Cute New Lunch Box

Look what came in the mail: a new lunch bucket, called goodbyn.



Love the wee icons a lot.



The genius part about it is that each compartment seals so there's no unwanted food mingling. Yay!



It's recommended for the 5 and over set since it takes a bit of practice to open and close. Spud has practiced twice at home and twice at school and still needs a little help to get it open.



The stickers are just so much fun. Spud had the time of his life decorating his new buddy, named 'fluffy'.







They have a set for the older kids, in more muted colours and no ears. Thankfully, Spud still thinks ears are cool.

Here I've combo'd up his morning snack and lunch together. It can certainly accommodate it.



· apple slices
· dried fruit candy
· popcorn
· stroop waffle cookie
· milk
· canned peaches [note that sloppy peaches keep to themselves, without the need for a separate container]
· cheese and tomato sandwich
· red pepper squares

Unfortunately, with shipping, this beauty of a lunch bin worked out to be very expensive. Finding it in a store would likely make it more affordable.

Spud Hearts Jello

To make the jello stiffer for the molds, we used 1.25 cups of water for one packet of powder.



In the fridge for 3 hours and they are ready to come out.

To release the jello from the mold, I placed them in warm water for a bit, to loosen the sides. Some turned out fine. Some not so much. But we'll have fun practicing.

Photo Friday #21

SEATTLE SCRATCH PATCH  |  TRAVELS WITH KID

A few weeks back, when I had very little time to post, I had a wee business trip in Seattle and brought the fam. Of course I went to Delicious Baby to see what sorts of kid friendly fun we could get up to in my off time and we found this! A scratch patch. A tradition in South Africa apparently, where one roots around a giant patch of various polished stones. Right up my kid's alley.





Identify them.





Roll around in them.



Pick your favourites.



And pay for the ones you leave with.

For other travel pics, check out my favourite family travel site Delicious Baby. Or go there to share your travel photos on Fridays too.

Bento Accessories Addiction Continues

Managed to pop over to Daiso, to grab a few more goodies for making bentos. Spud helped to pick out the following.

New food separators:



A few more silicone cups for separating food [we used some of our older ones for baking and they are starting to look it!]:



And a few more silicone cups which we will also use for mini jello molds



A cross between a fork and a skewer, these wee things will be good for meatballs and other solid, bite-sized morsels:



And a few new bento box belts to add to our collection:

A Little St. Paddy's Love

· Shamrock turkey and cuke
· Strawbs
· Cheese triangles and a couple of crackers
· Bagel with butter
· Carrots
· Orange slices
· Chocolate wafer cookie bites

Two Snacks in One

Morning snack and afternoon snack combined in one place for Spud to pick and choose what he wants.



· Vache qui Rit cheese triangles
· Apple
· Kashi crackers
· Cucumber fish in bubbles, my favourite!
· Cherry toms
· Banana
· Wholewheat Fig Newton

Photo Friday #20

Oh, just a little something that my designer buddies and I have been working on for the past 4 years. And I've been lucky enough to be a bit of a tourist in my home town for the past week, to take some of it in. Here are a just a few thumbnails of some of the things we've been up to.

Hope you are enjoying the Games! Only 3 more days left.

For other travel pics, check out my favourite family travel site Delicious Baby. Or go there to share your travel photos on Fridays too.

Flags of Nations

OLYMPIC ACTIVITY
I'm back. And happily finding more time now to enjoy the Games AND to enjoy my family. On the weekend we had a couple of good friends over to watch a Hockey match [Canada v. USA] and Spud kept himself pretty busy for the first two periods, making flags.

He has a particular fascination with Chinese Taipei at the moment, for some reason, so that's what he started with.



And here a but a few of the others he managed to bust out.




MATERIALS
Paper
Crayons
Straws
Scissors
Staples or Tape
Plasticine [for the base of the flag pole]
And a good visual cheat sheet, of sorts, is also important. We happened to have a little booklet with all the flags of the participating countries of these Olympic Winter Games. Kids Yahoo has a good reference site for nations flags also.



THE PLUSES!
· Questions and learning about other countries arise naturally
· Fine motor skill practice ... colouring, cutting, and stapling
· And we got to watch most of the game!

"I Want to Marry You, Mama"

My little guy proposed to me the other morning. As I was dashing out the door for another 14 - 15 hour work day. "I'm going to live with you forever, Mama." I think it was his way of saying he misses me since our "quality time" has been limited to those 20 minutes in the morning each week day. You can imagine what those look like "Honey, can you please put that toy down and get dressed for school?". Etc. We also manage a chat on the phone right before bed when we send kisses and hugs over the phone. Our hugs sound like this ... "ooooooooo aaaaaaaah". But that's it. Even weekends are full of work these days.

But there's an end in sight and this keeps me going. For the last 4 and half years, I've been lucky enough to be working on a GIANT project — an international event of Olympic proportions — hosted in my home town in under a month. And I'm so overwhelmed with excitement I could pee. That also keeps me going.

So this explains my lowest-post month ever. It seems that the number of posts I have is in direct proportion with the amount of time I spend with my boy. I look forward to getting back to normal in March. I have a million ideas of things I want to do, create, learn, try, and post about. I look forward to it.

But Friday night, I had a few minutes to myself as I was walking home and I starting thinking about the other moms at work who are going through the same challenges right now. And then all the moms out there working ridiculous hours. And to their children who learn how to cope with their moms living their dreams and making a living. And the dads who take up the slack and deal with the "single-parenthood" without complaint. And to family who step in and help out, with smiles and hugs. And to friends who understand why you haven't called to make brunch dates. And to great colleagues who listen to your sappy kid stories and distract you with laughter and fun. Love to you all out there.

Cranberry Garland

HOLIDAY TRADITION

Our tree is predominantly red, brown, white and silver and looks very dapper in strings of cranberries. Hubs, this year, had fun stringing some cranberries with Spud to add to our tree. Spud turns out to be a stringing machine and declared "I really love working with my hands".

The cranberry coloured button helped to start things off.

Hubs found this perfect needle amongst the sewing stuff we've inherited from grandmas and such. I'm sure there's a technical term for it but all I know is, it's large, thick, blunt, and therefore perfect for our little 5 year old's fingers. Perhaps it's a rug needle? Anyway, it rocks.

The fishing line worked really well too.

Looking good. Getting there.

Here it is in action.

We also have wooden ones we bought from IKEA years ago so we don't have to string all day.

Bird Feeder Wreaths Mobile

INDOOR WINTER ACTIVITIES

MATERIALS
· Bagels cut in half
· Peanut butter [or suet]
· Bird seed
· Spatula
· Ribbon
· Pie plate

First we tied ribbon around the bagel for hanging. Next, we spread the peanut butter on the cut side. Then we dipped the peanut butter side onto a layer of seeds.

We thought, given that we live a rainy city, it would be best to make them a bit of a roof too. And this turns the whole project into a mobile.

Finally we hung it outside Spud's bedroom window ... just waiting for the birds to find it now.

Paper Snowflakes

HOLIDAY TRADITIONS
Boy, things are gearing up at work so much lately; with working more and more 12-14 hour days it's getting harder and harder to find the time to hang out with my Spud. So, I took full advantage of the time I had with him this morning to do something Christmassy. We decided on continuing a little holiday tradition of ours ... hanging paper snowflakes from the top of his bedroom door. He likes to run through them. I'm also hoping they scare away Mr. Stick [his current, most-dreaded, resident monster].








HOW WE DID IT:
1. Started with a square piece of paper and folded it in half [tissue paper is easier to use for little hands but I didn't have any handy]



2. Folded it in half again



3. Then folded it in thirds, so ...



it looked like this.



4. Trimmed off the bottom tails



And then off we went ...

Robot Bag

Check out this crazy-cute bag that one of my uber talented customers, over at Wampeters come and come go made with the Robot Gear Garden Fabric.



Check out her blog. She links to where she found the bag pattern.

School Concert Costume Time

SUPER SIMPLE PENGUIN COSTUME
Spud was pretty hesitant to try it on at first. "OK, but don't laugh at me" he warned. Which was a bit alarming because I don't think we do a lot of that. When we got to the concert though and he saw all his other little penguin buddies running around he couldn't get the costume on fast enough. "Hurry, hurry!" he scolded.

One little girl must have thought it was pretty special also because she was chasing him around the stage trying to pick him up [she is much smaller than him] and give him a big hug. This went on for 10 minutes before the show started. I asked him about it after the concert "No, she's never done that before". We didn't anticipate the chick-magnet qualities of the costume at all. That was just a bonus, I guess.





MATERIALS
·My black hoodie with arms rolled way up
·Scrap piece of white faux fur for the tummy [which we will repurpose later]
·Yellow baseball cap for the beak [which we thankfully already had]
· One Styrofoam ball cut in half for the eyes [plus buttons and sundries]

That's it! I loosely tacked the fur onto the hoodie so it would be easy to take off later. Hubs carefully constructed the eyes and sewed them onto the hood ... he has way more patience than I do.

I Love Advent Calendar Season

I guess that's why we have two!



Well, it's day 6 on the advent calendar and that means that St. Nicholas paid a visit to our house last night and left a few treats in Spud's wee shoes that he left outside his bedroom door last night.



A book about bad dreams. Some chocolate. Stickers. Wind up toy. Cute erasers. A shark ring. And lego candy. You can build with it ... and then eat it! Spud held his hands up to the sky and said "Thank you St. Nicholas. Thank you!" with such passion. I think it helped blow off some of that waiting-for-the-big-day steam.