Published 10.12.2008 | Permanent Link
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Published 09.09.2008 | Permanent Link | Comments (2)
We've decided to stay in our home for another year and so we'll be finishing up the kid's rooms. For the past year each of the kids have had one big square of the color they'd like on the wall. When people come over they ask if we're painting. I like to look at them confused and answer "No, why?" Ha! Lazy home decorator humor!
Here's a collection of five great ideas I've had stored in my bookmarks.
Check out this recreation of the Kura loft bed from Ikea.
From Ikea Hacker:
Luke got a Kura bed for his young daughter Letty. However he hated the blue panels on it. So he flipped the panels the other way round so the white sides were facing out and then used aerosol chalkboard paint to turn the tall end into a chalkboard for her.
I love this DIY nursery art idea. Using three paper mache art boards, paint, paper and ribbon Evie created this really striking art for nursery walls. I think I can use this idea in my daughter's room too, provided I use the right images. Which, in her opinion should be photos of The Jonas Brothers.
Another excellent DIY idea for the walls is this poster size print at Black Eiffel framed as four separate images hung together. This would be cute in a kid's room or even in other rooms in the house with pictures of your kid (s). Since my kid's aren't babies anymore, I could see using pictures of them with their best pals or a family photo instead.
The other thing I love is kid's bedroom eye candy. Anna Spiro at Absolutely Beautiful Things has this great collection of ideas. My favorite pick above. I especially love the collection of Pez dispensers displayed on the wainscoting along with the great vintage red school chairs.
Even more inspiration can be found over at House To Home's kid's room inspiration gallery. This room particularly caught my eye because of my little girl's insistence on a room involving fucshia and orange. These are colors I never exactly imagined together and I fear the combination will radiate right through the wall into my bedroom and I'll never sleep again. I like how the white balances out the intensity of the accent colors.
Now to convince my daughter this is all her idea.
Published 09.02.2008 | Permanent Link | Comments (4)
Today was the first day of school and I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my kid. By the end of the year I will have made about 200-some odd peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I know, it's crazy our school still lets us eat peanut butter and don't remind me of the possibility they'll ban peanut products eventually. Because at that point I'll be picking up my kid at school and bringing her home for lunch. Every Single Day.
My hope had always been that making interesting lunches for my picky eater would encourage her to eat a wider variety of things. What appears to happen is a lot of food ends up in the garbage. Still, our options have slowly grown over the years.
My favorite lunch to send with the kids are these (extremely) simplified bento box lunches. Just some fruit, cheese, crackers and peanut butter. Add a cookie for dessert and you're done.
I wish I loved my kids enough to make these amazing lunches. But apparently I don't love them like that. Okay, maybe I'll take enough inspiration and enough love that I'll try packing pancakes into their lunches once in a while. Biggie's Flickr stream is a great place for lunch packing inspiration.
The Kid Eats Flickr group is another excellent source for school lunch inspiration. Some of the lunches are a little too involved for me to pull off so early in the morning (or ever) but a lot of the ideas these parents come up with would be great fun to surprise your kid with. Like this hilarious apple.
One suggestion I've read over and over while researching school lunch ideas is to get the kids involved. Now, this sounds lovely in practice and if I were a better mother I'd have the kids making their own lunches and I'd never yell in the morning or race them out the door with two minutes to spare. I made a magnetic lunch chart last year so the kids could pick and choose what things they'd like packed in their lunch...without letting the choices devolve into a bag full of pudding, cookies and a side of potato chips.
iLunchbox.com is a new website devoted to your kid's lunchbox. With articles like "50 Things To Do With Leftover Chicken" and an incredible index of lunchbox recipes I may be able to make lunches without falling asleep for half the year out of sheer boredom.
Finally, as always, Family Fun has some great school lunch ideas, especially those they've collected from readers. My favorite tips: these peanut butter (again with Peanut Butter!) protein balls. They're simple to make and quick to eat (this is important at school when the kids have about 20 minutes to eat and lots of chatting to do). I'm also loving these mini pizza ideas. I've hesitated to send anything like this because keeping it warm enough seems next to impossible. But then I remembered half our dinner is spent waiting for the food to "cool off"....by the time the kids open a pita pizza at school it should be just right for eating.
Do you have any fabulous lunch ideas that work for your kids? Do your kids get bored if they've got the same thing in their lunchbox week after week?
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