Bento Bandwagon

After seeing this slideshow of school lunches from around the world, I have been thinking about how to make better school lunches for my girls. So now I'm getting on the Bento bandwagon. I'm going to post photos of pretty (and healthy, mostly) lunches for my kids, and husband too. The lunches are packed in these cute partitioned containers from Japan. I don't have Bentos, but I found partitioned containers at Target that work well. So here's Day 1 for the girls. They're both similar, but Evie's class is peanut-free, so there are slight variations.

Evie's Bento Box is a Ziploc 3 compartment container with lid. So convenient, and cheaper than some bento boxes, but large, so it only fits in her large rectangle lunch box, so there's no room in there for a drink. We'll look into other options, but for today, it works perfectly. Here she's got ham and cheese dinosaurs, carrot sticks, green grapes, and a handmade chocolate (no nuts) I made for Valentines Day. She also has strawberry & vanilla heart marshmallows.

Maisey's Bento Box separates the two sides with a lid, then folds in half and locks. What a great design! Inside are two ham and cheese dinosaurs, carrot sticks, grapes, peanut butter cookies, and strawberry & vanilla heart marshmallows.

The colors, the presentation, and the food itself should be enough to entice my girls to eat the whole thing. I hope to get them excited about what they're eating, and giving them more of a choice in what I include (within reason.

So today's lunch was a little heavy on sweets, but it's a work in progress. Progress I hope to make for the rest of the school year. If you want some more inspiration, look here, or type "Bento lunch ideas" in Pinterest.

Jungle Gym Chicken Coop

After two years of reading, researching, talking about and obsessing over chicken keeping, we finally convinced DH to get chickens. So we are turning the the tower of this jungle gym into a chicken coop with attached covered run.

This tower has lots of character, but that makes it a little more difficult to just cut plywood and boards to fit. Luckily, DH is McGyver, so he did all the calculations to fill in gaps where boards are different lengths, widths and thicknesses, and the odd shapes at the roof peaks. When we get the boards at Lowes, we'll have them cut to length and height, so all I have to do is stain them, and DH can install.

We will screen in the tops of the side walls, and the triangles at the roof peaks for ventilation, with custom sized plexiglass "windows" to allow light as well.

We decided that the coop should be shorter for stability and mobility. DH wants to be able to move it around the yard for mowing, and move it closer to the house in winter for convenience. I like this idea.

So,we took off the picnic table/bench, the awning frame above it, and the 2 x 4 boards that secured the base. We gently laid the structure on it's side and then cut 2 feet off the legs. This left it at a height of 16" off the ground.

Then we reattached one of the stabilizer boards back into place at the bottom of the frame. DH use the board's pre-drilled holes to line it up and reattach the board at the bottom of the newly cut legs.

We screwed the other board to the front side of the coop about 3 feet up, to provide a framework for attaching the run, and as a framework for the sliding pop door. BTW, the door will slide sideways, not up and down.

So far we have spent a total of $70 for this coop, on plywood walls, stain for the boards, hardware cloth for windows and the run, 2x4s for the run, as well as deck screws. We still need plexiglass for windows, and cedar shingles for the roof, as well as a floor--probably linoleum. That's another trip to the home improvement shop, and another Saturday's work. Right now, I'm so excited; I love it when a plan comes together.

Weekend #2 We took advantage of 2 days of unseasonably warm weather to stain the boards we'll use for the walls, and then to cut and put them in place. We made a few adjustments to the design, to include more light and air flow, and hopefully an easy cleaning access.

The left side of the tower would make the perfect place for interior nest boxes. We found the angled stakes for anchoring the swing set worked perfectly to frame the space where the hinged nest box lid will go.

The opening beneath the nest boxes (where DH's legs are hanging out) will be closed with the boards from the table and bench we removed. It'll have a cute rustic look, and the little door will allow access to the coop if we need it.

Next warm weekend we'll finish the windows, screens, roof, doors and nest box lid, and then build and attach the run. It's almost time for chickens!