Healthy (Home) School Lunches

It's been a while since I shared any of our healthy packed lunches--mainly because I haven't packed lunches in a while. It wasn't practical to do when my family was here for over a month, and then we came upon the holidays. We finally started back this week and I thought I would share what the kids ate each day!

Monday: Rolled up turkey, cheese cubes, letter pretzels, apples, carrots and hummus (a special treat this week was juice boxes because they were on sale :)

Tuesday: Cheese Roll-Up on a whole wheat tortilla, veggie chips (coupon!), salad (dressing added later) and oranges

Wednesday: Bean, Cheese and Spinach quesadillas on corn tortillas, veggie chips, cucumbers and green peppers

Thursday: (Leftovers) Brown Rice and Beans with cheese, red peppers and pineapple

Friday: PB, Honey & Banana stars, cheese cubes, pretzel letters, carrot hearts (way to hard to make these, won't be doing that again!), oranges

Apparently, they liked their lunches this week.

Happy Friday! Hope you all have a great weekend!

**UPDATED*** Link at the bottom of this post is now working :)


I just wanted to share a wonderful website with all of you! I actually used it 2 years ago when I was trying to lose the weight from Brookie, but didn't use it faithfully and it took me almost a year to lose all the weight.
This time I got on again, have been very faithful with it since the new year, and only have 4.5 pounds to go to get to pre-Joey weight! I'm very excited about that, because I don't lose weight easily from breastfeeding like some people. I have to work at every ounce.
I'll quickly sum up the site in case you want to check it out for yourself.

• It's FREE! This is the best part!
• You put in your gender, weight and height and how much you want to lose. Based on that, SparkPeople gives you how many calories a day you can eat and how much you should burn.
• You track every bite of food. This helps you be successful! They have a huge database of foods, so chances are, anything you eat is in there. That way you know the calories and all nutritional information of what you eat.
• You track exercise minutes and how many cups of water you drink
• You can have a blog page, write on message boards for support or connect with buddies in your area (All Optional)

Yes, it takes time to track everything every day. But if you really want to get serious about losing weight, it's worth it.

Plus, if you know you have to record it, you won't eat seven and a half cookies in between lunch and dinner.

True story.

So, go to http://sparkpeople.com/ and check it out today! Believe me--it's worth it!

Newest Photo Props

I've been wanting little blocks with letters on them for a while now. There are so many cute shots you can do with blocks and cute pregnant Mommies and precious little newborns! I found a whole box of them for $1.00 today at a garage sale. Needless to say I was very excited! There is a whole slew of us pregnant right now so I will be doing a lot of pregnancy pictures in the coming months. Yay!

Who doesn't Love a Great Deal?

I have to share something that I just recently heard about!
It's this GREAT website called Saving with Shelly! The link for it is here. It's so worth it to go there and browse around. You can find coupon savings for all kinds of grocery items, but it's way better than other sites I've used. This one actually tells you the stores that you can find the great deals at!

For instance:

Click on the Target link, and you will find all kinds of deal like this:
Kashi Frozen Waffles - $1.99-
Use $1.50/1 Kashi coupon
Final Price = $.29

In her original posting she has the link for the printable coupon right there so you can just click on it--so easy and convenient!

Also,
Hershey’s Bliss Candy Bar - $.99-
Use $1/1 Target coupon
Final Price = FREE
Who doesn't love a good piece of chocolate for FREE???

WALMART:

Bar S Hot Dogs (12oz) - $.50-
Use $1/2 Bar S coupon
Final Price = FREE

Blue Bunny Large Single Serve Ice Cream Sandwiches - $1-
Use $1/1 Blue Bunny coupon
Final Price = FREE

At some Wal Marts, they have 4 rolls of Cottenelle toilet paper for $1.00. On this site you can find a $1 off coupon, so it's FREE! Stock up on tiolet paper for the whole year! :)

Again, all the links for coupons are included on her site! This is great girls, we can save a lot of money each week! There are a lot of other stores listed on there as well so check it out. I know a lot of my readers are from NY and there are no Tops or Wegmans on there, but like you just saw she has Target and WalMart, plus Walgreens and CVS.

Hope you get over there to check it out! Lots of awesome savings, and who doesn't love a great deal?

I just Love These!

I have to put a plug in for one of my favorite snacks. :) I know how hard it is to find healthy snacks, especially on the go, but these are awesome! Quaker mini rice cakes have become a real staple around here and I can eat them pretty much guilt free! I'll eat the sour creme and onion or cheddar ones with a sandwich at lunch instead of chips. Because they are small, they give you the same crunch and salty flavor you want when you eat a bag of Lays, just WAY better for you! The rice is puffed, so it's way less calories that most other munchies like this that you can get--including pretzels and sun chips. And the great thing is when you want something sweet, they have apple cinnamon, caramel (tastes like caramel popcorn!) and chocolate.

Give them a try and let me know what you think! If you already eat them, let me know your favorite flavor! Mine are sour creme and onion and apple cinnamon!

Spring Cleaning!

JulieMom is hosting this great clean home carnival. I will admit, I have never commented on her blog and she doesn't even know me. I sort of know her as she is a missionary. I pulled the link for her blog off of Vicki;s blog. Anyway, April 1st is known to all of us as April Fools, and instead, she is encouraging us to be WISE woman and do something profitable around our house! You can read all the details here! I've been cleaning and organizing so hopefully by April first I will have all that de-cluttering DONE! If you are a daughter and don't have your own house, you can always start in your room--c'mon, whens the last time you looked under your bed? Or under the clothes in your closet?--and even offer to help your Mom with other areas in the house, like a counter or shelf that ends up being a throw-all, a messy closet, desk, or even the fridge!!! :) Let's all be wise woman in these next few weeks and on April First! Who's with me?