Kid Lunches

My kids are *pretty* easy to feed. Kind of. Rachel (the oldest) will pretty much eat anything, or at least try anything), Emma (the middle) will try anything, and eat most nothing. Just kidding, but she is a bit of a picky eater, she's not a huge fan of meat, but will scarf down double helpings of pheasant wild rice hotdish. I know. Strange kid. Alayna will eat any and all fruits/veggies, but is also not a fan of meat. She is also the one who needs to eat frequently, as in every half hour. Add in the hubs who has gut issues anytime he eats cream sauces, pasta and breads and it makes for a super fun time planning meals! Fortunately I am not the type to make different meals for each kid (hubby included), what I make is it, you can eat it or be hungry.

Now, lunch meals I feel a bit differently about. I make sure they get a nutritious breakfast, but unless I pack a lunch, I am hoping that they eat what the school serves. We are pretty lucky to have a *semi* decent lunch menu. However, with three kids in school, it gets spendy. I am going to try and make most of their lunches, and have now become completely obsessed with these bento type lunches. How fun are those? I love the idea of making the lunches fun, which (I think) encourages them to eat more.

So here was today's lunch:

I know, fancy right?? (umm, no) I had these muffin liners that work great for keeping foods separate. So today she had a hard boiled egg, summer sausage and cheese cubes on toothpicks, goldfish and fresh veggies. I had a separate container for ranch (which I am going to start making from scratch) that I also put in her lunch bag. There are sooooooooo many super cute and fun additions you can add, like little picks, egg molds and of course super fun cookie cutters to cut out fun sandwiches of course! I have a whole pinterest board now full of these fun lunches, and I am excited to get more ideas and stuff to get going!

Snow Day!

We got our first big snow storm here in Minnesota! Yes you heard right...first storm this winter! Crazy right? It has been an extremely mild winter which can only mean we will get slammed the end of April. Oh well...We thoroughly enjoyed our snow day!

Brad took the girls snowmobiling, and only a few minor head traumas ensued...

A snowgirl was made, after having Alayna melt down from not being able to put the freakin carrot nose on...*sigh*...

And all over fun had by all...well, after me threatening to take all their toys away unless they go outside with their sister...

All in all, it really WAS a fun day! The morning was spent decorating shoe boxes into mini dollhouse, I have more strands of hot glue than I thought could be possible all over my floor. But they spent hours and had so much fun making them. I did take pictures, but I was instructed by the oldest to NOT post them online, so I won't. But she doesn't know these ones are here...shhhhh...

Water Kefir

Say wha????? I know, it's ok. When I talk about this yummy flavored soda pop type of drink, I get the look. No, it's not a foreign language, and no it's not a new kind of drink meant for earth loving hippies that sit in a circle chanting. Water kefir is an amazing probiotic drink full of the good healthy bacteria that our bodies need.

I have always been into healthy eating, and trying new things, especially after having my first child. It all started with breastfeeding (which I have spent four years of my life doing, woot woot!!) and just grew from there. I buy very little processed foods, and make most everything from scratch.

Now, let me just mention though that just because something is homemade, it is NOT OKAY to eat a ginormous piece of apple pie and several scoops of homemade ice cream...not that I did that...just want to throw that out there for those that *could* be tempted you know...

I am grateful that I LOVE to cook, and love to try new recipes. I have recently become a member of the Holistic Moms Network here in St.Cloud that I have learned a lot from. Between HMN and being a LLL leader for our area, you hear copious amounts of cool things to try. One of them is water kefir. You can learn more about it here. The end result is a fizzy almost soda-like type of drink. You can flavor it, this time I did a raspberry lemonade. The girls even like it, and you don't have to drink much to gain the benefits. It is definitely a trial and error type of process. The second batch I made fermented too long and tasted like a very strong type of wine. Kids weren't impressed.

It all starts with these groovy little things called kefir grains. There are two types of grains, water or milk. I buy my milk kefir from our coop, and have no desire to make it on my own. I got my grains from a mom who attends my Holistic Moms meetings. You can also buy them online too.
The process is quite easy, you use a combination of water, sugar and dried fruit, along with the grains which you sit in a cool dark place to ferment, usually 12-24 hours. After this first ferment you can flavor it, and then let it ferment again.

Now, one thing I beg of you, if you are going try this, is to make sure you buy organic dried fruit without sulfites. I had a major skin reaction and realized it was from the dried cranberries I had used. You can read the step by step process here.

I really feel like this is benefiting all of us, especially Alayna who has been dealing with a wonky gut lately.

Valentine's Day

Well, now that everyone has come down from their sugar highs (or comas), I thought I would show you what we (ok, more of an *I*) made for Valentine's Day. Alayna is in Kindergarten this year (all day everyday...WOOT WOOT....oops, did I say that?) and her teacher asked that no treats be brought in, as there are a few kids with allergies. I needed to come up with an alternative, and was pretty excited and what we (I) did. For the girls we made heart wands, which were actually pretty easy. I used my Cricut to cut out the hearts, and then had the girls decorate them.

For the boys I was bummed because I was all set to make these superhero capes to put on tootsie roll suckers. How cute are those?? But now I had to find something different to use instead of the suckers. Bum-dinger. I decided to go with plain ole pencils. Definitely not as cute as hers, but it worked!

And of course it looked ohhhh so super easy to make, but ended up taking me a couple hours of cutting, re-cutting and hot gluing (and maybe a swear word or two) to get these pups done. Alayna loved them, and that's all that matters. 'Cuz we know dang good and well that the pencils will never get used and the kids will say, "oh, neat" and throw them aside. *sigh* it's the memories, though, right?

These were just for Alayna's class, I have that whole over achiever disease when it comes to my kids and Kindergarten. As if I need to try and impress 24 five and six year olds. For the other two we went all cheap, Rachel got them conversation heart boxes, and Emma used 4 year old High School Musical cards I already had. Ya, didn't need to impress the older kids, ya know....

Banana Oatmeal "Granola" Bars

I found these on Mel's Kitchen Cafe and decided to make them for snack this afternoon. The kids loved them, and I love how healthy they are. I did use half white whole wheat flour and half rice flour. I baked them for 15 minutes so they were more of a chewy bar, and not really like a crunchy granola bar. Rachel wasn't too keen on the sunbutter in it, but she still ate them:)

Vegetable Soup

Thanks to Pinterest, my family is eating very well (not that we weren't before) thanks to all the amazing recipes to try! So many recipes, and so little time...

I know that my picture taking skills make you want to run out and try this recipe asap, but let me tell you, although it might not look that good, this is the BEST veggie soup I have tried! I found it on the blog Butterfly Food, her recipes are delicious, and although her pics don't quite compare to mine, she *is* is a pretty good photographer. (insert giggle here)

I did add a few things here, I added homemade chicken stock along with the water (I just eye balled it), quinoa (because it's so healthy for you, and it doesn't have much of a taste for the kids to whine about), and sweet potatoes. I left out the pasta, as we have some gluten-ey type of

intolerances in this house (along with breads, pastas, raw fruits/veggies, dairy...*sigh*...). Brad and the girls really loved, so it will be a keeper for us!

Crockpot Yogurt

This was my first try at making homemade yogurt, and I fully expected to wake up to some milky slop called yogurt. Boy was I surprised! This made the BEST yogurt, and was so easy to make that I am going to put Rachel (my 10 year old) in charge of making this weekly. The recipe I used was from the blog Mom on a Mission. I love her blog and have made many of her freezer meals.

The only changes I made was that I used 2% milk instead of whole, and added a box of vanilla instant yogurt as a thickener. It was still pretty thin this morning, but I know it will thicken up in the fridge. I had some alone ( as in no fruit, not that I was sitting in a closet alone eating yogurt!) and was very surprised at how tasty it was. I plan on using this in our green smoothies instead of grocery store yogurt.