Sandwich Wrap Bento Lunch

I wanted to share the lunch I made for my daughter. I made a of sandwich wraps using leftover chicken, jazzed up sour cream, lettuce, and shredded cheddar. Once they were finished being filled, I rolled it up on both ends to look like a burrito, and cut it in half. The bento box pictured has a heart-shaped silicone cup, so I cut the wrap diagonally, then flipped the top half over the bottom so that the points of the wrap looked like the bottom of a heart. I place the heart cup (just a silicone cupcake cup) in the far end of the bento box, and then slipped in the wrap. There was a little room left inside, so I put in a cherry tomato. The lunches were really yummy, and fit inside the box beautifully.

The silicone cup squished together a bit. Oh well.

Sour cream dressing (taste as you go method)
Sour cream-small container
Minced/crushed garlic in jar (about 1tsp)
Seasoning salt
Extra virgin olive oil (about 1 tsp)

Who Doesn't Love Playdough?

I'm not crafty. At all. I love the idea of making things, but I have very little patience and a perfectionist nature that makes crafting difficult for me. I will start a project on full blast, get bored and lazy with it while I try to rush to the end, then get frustrated with my end product which is normally too big, too small, lopsided, discolored, or smelly. Because of this, I tend to shy away from making things with my kids, even though I have to admit that these activities make me feel like a good mom, even when they go horribly awry and I end up overwhelmed with damage control and clean-up. Well, I have found the perfect project for me and my kids: Playdough. It's easy, cheap, takes about ten whole minutes to make, and I always feel like an awesome mom when I cook some up for the kids.

I have tried lots of different recipes for playdough, and my favorite is as follows:

2 cups plain flour
2 cups colored water
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup salt

Combine all the ingredients in a pan and stir over low heat. It will gradually thicken into dough, and then you just plop it out of the pan, let it cool off, and play with it.

I play with it, too!



This dough is freakishly similar to the stuff you buy at the store; it stays pliable for hours, and it will keep for weeks in the fridge, in a sealed container. I divide the dough between my two kids and give them forks, toothpicks, cookie cutters, plastic knives, pizza rollers, glitter, beads, pipe cleaners; everything and anything I can think of that they can use to shape the dough. My kids play with it for long chunks of time, and when they get bored (as all kids inevitably do) I make myself a playdough stressball to get me through the destruction that follows. So, really, everybody wins!

Short Review: Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein

The gist: The world of little girls is a hot pink mess, thick with pink princessy frou-frou unlike anything parents have dealt with before. Is all this extreme girliness just a harmless phase, or is there something more sinister lurking behind all that pink?

What I Liked: The conversational tone and sense of humor made this an easy and enjoyable read, without skimping on the hard facts, and there are some surprising hard facts. Orenstein navigates this territory with honesty and hubris, dismantling the mighty pink monster in a way that enables you to see it clearly without completely admonishing it. She doesn't offer any concrete answers, but provides the reader enough information and space to decide whether those Disney Princesses are friends or foes.

What I Didn't Like: I got this feeling like I was a tiny post trying to protect my kids from a hurricane. More than once, I felt the urge to move to a cabin in the woods without electricity and pop culture, and I still don't know what to do about my daughter's insistence that she wear dresses in subzero temperatures so that she can be "pretty."

Should You Read It?
If you have any young girls in your life, yes, absolutely read it. At the very least, it will make you laugh.

For more information, check this out.

You might also like Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne and So Sexy So Soon by Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne.

Welcome to SodaPop Pages!

SodaPop Pages is brought to you by a pair of bubbly sisters with a mutual love for food and cooking, summer fun, vintage style, trying new and sometimes crazy things, and books, books, books. Why the name?We have big plans for fun things we'd like to share with our readers, and our interests are hard to categorize. Soda pop makes us think of food and drink, which is one of our main areas of interest, but it also makes us think of summer fun, vintage style, and the joys of childhood. Our other main focus with this blog will be on books and reading, hence the Pages of our title.

Allow us to introduce ourselves:

Hello! My name is Jennifer. I live in Germany with my husband and daughter. My husband is in the Air Force, so home is where they send us. I love the mystery of how things are made, and am a DIY fanatic. Cooking and crafting are some of my major interests. I love to sew and design, and plan to start attending online classes for fashion design. So far, I am self-taught. I learn from my mistakes, and revel in my failures as much as my successes. I am also an avid reader. I have two etsy shops featuring my handmade designs.

http://www.jenharruff.etsy.com/ and http://www.cupcakesandcameos.etsy.com/.








Here I am with my signature hair flower.

 

I am Melanie, mother of one girl maniac and one boy maniac, living with said maniacs and my husband in a little city in the land of Montana, or as I like to call it, "Not-Quite-Canada." I'm an imperfect stay-at-home mom, doing my best to keep my kids alive and happy and my house at least a little clean. Some days are better than others. I'm a reader and a writer and an aspiring librarian, and when I'm not hiding my face behind a great book, I like to make a fool of myself in front of large crowds singing bad (and sometimes good) sober karaoke. Mornings are tough for me and I don't truly wake up until after noon, my bowling average is dismal, but I get very lucky at pool, and I hate gameshows.



I love fire.

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