Bella's Bento for Wednesday

I LOVE making lunch for Bella. I know she may not remember them when she gets older but it really is a lot of fun and hopefully she enjoys them now. Today's bento I have dubbed the Orange Bento, it includes;
Ham and cheese with honey mustard on a pretzel roll
Mandarin Orange slices
Cheddar & Mozzarella cheese stick
Annie's Organic Bunny gummies
Cheetos & Cheese fishies

It's all very orange, lol. And for good measure she will have orange juice to go with it. Do you ever make specialized or theme lunches? I'd love to hear about them!

More Augusta Deals!

I woke up this morning and checked for deals like always, and wow what a biggie! There is a coupon book being sold for $12. It has easily over 30 restaurants in it, plus golfing, laser tag and other amusement type vendors. Yes you read right $12.00! They are all for places in Augusta GA and good until November 2012, so a full year of buy one get ones! I love FREE food don't you?! Check out the page with all the coupons here, then use this link to buy yours! If I get 3 friends to sign up mine is free, buy yours using my link then get your own link to share and get yours free too! If your not already using Living Social here's another freebie for you, use this link and you will get $5.00 towards your first living social purchase!!!

.:sigh:.
I LOVE deals!

North Augusta DEAL!

Ok deal seekers, this one is for you if you live in or around North Augusta!

Today on living social I came across another great deal. Spend $8.00 and get $17.00 of food! This is what a friend of mine calls "tempting me with a good time". So the restaurant is Al's Family Restaurant, they have been in business for 30 years. The best part is it is locally owned and operated. I LOVE giving my business to a real family instead of the franchises all over the place. Don't get me wrong I love their food too, but it's just a really good feeling knowing you are supporting someone locally. Check them out on Facebook, they update their menu items daily so you can plan your visit if needed.

The deal can be found here, you can buy up to 2 for yourself and 2 for friends. I plan to use mine on a night when I just don't want to cook. As much as I love cooking, there are some times when I just don't feel like bothering, these coupons will go into my car coupon book for quick retrieval when the mood strikes.

Gingerbread houses for CHEAP!

I'm not sure if this is a deal or crafty, I think it's both!

Target currently has it's Halloween things on 90% clearance! (I'm a clearance shop-a-holic I know). I found among the items a haunted house gingerbread kit. I think it was Wiltons (it's already in storage so I'm not sure). It is exactly like the Christmas Gingerbread house kit except it has Halloween sugars and candies. I paid $1.00 for it and it has 5 houses in the kit. ONE DOLLAR! So of course I bought 2 of them and finding candies for decorating is not that big of a deal. You can even make your own icing to put the houses together too. So run out to your local Target and see if they have any left, at Christmas the same kit will cost you anywhere from $10 - $20.

Bella, Tim and I worked on the houses last year together for Christmas and it was a lot of fun. I love finding fun family things to do, which reminds me, I'll be posting some new fun crafty things VERY SOON!

More Cake batter!

Ever since trying Cold Stone's Cake n shake I have been in love with cake flavored items. I joined pintrest awhile back and started seeing other cake flavored items. Walmart also has an amazing cake batter ice cream. Anyway, tonight I tried cake batter edible cookie dough, dough that does not have eggs in it so you can eat it raw....all I can say is OMG!!!

Cake batter cookie dough:

cream together 1/2 c sugar with 1/2 c butter (I used crisco sticks butter flavored), add in 1 tsp vanilla until well mixed. Add to this 1 & 1/2 c flour and 2/3 c yellow cake mix then add 6 tbsp water, more till you get the consistency you would like (I used 9 tbsp water). For more cake like presentation add 1 contained or sprinkles and mix in.

This recipe makes 8 servings. I put mine into the small 1 c serving size zip lock containers and refrigerated them. (I'm sure they will be gone tomorrow!) 

I'm thinking you can make this more "healthy" by using splenda.

Awesome savings!

I don't know about you but I love to eat out, in fact my whole family does. Just the other day Bella said to me, "You know Mama we haven't gone to a restaurant in awhile." Eating out can be expensive though, what am I saying, can be? It is! Corner cutter that I am I use Groupon! It doesn't just give discounts on food though. Today I bought a $20 gift card to 2nd and Charles a really great store in Augusta where I buy books, music, even games for the PS3 (Christmas presents shh) at second hand prices. So I save on top of saving! When you sign up you even get a first time shoppers code to save $10 off your first purchase. I highly recommend signing up, it's free! You can even add the app to your phone, I know personally it supports android, I get updates with new deals daily. Groupon has deals all over the place too, so if you're headed out of town for say Thanksgiving, check the town your headed to. I usually start looking for deals as soon as I know I'll be traveling. I got some amazing deals when I visited Denver this summer, buy one get one on gellato, movie tickets for $4.00 each, I mean really great deals!

Check it out, I promise you will be happy you did! Sign up for your deals here!

Bento Boxes

This would fall under the "crafty" category I think. My daughter is 6 and in kindergarten. It's a half day class but she goes to "Lunch bunch" and then fabulous fives. Lunch bunch is just a 30 minute lunch time, but it is her favorite part of the day, typical kid right?! This year I decided to make lunch even more fun for her. I've ventured into making bento boxes for her. Creative little ways to put together healthy foods in a way that is more fun than a plain square sandwich.





Some of my favorite things to do so far are:
*Use cookie cutters with thick sliced ham or turkey and cheeses
*Cut up the sandwich into little bits and add them to a skewer 
*Cut up apples and string cheese and alternate on a fancy toothpick
*Use mini muffin papers/silcone shapes for frosting or peanut butter
*Write little notes with dot games, tic tac toe and stickers

Have fun with it, make lunch time and healthy foods creative and exciting!

There are a lot of great examples on the web, below are some links!
bento-logy
how-to-make-a-kids-bento-box
lunchbox lunches
Yum Yum Bento
Laptop lunches