Rice Hand Warmers

To teach my son measuring concepts we "played" with rice and measuring cups: four 1/4 cups go into one full cup, two 1/2 cups into one full cup, etc... It was educational for the first five minutes, but quickly turned into a big mess all over the table and floor.

Instead of throwing the rice away, I scooped it all up and made these rice hand warmers. I microwave them for a minute to keep my hands toasty while we walk to school on cold mornings.

Table Cloth Apron

One night after dinner, my son suggested that I wear a swim shirt next time I wash the dishes because my shirts always get so wet (this still makes me smile when I think about it). His comment was the inspiration for creating a vinyl table cloth apron.

Luckily, I already had a cute apron to use as a template. I used vinyl for the main part of the apron and cotton for the ruffle and straps. The cotton absorbs any water that might drip down, and I can also use it to dry my hands.

Back To School - Cold Lunches

I've been looking for lunch ideas, now that I'm packing my son's "cold lunch" everyday. It's challenging to figure out what, and how, to serve. I find that small, easy to eat portions are more likely to be eaten.

To keep food cold, I started using a booboo ice pack on the bottom of the container, covered it with a wet paper towel and added fruit on top.

I found these containers with removable cooler ice (that can be frozen the night before). Unfortunately, these were too difficult for 5 year old hands to open. Just Bento, an awesome site I came across, suggests freezing a juice box the night before to use in place of an ice pack.

Some of the lunches on that site are so pretty, they've inspired me to pack a lunch to eat at home.

Back To School - Labeling Everything!

"Back To School", to me, means labeling everything.

When my son was a toddler, I began ironing on name tags with my cell phone number to all of his clothes; so that was already taken care of.

Plastic was the problem. I tried a number of different ways to label lunch ware: paper labels pealed off or got wet, permanent marker eventually washed off, my son took off the rubber bands to play with...

Packaging Tape was the solution! I wrote his name on a label then stuck it on with packaging tape. The packaging tape stuck really well to the plastic and made it very water resistant.