Bento Thursday

In the bento on the left you have an owl turkey and cheese sandwich on top of a fishy cracker medley, with a gummy worm mixed in. In the bento on the right are fruit skewers and celery and peanut butter.

In the bento on the top you have a mini cupcake and two gummy worms (they are "potty" treats run a muck so they keep making a come back!)along with cantaloupe and strawberry hearts. In the bottom box is turkey pepperoni, turkey and cheese flower skewers and crackers.

In the top bento you have flower turkey and cheese sandwiches in th bottom is watermelon, carrots, and dip.

On the left are beef and cheese quesadillas and on the right is a marshmellow, all dressed up, and fruit skewers.
In the box on the left is an apple crusher, carrots, and dip. On the right is a turkey and cheese sandwich sushi roll skewer and a mini cupcake.


This one is a lil different. This was dinner and I made some homeade baked fries. I cut them out into little shapes and the kids ate them..a bit more..as they are really not potatoe fans.

In the top box is a paratha (Indian Bread) with a cheese stick and little raspberries with chocolate chips in the center (I had these in my lunch too..yum!!) In the bottom is Chicken Korma.

A Garden Update

Wow! It has been only a few weeks since we planted our garden and boy how it has grown! Our pumpkins are starting to vine, we have little green tomatoes, and we already have TONS of big red raddishes, ripe lettuce, and spinach, and ready to use cilantro. I love just asking Conrad to run out to the garden and grab some veggies for dinner! We have been having salad from our garden for a couple of week now. LOVE it!


Unfortuantley, we had an invasion of aphids and they completely killed our spinach plant. I removed the plant and the bugs and haven't seen them on anything else. I didn't want to put chemicals on our garden so got ready to go buy some ladybugs..which I read eat aphids. We also found a bunny hiding in our squash yesterday. We were wondering how long it would take them to realize the garden was food!

But over all, we are still doing well and chemical free! We are going to have a ton of produce in a few weeks! Getting ready to give it away as I'm sure it will be more than we can handle!! Here is a picture of a salad using lettuce, spinach, and raddishes from our garden(pre aphid infest). Yum it was delish!

The Best Cinnamon Rolls Ever!

I've been making these for a few years. I got the recipe from my dear friend, Kirsten. If you are looking for an easy and awesome breakfast recipe for guests, this is it!

Ingredients:
One loaf of frozen white bread
Cinnamon
Sugar
Brown Sugar
Butter
1 Cup of heavy cream
Nuts (optional)

Let the bread dough thaw and raise. Then roll it out. Take one stick of butter and spread over the dough. Then cover it with sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. If you like nuts, you can add these here too. Roll up the dough into a long think log, then slice into one inch slices. Take the rolls and place them in an 11x13 pan. Take your cup of heavy cream, mix in about 1/4 cup of brown sugar and then pour over the dough. Let it rise overnight. In the morning, bake it at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until brown on top. Get a large platter and dump the Sticky Rolls out upside down on the plate. Delish!

The Graduate

sabelle "graduated" from preschool last week. This week starts the Summer camp portion of daycare. They spend thier days going on field trips to everywhere from Big Bounce Houses, parks, Saftey Town, Water parks, and movies. They are so stoked about school everyday.

Anyway, congrats to our new little graduate!

Bento Thursday

This is an at home bento. It's a sloppy joe butterfly sandwich with strawberries and corn on the cob. Consequently, the didn't touch the sandwich. They ate the eyes off of it and that was pretty much it.


In the top bento they have cheese and turkey pepperoni skewers with crackers (homeade lunchables!) In the bottom bento there is sugar free chocolate pudding and berries in the bottom.


In the bottom box is (leftover) pizza skewers with ranch dressing (which I covered with plastic wrap) In the top is carrots and berries.


In the top box there is another lunchable like lunch with cheese cut outs, turkey pepperoni and crackers. Also packed are some cashews for a little extra protein and a twizler treat. The cheese is all dressed up with pink candy pearls. In the bottom are cherries and watermelon hearts.


In the top bento is peaches and strawberries and a cheese stick. In the bottom is a mini cinnamon raisin bagel with organic peanut butter. In the little box are gushers and then you have good ole' fishy crackers.

A Visit from Tereza-Akka

I have been procrastanating downloading pictures but finally got around to it today. When I did I realized that I forgot to mention that Tereza-Akka (Conrads cousin) came to visit us for a weekend. The girls L.O.V.E. Tereza and it was so fun to have her here. We showed her the town (ahem) and convinced her that she really needed to move to Ohio. We'll see how that turns out, but we gave it our all.

We took her to the zoo. Our current favorite thing to see at the zoo is the baby gorrilla. It is SO cute. And he loves little kids. So the little kids come up to the glass and press thier noses to it and the baby gorilla comes up on the other side and does the same thing. And one of my favorite things about the Columbus Zoo is that they place these great volunteers at some of the bigger exhibits and they asnwer all of your quesitons about the animals and tell you interesting facts!




My favorite animal at the zoo is the Okapi. It's the coolest animal! Apparently, it's very rare and it's limited to a very small area in the Republic of Congo. The Okapi looks like a zebra on the bottom and a big deer on the top. It's related to the giraffe.

We drug Tereza around with us to all of our fav events for the weekend. My cousin, beautiful Jenna, just graduated from high school (consequently, Jenna was BORN my freshman year of college, so ya, I'm feeling old!)

Then we took her to a home group Par-Tay. We always have fun with our home group peeps, but it was especially fun to introduce Tereza to everyone...and the kids had a blast too.



We ended the weekend with church and a tasty lunch at our local country club with beautiful scenery in the backdrop.


We miss you Tereza...come back soon!

Bento Thursday: Making Food Interesting

I haven't had a chance to download pictures of this week's bentos, so I thought I'd post an old picture and talk about making food interesting for kids. As I've shared before (and had other mom's of small children echo) sometimes kids just don't like new foods or ANY food. I don't know about you, but both of my kids would eat pretty much anything I put in front of them, until they turned about two, then they rejected about 75% of everything I served.

We have held to the principle that you have to eat what mom cooks or the other alternative is eating nothing at all. There are no substitutes. This means my kids go to bed without eating quite often. Usually thier plates stay on the table until they have fallen fast asleep (because they have been known to get hungry enough to get out of bed and come down and ask to finish thier dinner).


Although, usually not for dinner, I like to make lunch, and sometimes breakfast fun! They DO eat better and try more if the food in question has eyes on it or legs. I don't know why, but it's true!

I wanted to highlight two of my favorite sites where I steal many ideas from. The first is Disney's Family Fun site..I know, I know, it's terrible commercialization, but free information!

I also LOVE Cute Food For Kids Blog. It's great and very interesting. One of the best ideas I have found there are great ideas for those Babybel Cheeses. Unfortunatley, my kids don't like to eat the Babybel Cheese. I tasted it for the first time a few days ago and I concure, they don't taste that great. Oh well, mabye I'll try one of the new Babybel's and see if I have better luck.

By the way, I know it's difficult to see with the new font, but if you click on the name of the website, the link is embedded and should take you there. Happy Bentoing!

One on One Time with the Princess

Conrad has been in New Orleans for a few days for work. Coincidentally, Isabelle went to stay with my parents for a few days during this time too. So, it has been just me and Grace on the home front for a few days. She doesn't mind at all because she is a Mama's girl. We have been having a great time swimming, going to the zoo, eating out, watching tons of movies, and having a lil' ole vacation, just the two of us.

This morning she did tell me that she wanted her Daddy. (Daddy will be very happy to hear this, since she usually asks for Mama) It was during the morning while I'm usually running around getting things ready to go, Daddy always makes time to sit and cuddle. She'll often ask, "Mama, can we go sit on the couch and just cuddle?" How could you say no to that?

Anyway, we have a couple more days of just us and it's has been wonderful and come to think of it, we'll have a lot more of when Isabelle goes to kindergarten in the Fall! More time with my Baby?? Bring it on!!

The Princess

Today, as I was picking up the kids at daycare, another of the parent's was there. His son is in Grace's class. He saw me picking up Grace and said, "Ohhhhh..you must be The Princess's mom." I rolled my eyes and confirmed, Yes indeed. I am The Queen. Grace will sit on our front porch, and talk to passer's by. "Hi! I'm The Princess." Apparently, it's not only complete stranger's Grace introduces herself as "The Princess." It's her teacher's at school and other kids! She's even gone as far as to tell her teacher that she doesn't have to clean up because she's The Princess. I can see this taking an ugly turn....

Let the Games Begin!

We have started some of our fun summer activities...okay actually it's just trying to suck every minute of enjoyment out of the few dry days we have had in Ohio. But we have been doing a steller job at it!



Isabelle and I used a Groupon to go and paint pottery. My little artist loved this and it was a good chance for us to do something one on one.

I remember Grandma Margie making me wonder woman bands and crown (was that what wonderwoman called it? A crown?) out of aluminum foil and I thought I'd use Chipotle's new gold foil left over from dinner to make some cool jewerly for the girls. Cheap AND fun! I know...ohhhh...ahhhhh.



I've decided that we might as well start early being the house that all of the kids want to hang out at. And we are! The neighborhood kids come and hang out at our house pretty much every night. So now it's like day camp at our house. It's a lot of pressure to do fun stuff! Nah, not really. It just involves more cookies than it used to. But we did spent a hot day running through the sprinkler, then coming in to make these simple little treats, made out of gusher candies, yogurt pretzel rings and some white chocolate. A little messy, but very popular with a handful of girls! These are called Gusher Ring Bling!