My eldest, William started year 3 this year and that meant the end of his free school meal entitlement. He’s ok with it, me – not so much. It means thinking about and making his lunches every day. I’m managing so far, but to be fair it’s only a few weeks in to the new term!
Gathering lunchbox inspiration
I’m a big Pinterest fan, and I’m always gathering ideas ‘for later,’ some which I will do, others not so much. Here’s my lunchbox inspiration board.
Take a look at this for example, do people really do this for everyday? Apparently they do, but Grace from Eats Amazing does it for a living and sells the accessories in her shop, so she has some motivation to do it. This is a picture from her alphabet bento lunchboxes, I picked J because it’s my initial but she did the whole alphabet! I doubt it’s something us normal mums do – If they do, they don’t work, probably only have one child and are seriously bored.. I’d love to give bento boxes a go one day. I’ll work up to it.
Photo: Eats Amazing
Lunchbox notes and free printables
I love the idea of lunchbox notes, it was something that just wasn’t around when we were kids, the concept just wasn’t there. There are loads of free printable notes and templates around that I’ve saved on Pinterest, one day I’ll print some out and surprise him – hopefully while he’ll still appreciate it and before he’s a teenager. You can even get lunchbox jokes!
Image courtesy of Wellies and Lemonade
Image: The Crafted Sparrow
This is how my lunchboxes look now – sandwich not cut into pretty shape (I do hate waste but you could always use the cut offs for breadcrumbs), fruit, pudding like a yoghurt or cereal bar, miscellaneous snack like crisps, cheese string, raisins, carrot or cucumber.
Pretty basic, but I’m inspired now to do better. Hartley’s sent me some of their strawberry Jelly pots which made a great easy addition to William’s lunchboxes and they were very popular all round. At less than 10 calories a pot they make a great low calorie snack for Mums too! They contain no added sugar, no artificial colours and flavours and are fat and gluten free, but they do have artificial sweeteners in them. They didn’t last long and were good as an after school snack too. They’re offering a promotion at the moment, where if you collect 12 of their green jelly pot lids, you can get a lunchbox and set of stickers to decorate it, like we’ve done here:
Disclosure: I was gifted the lunch box, stickers and some jelly which inspired this post. All opinions are my own.
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