How I Keep It All From Getting Lost!
I don't really do product reviews, it's not my thing here. In fact, this is the first time I've ever written an entire post just for the purpose of telling you about a product. And don't worry, I'm not going to become one of those blogs that's just trying to sell you stuff. But if I come across a product that I think is really awesome, then I am definitely going to tell you about it.
School Lunches 2014-2015: Weeks 18 & 19
We are not quite half way through the year and honestly I am starting to feel a little burnt out of ideas. The kids aren't tired of the food, it's just me. I could easily just keeping rotating through the same dozen or so things until the end of time, and I think they would be ok. But when you're a stay at home mom, you don't have a whole lot of creative outlets, so making the lunches a little creative is sometimes just something I do to entertain myself. I like to keep it interesting. So over the next few weeks I'm going to try to come up with some new ideas, because I'm bored.
I'm sleepy too. Due to a series of events (a flood, and then houseguests), we've had a boy sleeping on a blow-up in our room (squished right up against my side of the bed, because our room is so small that it didn't really fit) for the last 2 weeks. I didn't really mind having him there, but he is my autistic child and he doesn't always sleep well. He wakes up very early, and makes a bit of noise in the night, and I realize that I am suffering from some lack of sleep. He's back in his room now, and I am very much looking forward to catching up a bit on my sleep. Well, as much as one can do with four kids.
School Lunches 2014-2015 - week 17
One of these days I have plans to start blogging about more than just my kids school lunches, but spare time is limited and so this is most of what I do here on the blog right now. I'm glad that there's so many of you who are interested in seeing these things - keep sharing with your friends, and let me know what else you'd like to know about what I'm doing.
One of the key things I try to focus on when packing a lunch is to give them some amount of balance. I don't always manage it, but at least several days out of the week I think I do pretty well at giving them a balanced meal with protein, fruit, veggie, and carb. Sometimes there's more of one than the others, but over the course of the week I think we balance out ok.
School Lunches 2014-2015 - week 16
If you're paying attention and go back and look at the lunch posts, it will seem like I skipped a bunch of weeks. I did. But I got weeks 11-15 all caught up in one post last week, so I'm still on track with sharing all our lunches for this year.
The first week of the New Year was all about catching up from the holiday break - putting away new toys and clothes, getting the kitchen back in order, doing laundry - certainly not a time to get fancy with the lunches. So my goal for the week was to keep it simple, but still make it attractive and something that anyone would want to eat. Also - it's the start of ski season. Where we live we are only an hour away from the local ski mountain, so some combination of kids will be in lessons every Saturday for the next 2 months. (Sounds exhausting, and it is, but it goes by fast.) So for the next two months I will be packing lunch 6 days a week.
Catching up on 2014 school lunches
The holidays really throw my routine out the window. In November and December the school lunches were made, and the photos were taken, but I didn't get around to blogging them for you. So here you are, a catch up of several weeks of school lunches.
Remember, the food itself doesn't have to be anything fancy. Just take an extra minute to present the meal in a fun way, and it will seem so much more appealing. If you look at the contents of these lunches, most of them do not contain anything really revolutionary, just normal kid lunch stuff presented in an appealing and organized way. I try to make sure the lunch is balanced with a protein, a fruit and a veggie (although looking back at some of these pics, I see I haven't done so great with the veggie - something to work on in 2015!).