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First time mother just trying to figure out where to go from here.

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Capri-Sun #PackedLunchLove Hack Workshop

22/09/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Lunch. It seems to be on my mind a lot lately (but to fair when is food not? ?). I recently got Oscar a new lunch bag, when his existing one started causing concerns I’d never even envisaged, and a few weeks ago I was invited by the lovely people at Capri-Sun to join them for a lunch box hack workshop in London to celebrate the launch of their Fruit Crush all fruit juice drink. Until recently Oscar would only drink water, but once he found ‘juice boxes’ that was it, he was in love. So I was interested to find out more about an option that could also be counted as is 1 of your 5 a day. Capri-Sun Fruit Crush is made with 75% Fruit Juice and 25% Spring Water and is available in three flavours, so I was interested to see whether it could find a place in our lunch boxes.

Capri Sun Fruit Crush. Fruit Juice and Water, that's it!
Capri Sun Fruit Crush. Fruit Juice and Water, that’s it!

When I first got the invite, I immediately knew Oscar wasn’t ready for the craft and fun they were promising the little people. However, I also knew my friend’s daughter would love it, so invited Cecily and her mummy Bethany to come with me. And I still believe they would have loved it, however Bethany was so poorly that weekend, I ended up going alone. Hope you’re feeling better now Bethany!

The event was run at the London family members club Maggie and Rose in Kensington, and while the children were entertained in one space, we mummies and daddies sat in another. The set up immediately piqued my interest. I mean, what were we going to do with cookie cutters and dried spaghetti?

Thanks to Maggie and Rose in Earls Court for hosting
Thanks to Maggie and Rose in Earls Court for hosting
Seriously! What were we about to do?
Seriously! What were we about to do?

I’ve never been particularly creative when it comes to Oscar’s lunch. At the moment we mostly eat at home and that mostly involves sandwiches (cut into squares) made from gluten free bread and one of a number of fillings (his favourite du jour is Dairylea, but he’ll eat most things to be fair. As long as it’s not green!) Trimming the crusts off is my only nod to fancy (and I only do that because then he’ll weirdly eat more of the sandwich than when I don’t!). So, believe me when I say I was a leeeetle sceptical about making a ‘fun’ lunch. I mean who has time for that, right?

The workshop was run a blogger I’d not come across before, Grace from Eats Amazing. Grace’s hobby of getting her children to eat healthy food, has turned into an obsession. For Capri-Sun’s Fruit Crush #PackedLunchLove Project She had designed five bento style packed lunches and the first thing she did was show us how quick and easy the Dinosaur one was to make.

Grace under pressure!
Grace under pressure!
I literally timed the poor girl. And this is how long it took to create the dino lunch box
I literally timed the poor girl. And this is how long it took to create the dino lunch box. Impressive!
Grace's awesome 4 minute Dino Lunch!
Grace’s awesome 4 minute Dino Lunch!

What a great idea and so ridiculously simple it was almost embarrassing that I’d never thought to try something like it before. You can find the directions to create this fun but healthy dino themed lunchbox here.

So once we’d seen just how simple a fun lunch could be, it was our turn to have a go. Only Grace decided it would be fun for us to have a crack at a really special lunch, one she was at pains to explain she wouldn’t make every day. In fact she explained she would usually only play with one or two elements per box (as you can see in the Dino lunch). Doing that and adding a couple of eyes or character picks is usually enough to have even the most inscrutable child bowled over. But to give us some real practice on the bento lunch style, we were set the task of creating a ‘Woodland Themed’ lunch, complete with Owl sandwich, egg mouse, grape acorns and carrot leaves.

And I loved every minute of it!

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Grace’s Woodland themed lunch
So that's what the dried spaghetti was for! The eyes are ebilble ink. I need one of these pens!
So that’s what the dried spaghetti was for! The eyes are ebilble ink. I need one of these pens!
Two slices of bread, one slice of ham, one slice of cheese and some stick on eyes and you my friend have got yourself an Owl!
Two slices of bread, one slice of ham, one slice of cheese and some stick on eyes and you my friend have got yourself an Owl!
And here's my box, complete with mouse, owl along with leaves cut from slices of carrot and acorns made from frozen grapes dipped in melted chocolate.
And here’s my box, complete with mouse and owl along with leaves cut from slices of carrot and acorns made from frozen grapes dipped in melted chocolate.

It was too much fun and while I would never have time to do this kind of thing every day (sorry Grace, I just wouldn’t!) it was amazing to see what you could create with just a little bit of thought, and some awesome cutters.

I had such a great day, but what I really came away with was inspiration. Such as:

  1. If you’re cutting the crusts off bread, do it before you add the filling. Then bag up any crusts you have, in the freezer. When you next need breadcrumbs, whizz up the left overs and hey presto, breadcrumbs. I’ve already started doing this at home!
  2. The wax on Babybel cuts easily and sticks to itself, meaning you can make a boring cheese look super exciting!
  3. When cutting out shapes from vegetables, keep the left overs. These can be used in all sorts of ways later on (beak of an Owl sandwich anyone? Soup?)
  4. To keep it exciting, stock up on a few different types of breads (such as rolls, pittas, wraps, muffins etc) and keep them in the freezer. They last for ages and you can mix it up as you go along. Use it frozen and it will be thawed by lunch time – no defrosting needed!
  5. Although we don’t like it, I learnt hummus freezes really well. You can freeze it in all sorts of shaped ice cube trays and the frozen hummus will hold it shape, even when it defrosts. How cool is that?
  6. Once you start looking around you’ll be amazed what you can use to spruce up a packed lunch. Cocktail stirrers, cookie cutters, cake flags, the list is endless. And there is such a thing as an edible marker. Who knew?!

I was amazed. It had never occurred to me to cut pitta at an angle to make a dinosaur spike, or to dip frozen grapes in chocolate to make acorns. Heck, it had never occurred to me to theme his lunch full stop. But it really is that simple. With a few tweaks on a bog standard lunch and a few little additions (picks, eyes etc) Grace created something so cool, even I wanted to tuck in!

And that was the philosophy of the day I guess. Take the familiar, be that food or drink, look at it from a different angle and BOOM! you’ve got a whole box of healthy fun. I would never have thought to take a cookie cutter to a carrot and I would never have thought to give Oscar Capri-Sun Fruit Crush.

I do both now.

 

Thank you for so much fun!
Thank you for so much fun!

 

Thank you so much to everyone involved in the #PackedLunchLove workshop. Thank you to Capri-Sun for arranging such a wonderful day and to Grace for inspiring me to give it a go.

You can find all the picks, eyes and lunch accessories you could ever need at Grace’s Eats Amazing Shop

I was given a Yumbox to carry my creations home in and boy do we love it! Watertight and secure, Oscar wants to eat every meal out of it now! You can find out more about Yumbox here

I wasn’t paid for this post and as always all opinions are my own.

 

Filed Under: Children, Family, Review Tagged With: #PackedLunchLove, Blogger event, Capri-Sun, Eats Amazing, eyes, Maggie & Rose, mother, mummy, Packed lunch, picks, Review, Sandwiches, Woodland theme, Yumbox

Smells like teen spirit…

13/07/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

I was listening to a piece on the wireless the other day about the sense of smell and how it’s being used in the therapy for those with Alzheimer’s. It would seem a scent can access memories in a way simply nothing else can. And this didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

For example when Oscar was a baby (and still today when he’ll let us near his head!) we washed his hair with Burts Bees Shampoo. When the tiny trial bottle we started with was finished I kept the bottle in his special box, in the hope that should/when he stops using it and grows up I can go back to that tiny bottle, for a quick sniff and a remember.

Then I was talking to a friend this morning about her teenage son using Lynx body spray and it got me thinking about the iconic fragrance and what it means to me.

Firstly I still can’t believe it’s going! When I was a teen (and sob sob, we’re talking the mid 1990’s here) every boy I knew left a trail of unmistakable scent in their wake. It was sort of cheap talcy aftershave mixed with body odour. It’s teen boy to me. And here we are 20 years on and teen boys (or so I’m told) have yet to move on.

Which in one respect is great. It makes me giggle to think of teen boys smelling like their dads and uncles used to. It’s like some scented heirloom, a fragranced ancestory. Lynx, making teen girls cough since 1985 🙂

But in another respect it’s a little bit worrying. For me anyway. Lynx holds such a special place in my memory. Yes all the boys wore it but no one wore it like my biggest secondary (High) school crush. He was dashing even then, and always smelt of just Lynx (without the BO – maybe that’s what I liked?). I get one whiff of Lynx Africa and boom, I’m 16 and weak at the knees again. Not appropriate for a 36 year old married woman with a child! I was rather disturbed to hear the boys are still coating themselves in the cheap body spray before leaving the house. But then my friend told me the Africa scent has gone out of favour, well at least with her son’s friend group. Phew! I’m going to hope that this is the case the country over. In fact I’m hoping it’ll become so passe that Unilever will discontinue it altogether, if only for the benefit of 30 something women who can’t smell it without getting a completely involuntary reaction up their spine. I mean, there’s no way my own son can ever wear it. It has to go!

Although, I may go and buy some, to keep next to the bottle of CK One, in my memory box.

Just in case.

image

 

Life with Baby Kicks

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: 1995, boys, first love, fragrance, girls, halcyon, Lynx, memory, mother, Personal, scent, teenage, teenager

Monthly Monday Melfie – February 2015

03/02/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

So it’s a day late (so sorry Elfa) but here’s is this month’s Monday Melfie post.

The first pictures were taken all thought out January, with a real effort taken to remember to include myself in our digital records! The middle one is my favourite as it shows Oscar walking around holding my hand. This is a really big step for him and this trip to the farmers market was an absolute triumph because of it.

image

This is second picture is really special to me. We took the sides off Oscar’s cot over Christmas and ever since he’s refused to nap in his bed as he did is his cot. I knew this might be the case and was totally prepared for it. What I wasn’t prepared for, was that over the last month he would take to having his nap on the sofa, or more to the point on me. It’s something he hasn’t done since he was a tiny baby. Yes, it means I don’t get as much done as when he napped in his cot, but I wouldnt change it for the world. He’s growing up so fast (he turns three in 8 weeks) and how much longer will he choose to sleep cwtched up on his mama? So I’m making the most of each and every time. Knowing each and every time could be the last.

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Im joining in the #monthlymondaymelfie run by the lovely Elfa over at Californian Mum in London.

Californian Mum in London

Filed Under: Children Tagged With: childhood, cwtch, mama, Monthly Monday Melfie, mother, Motherhood, mummy, photo, pictures, selfie

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