School Lunches

I can only imagine what your thinking...this lady home schools, why on earth is she packing lunches?   I love back to school time, new supplies, backpacks, clothes...and most of all lunch boxes.  Even though my girls are primarily at home, they love all of these things too.  Nothing makes me more excited then receiving the Sunday papers in August, busting open with all sorts of ads for reams of paper, unsharpened pencils and highlighters galore!  
It is in those moments that I feel a little pang of guilt that my girls won't have the traditional school experience, but I can mostly recreate it at home.  And we are so fortunate to have an amazing charter school in our area that caters to only homeschooling families.  Two days a week, I plan and prepare little lunches for GiGi (8) and LiLi (6).  I have so much fun creating these mini master pieces, and I hope that my girls have just as much fun eating them.
I'm also so lucky to have a handful of blogs who share this same passion, they daily inspire me to get even more creative in  providing a balance of healthy choices and exciting food.  This blog might not be earth shattering, I may not be changing world politics, and I probably won't win any journalism awards, but I might inspire one family to make a change in what they eat.   Given the press that school lunches have gotten (none of it good), I really hope that I can help show a really very easy way to feed our kids the food their growing bodies need!  

These were a Winter Wonderland theme...the first was for LiLi, she had organic ham, cheddar crackers, cucumber slices, a granola bar, some homemade breakfast bread, and organic apple fruit leather.  I usually give them either organic milk boxes or honest kids fruit juice to go along and I use organic when ever possible.  This was kind of a cheating lunch, since I was rushing and didn't really get to be to creative.   The second lunch is GiGi's, she has ham, sliced orange bell pepper, raspberry fruit leather, granola bar, cheddar crackers, breakfast bread and some gummy bears (aka polar bears).  I intended the granola bar to be a snack item.
The third is my lunch, a salad with organic turkey, cucumber, tomatoes and feta, some left over tomato mozzarella salad, some cheddar crackers and a honeycrisp apple for snack.
All three lunches were packed in an easy lunch box system.  They are hands down the easiest bento style box ever! You can find them at http://www.easylunchboxes.com/.  I use a lot of cupcake picks, little cookie cutters, silicon cupcake holders and all sorts of little containers when making our bentos.