Halloween '13 - Carving Contests, Dress-Up, and Friday Flair

Another Halloween in the books. This has never been my favorite holiday but it sure is fun to experience it through the eyes of my kids. Let's look at what this day had in store for our family.

In my last post I shared the Halloween Pails I created out of coffee cans. The boys loved them and they got a lot of attention at the Harvest Festival we attended. My husband said people kept asking if he was a painter! Too funny. Aren't my little super hero, ninja, and batman cute sporting their adorable pails?

Speaking of cute, while we didn't take Samuel and Amelia out with us, we still wanted to dress them up for their first Halloween. Tell me...are they not the cutest hot dog and chick you have ever seen? I sure think so!

 In my recent post about our trip to the pumpkin patch, I mentioned that we were again going to be participating in the school's pumpkin carving contest again. Want to see what we came up with? Nathan designed this stegosaurus and Jordan helped create the pirate ship. We managed to place 3rd in the creative category for the third year in a row....can you guess which pumpkin was the award winner? Congratulations Jordan, that pirate ship was awesome (and the stegosaurus was a winner in my books as well)!

And as if I hadn't crammed enough into this post, I wanted to try to fit in a Friday Flair as well since I have missed the last few. We have been hit hard with pink eye, ear infections and tonsillitis for two weeks so needless to say, lunches weren't the top priority. Here's what they boys' got for lunch on Halloween:

pumpkin shaped pb and honey sandwiches, graham crackers, carrots and celery (yes, that's an ear in there!), and a special treat of boogers (thank you Dollar Store for this absolutely disgusting candy that is bound to have my guys in giggles)

Friday Flair - October Edition {#1}

Does anybody else LOVE October? To me it is the kick off of all of the upcoming holiday festivities that I love so much, so I just can't help but get excited. Not to mention pumpkin patches, apple cider, scarves, falling leaves....really, what isn't to love? 

With so may fun things to look forward to this month I wanted my Friday Flair lunches to focus on all October has to offer as well. For my kids, that pretty much means all things Halloween. So be prepared for a few weeks of lunches that I hope will get my little trick-or-treaters in the mood for the holiday.

The theme of this week was basically orange (how easy is that?!?!) and I threw in a slimy surprise just to make it a little more fun. Can you say WORMS?  Gross, I know. And my boys will LOVE it for sure. What you are seeing is oranges, carrot sticks, cheese slices, DIY Bisquick drop biscuits, and {slimy worms} also known as hot dog slices tossed in homemade BBQ sauce.

Please do not get thrown off by the DIY and the homemade labels. I know for busy moms that can be enough to make you look the other way but I am only adding that in there to show options and to prove that it really is that easy. Awhile back I stopped buying some of the boxed mixes when I realized just how easy and economical it was to make your own. But by all means, use the pre-boxed stuff....heck, use the biscuits in a pop can if that is what you have! And the BBQ sauce came about when we ran out one day and my hubby volunteered to whip some up from a recipe I had found. It turned out that it was a version that all my kiddos could agree on, even those who swore they didn't like BBQ sauce, so we keep that in a mason jar in the fridge now. But squeeze bottle away! Try them with ketchup if your kids prefer. Or leave them dry. Hot dogs are hot dogs any way you dress them, right?

This week I used free printable lunch box notes from Kiki & Company that have Halloween jokes on them. My boys are always looking for a new joke to tell.

That wraps up another week! Until next Friday.....

Friday Flair - Birthday Edition

Welcome! This week's edition of Friday Flair is extra special because it falls on my son's 6th birthday. Let's all say a loud, "Happy Birthday" to Jordan, shall we?

I tried to find some free printable lunchbox notes with a birthday theme but didn't have any luck. If you know of any, feel free to share a link with me. Since I couldn't go that route, I just decided to make a quick little note myself.

I saw a cute sandwich idea a few weeks back that involved sprinkles so I knew this would be the perfect occasion to try that. So I punched out the top slice of bread with a 6 and filled in the hole with sprinkles. Super cute, right? For fun I put the punched out 6 in a mini-muffin liner and put a blue M&M in the center to match the blue on the sandwich. The bigger muffin liner has a little Birthday trail mix of M&M's, white chocolate chips and broken up graham crackers. Some veggies and cheese and olive skewers rounded out the meal.

Happy Birthday my big 6 year old!

Friday Flair - Week 3

I probably should have titled this week's post Friday {Un}Flair since it really is just a typical lunch. In fact, I woke up this morning having totally forgot that it was Friday. So regular old lunch it is. BUT I did get to join the boys for the Moms R Marvelous breakfast at their school this morning so I am counting that as the flair for the day. Hey, it's my blog, I can do what I want! Right? Right!

Yogurt, cheese crackers/pretzels, carrots, celery, apple wedge, peanut butter and honey tortilla roll up

On our way to breakfast at the school. My handsome big boys :)

Until next Friday!

Missed some posts? Here are the last two Friday Flair posts:
Week 1
Week 2

Friday Flair - Week 2

This week's Friday Flair makes me laugh a little bit. It looks more like something that should be appearing in 2 months, don't you think? I happened to have a very large turkey taking up space that I wanted freed up in my extra freezer so last night I cooked up a turkey dinner with all the fixings that much resembled a November holiday we all love. The boys gobbled it up (get it, gobbled? Ha! I crack myself up) and were begging for pieces of it in their lunch so I put together these little mini-Thanksgiving looking lunches for this Friday Flair.

 I once again used THESE free printable lunchbox notes from Skip to My Lou, mostly because I had the leftovers from last week still on hand and it was the easy thing to do! Once again, used a little tape and a toothpick to make them into mini-signs and called it good.

I almost feel guilty classifying a lunch that took almost no effort as a Friday Flair post. But then I realized how stupid that was! Why do we moms always do that to ourselves? Pile on the guilt for the little, often meaningless things. So silly! Besides, that is the whole point of these posts. To prove that it doesn't take a lot of extra effort and time to do something special. It's all about the little things. I am going to keep saying that until it sinks in and the guilt no longer creeps in. IT'S.ALL.ABOUT.THE.LITTLE.THINGS!! Phew, that feels better.

 Let's break it down:

Nathan's Lunch: Crock pot bread with pesto, turkey, candy corn treat, cucumbers, stuffing

Jordan's Lunch: Mashed potatoes, corn, crock pot bread, turkey, candy corn treat

Here's a link to the crock pot bread by The Quiet that I tried out this week that tasted just like rolls (but so much easier!): http://inquietmemory.blogspot.ca/2012/01/crock-pot-bread.html

Until next week! If you missed last week's post, you can check it out HERE.

Friday Flair - Week 1

This year I have decided to forgo my lunchbox roundup posts for something that fits a little better into this new chaotic season of my life. Since having the twins and now having two kiddos in school, I find it pretty impossible to try to put together thoughtful, creative lunches everyday. Heck, it's hard to get past the basic survival stuff most days. But there is still somewhere in me a drive to make school lunch a special thing for my boys as a reminder that I am thinking of them, so I have come up with something that reconciles my desire with my reality. I am going to start something called Friday Flair which will basically be a commitment to let my self off the hook the rest of the week and let Friday be a day for special lunches. I am not talking anything over the top, just lunch box notes and/or special treats and/or theme lunches to give Nathan and Jordan something to look forward to each week. I think of flair as something that dresses up something plain and just gives it that little something to make you take notice. That's what I am going for here!

Since I am not alone in this busy mommy gig, I want to try to share some of my ideas each week to make it that much easier for you. So I will link to any free lunch box notes I am printing and I will share recipes and lunch themes as I use them. Sound good? Hoping you all will share some of your creative ideas with me as well. Nothing beats a give and take relationship!

I have been pinning free printable lunchbox notes all summer so it was hard to chose which ones to use first. I settled on these fun, bright sayings from Skip to My Lou. The best part about these are that one page has multiple notes on it so once I print them, I have extras on hand that I can use for future Fridays or to throw in during the week with no extra hassle. Score! Here are the two I chose this week for my dinosaur loving 7 year old and my banana crazy 5 year old. I simply taped a toothpick to the back so that I could stick it into their food and wrote their names to make them personalized:

Let's take a look at these lunches, shall we? They are only slightly different from each other to adjust for personal taste (if only all of my kids liked and disliked the same things!):

Jordan - Apple slice sandwiches with peanut butter and syrup (I was out of honey), zucchini bread, olive and cheese skewers, carrots, celery and cucumber

Nathan - Apple slice sandwiches with peanut butter and syrup, zucchini bread, cheese skewers, carrots, starfish crackers

Nothing too fancy, right? Just a tad more effort than spreading some peanut butter and jelly between two pieces of bread. But maybe you are in an even more chaotic season than me and all you have time for is that pb&j everyday....that's okay too. It's just lunch. You decide where you want to add your flair to the ordinary in your life! I would love to hear how you are taking something simple and making it just a little special for your loved ones so feel free to share those non-lunch related ideas as well.

See you next week!