple slices with a cute tree pick.

Their next lunch had me giggling the whole time.  There is just something silly about those owls.

They have pb&honey owl shaped sandwiches with fruit leather and candy eye decorations, veggie sticks, yogurt with fall leaves sprinkles and more apple slices. 

The girls only had a half day on friday so no lunch was needed.  I packed them their Halloween lunch a day early.

This lunch was a ghost and "Boo" shaped pb&pumpkin butter sandwiches with fruit leather decorations, corn puffs, yogurt with sprinkles, and a lemon poppy seed jack-o-lantern muffin.

I went out of town for the weekend with some wonderful ladies from church.  On Saturday the girls asked my husband if he could make them "a lunch like mom makes".  He heartily laughed and said no but he could make them a sandwich.  Cute. 

Have a wonderful day!

Today I am

:: grateful for such an amazing husband

:: thankful for a wonderful weekend away with friends

:: still laughing at the sillyness from the weekend

:: making my to-do lists for the day

:: checking the calendar for this week's activities

:: staring at a pile of bills to be paid (boo)

:: noticing the leaves starting to change on the trees

:: watching my sweet dog snooze in her bed

:: remembering a refrigerator full of apples waiting to made into something delicious

:: thinking how blessed I am

:: having faith that everything will work out fine

:: preparing for change

Apple Picking

 We got up really early Saturday morning and headed to the mountains for apple picking with friends.  Carter Mountain Orchard is located in Charlottesville, Virginia and only a couple of hours from where we live.  It was an amazing day.  The weather was perfect, warm sun and just enough of a breeze for comfort.  Once we had our bags we were ready to start picking.  The trees were loaded with apples and everything was within reach.  It didn't take long to fill our bags with 5 kids helping.  The apples  

were so beautiful hanging on the trees and they felt amazing in your hand as you picked them.  There is something wonderful and satisfying about picking your own food.  Once we had filled our bags we took our haul to the car and checked out the other activities.  They offer hay rides, a pumpkin patch and a cute store that has all things apple.  Just outside of the store is a little food stand with the typical fare and the most amazing apple cider donuts you've ever eaten.  After indulging in the warm doughnuts, the adults took turns at the wine shop sampling some delicious local wines (nevermind that it was 10 in the morning :)) When we felt like we had our fill of apples we started our decent down the mountain.
Before starting home we stopped for a bite to eat at a local pizza place called The Mellow Mushroom.  This was by far the best pizza I have ever eaten.  The crust was delicious and crispy, it had just the right amount of sauce, and the toppings were plentiful.  We had the House Special but there were so many other types we wanted to try. I see a future trip planned, maybe just for pizza.
I hope your weekend was full of good times and good friends as well.  Love to you. 

Nuts About Halloween

It has been a crazy busy week.  There are weeks that the calendar looks black because there is so much written down.  Today is definitely one of those really busy days that I didn't think I could squeeze one more thing in.  I had everything planned out down to the hour and then... "Mom, can you PLEASE come eat lunch with us today? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEEEEEEEASE!"  So, I rearranged the plan and went and had lunch with my girls.  It's always an experience having lunch with them at school.  They each get to pick a friend and we sit at a special table reserved for parent/child lunches.  It is a great opportunity to find out what their friends are like and the conversations that go around the table are usually quite funny.  After lunch I was asked by one of the 3rd grade teachers if I could stay. I really needed to leave but she had the same look on her face as the girls did this morning when they were begging for me to come to lunch. I said "SURE!" and stayed to help grade some papers.  The rearranged plan has been thrown out the window and here I sit in front of my computer writing a post.  Oh well, all those things will get done just not today.

October always seems to be a busy month.  School is moving along, after school activities have started and the most coveted holiday happens at the end of the month.  Halloween!  Halloween has always been my favorite and I love that my girls and husband enjoy it just as much as I do.  The minute pumpkins start appearing at grocery stores and farmers markets we are in full Halloween mode.  I am a little slow getting the house decorated this year but it will happen soon. The girls started asking for Halloween lunches last month and  I promised them I would make a Halloween lunch every Friday this month and as many as I can come up with the week of Halloween.  Here is their first Halloween lunch.

Today the girls had Jack-o-Lantern and Bat PB and pumpkin butter sandwiches with fruit leather decorations, Halloween chips (so cute), yogurt with sprinkles in the pumpkin cup and Halloween marshmallows in the spider cup.  They also have a Go Go Squeez.

Thankfully this time of year is filled with many opportunities for fun lunches not just Halloween ones. Yesterday the girls had this fun Fall lunch.

The girls had 2 acorn PB and pumpkin butter sandwiches, pretzels, yogurt with frozen mixed berries, and grapes with a autumn pick that I made from a toothpick and 2 stickers.  The stickers didn't exactly line up but it was still cute. 

The days and weeks ahead are filled with many activities and family time.  I am really excited for many of our upcoming outings and time together.  I hope you too have some fun times planned this month. Happy Friday!

Joy To The Fishes In The Deep Blue Sea

Well, its Monday again.  Not a bad Monday, just a Monday.  There are many things happening in our little family right now and my brain seems to be on overload.  I don't know about you, but when things get to be too much for me I try to find something else to concentrate on.  It sounds like I'm ignoring the situation but really I'm just taking a brief time-out.  I think that is why I love making fun lunches for my girls.  I get to use my creative side but it also lets me and take a quick break from reality.   Here is the girls lunch (a.k.a sanity moment) for today.

The fish looks a little like the fish on The Cat in the Hat cartoon on PBS, don't you think?  I will have to try to remember that when Dr. Seuss's birthday rolls around.  Today the girls had 2 fish PB&J sandwiches with candy eyes and fruit leather smiles, goldfish crackers, and mandarin oranges with a seal pick.