I have two sons in Elementary School … multiply that by 191 school days … minus 12 hot lunches …  carry the two …  that’s approximately 370 sandwiches I’ll be making this school year!  (When all four of my boys are in school, it’ll be 740!  Yikes.)  I’m proud to say that we are healthy eaters – I know the importance of nutrition, and I feed my family whole, natural foods whenever possible.  I used to make them a sandwich, pack a juice box, a small yogurt or fruit cup, and a recess snack of crackers, pretzels, or something equally easy-to-eat-while-running-and-climbing-on-the-playground.  Then I watched Food, Inc. and I took a good look at the lunchtime staple – THE SANDWICH!  What was I putting into the sandwiches I was making for my kids?  After watching Food Inc., I wasn’t sure I wanted all those chemicals and food-like products going into my little boys.  I’ve noticed over the last few months that natural sandwich options are popping up all over my local grocery store, which gives me options to make sandwiches I feel good about!

Maple Leaf now offers Natural Selections deli meats, which contain no preservatives, artificial ingredients, fillers, or MSG!  In fact, I guarantee you can pronounce each and every ingredient.  With ham, turkey, or chicken deli meats available, I can keep both my eight-year old “I want a ham sandwich every day, Mom” and my six-year-old “Do we have to have ham again, Mom?” happy.  Good times.  You can purchase Natural Selections at your local grocery store, but check out these Maple Leaf coupons before you go.

What is it with kids and those processed cheese slices?  I’m not even sure they should be considered “cheese”.  Try as I might to duplicate the size and shape of these perfectly square and flat slices of processed cheese from my block of cheddar, I just cannot do it to my boys’ satisfaction.  This is why I was so delighted to find Cracker Barrel cheese slices.  They’re slices of Cracker Barrel cheese (yum!) – perfectly square and perfectly flat.  And they’re available in Medium, Marble, Monterey Jack with jalapenos, and Swiss cheese varieties!

We’ve all heard the importance of incorporating whole grains into our diets.  Choosing a whole grain bread for your kids’ lunches is a great way to get started.  It’s wonderful to see so many varieties of whole grain breads on grocery store shelves these days.  I’ve been buying Dempster’s Wholegrains Ancient Grains and Dempster’s Wholegrains Multigrain breads for over a year now.  My boys love them both – they’re soft, not too nutty, the right size slice, and they taste great!  Dempster’s also makes Flax and 12 Grain breads.

I would need a degree in higher math to figure out how many sandwiches my boys will be eating over the course of Grades one to 12.  Needless to say, it’s a lot.  It’s so exciting to see nutritious lunch options sprouting up all over my local grocery store.  Read the labels, try the different options, and find ones that work for your families!  Your children might even thank you one day … if they even realize that they were eating ‘healthy’!

Don’t forget to enter to win a Lunch Punch Sandwich Cutter to cut those school lunch sandwiches into funky shapes!

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Just in time for Back-to-School lunches, Maple Leaf foods has generously provided the Spilt Milk Moms THREE prize packs for THREE readers to WIN!  Two lucky winners will win product coupon prize packs valued at over $25 CDN each, and one really lucky winner will win a thermal grocery bag, a Natural Selections memory stick, a Maple Leaf Butcher apron, AND product coupons valued at $40 CDN! Thanks Maple Leaf Foods!

To Enter:  Go to the Maple Leaf Foods and the affiliated Dempster’s Bread website and then leave us a comment HERE (one per day only, please) telling us which Maple Leaf and Dempster’s products you would use to make your favourite sandwich.  Need ideas – Maple Leaf can help!  Once you’ve entered by leaving a comment, you can gain additional entries like this:

• Follow @MapleLeafPledge and @SpiltMilkMoms on Twitter and tweet ” Win an @MapleLeafPledge Natural Selections & Dempsters prize pack for lunches http://tinyurl.com/3x4kbyf @SpiltMilkMoms #giveaway #contest “
• If you ‘Like’ Maple Leaf on Facebook, leave us a comment letting us know for one extra entry.
• If you ‘Like’ Spilt Milk Moms on Facebook, leave us a comment letting us know for one extra entry.
• Mention this giveaway on your blog for one extra entry.

This giveaway ends at 12:01am PST on Thursday, September 16th, and the winner will be selected using Random.org.  The winner will have 7 days to respond to our notification email before another winner is selected.  THIS GIVEAWAY IS OPEN TO CANADIAN RESIDENTS ONLY.

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Snack Happened Reusable & Washable Snack Bags are made of 100% cotton fabric on the outside with thick PVC-Free waterproof lining on the inside. They are FDA approved, BPA free, and the YKK zipper used to close the bag is lead free! You can choose from 17 great patterns from Heart Throb, to Urban Jungle (which also comes in pink), to my personal favorite, Black Skulls!

These bags are ideal for small hands (or big ones!) and work well for storing dry snacks, wet snacks and fruit, sandwiches, or anything and everything that will fit inside! They are reusable, Eco-friendly, and fashionable. Snack Happened Bags are also machine washable, and although the company advises that they hang to dry, I forgot and tossed mine into the dryer along with everything else and it turned out just fine.

You can buy the 7 x 7 inch Snack Happened Bags through the Itzy Ritzy website for $12.99 CDN, or you can go bigger by choosing the larger 11 x 14 inch Wet Happened Bags for $19.99 CDN or you can find a local retailer here.

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Itzy Ritzy has generously supplied us with one Snack Happened Reusable & Washable Snack Bag of his/her choice for one lucky reader to WIN.  Thank you Itzy Ritzy!

To Enter:  Go to the Izty Ritzy website and then leave us a comment HERE (one per day only, please) telling us which Snack Happened Bag pattern you think your kids would love the most and why.  Once you’ve entered by leaving a comment, you can gain additional entries like this:

• Follow @ItzyRitzy and @SpiltMilkMoms on Twitter and tweet ” WIN a funky reusable @ItzyRitzy Snack Happened Snack Bag in time for Back-to-School! http://tiny.cc/9ojli @SpiltMilkMoms #giveaway #contest “ .
• If you ‘Like’ Itzy Ritzy on Facebook, leave us a comment letting us know for one extra entry.
• If you ‘Like’ Spilt Milk Moms on Facebook, leave us a comment letting us know for one extra entry.
• Mention this giveaway on your blog for one extra entry.

This giveaway ends at 12:01am PST on Wednesday, September 15th, and the winner will be selected using Random.org.  The winner will have 7 days to respond to our notification email before another winner is selected.  This giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.

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We’ve talked about Goodbyn lunchboxes before, but because they’re so Eco-friendly, customizable, and cool, we thought we’re remind you about them again just in time for Back to School!

What’s so great about these lunchboxes?  Goodbyns:

• come with their own reusable 8.5 oz drink bottles;
• have six different, self-contained compartments that hold everything from whole fruits to sandwiches to eating utensils;
• include 275 + dishwasher-safe stickers are included for your child to decorate their Goodbyn any way they choose (including the drink bottles, like those above);
• are dishwasher safe, BPA, phthalates, and lead free, and can be recycled when you’re through with them (if that isn’t enough to convince you that your child needs one, here are more great Goodbyn features).

Original Goodbyns for children aged five to nine years old are available in Pink, Blue, Green, and Red/Orange colours, while the company’s new ‘too cool for ears’ Goodbyns (aimed at children ten and up) come in more muted colours including Charcoal, Slate, Plum, and Ghost.  Reasonably priced considering you’ll never have to buy drink boxes or plastic sandwich bags again, purchase one through the Goodbyn website for $24.99 USD or from Canadian online retailer Raspberry Kids for $29.99 CDN.

Excellent children’s retailer Raspberry Kids is offering the readers of Spilt Milk Moms a 15% discount on all purchases through their online store (excluding sale items).  Simply enter discount code spiltmilk15 at checkout – thanks Raspberry Kids!

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Australian company Lunch Punch Sandwich Cutters is all over this concept.  Founder Kiersten, mom of three, invented these clever punches purely with the intent of making lunch more fun for everyone.  And oh are they fun!  Lunch Punches are available in five fabulously fun designs – from puzzle shapes, animals, transportation, princess-themes, and the continents (coming soon), there’s definitely a Lunch Punch to inspire your child’s imagination.  Kiersten was generous enough to send me one of their Match & Munch (puzzle shapes) and Critter Cutters (below) sandwich cutters, and I can’t remember the last time my son was so excited about eating lunch.  He loves choosing which shape he wants his sandwich to be, and the best part is that he eats his lunch without complaint.  All of it.  And then he asks for more!  We found Lunch Punch sandwich cutters super easy to use, and the shapes came out really crisp (particularly when our bread was really fresh).  Since then we’ve gone on to use them for Jell-O, playdough, and as cookie cutters.

You may be wondering if you couldn’t do the same thing to bread by simply using the cookie cutter collection you already have.  What makes Lunch Punches ideal for cutting sandwiches is that they are bigger than traditional cookie cutters and come in two sizes (for both medium and large-sized breads), which means less waste as they’re specifically designed to get as close as possible to the bread crust.  Other Lunch Punch features include:

• made from FDA certified food-grade plastic;
• BPA, Phthalate, PVC, and lead free;
• dishwasher safe;
• easy for little hands to use;
• AND both the Lunch Punch and its packaging are 100% recyclable!

Lunch Punch Sandwich Cutters are a great way to make school lunches fun, and they can be purchased from the following retailers for $14 to $17 CDN depending on the set and its size.  Your kids will love them – what a great way to ‘feed their tummy AND imagination’!

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Just in time for Back-to-School, Kiersten has generously supplied us with a set of Lunch Punch Sandwich Cutters for one lucky reader to WIN (the winner will have their choice of the Critter Cutters or the Match & Munch sets).  Thank you Lunch Punch!

To Enter:  Go to the Lunch Punch website and then leave us a comment HERE (one per day only, please) telling us which Sandwich Cutter set you think your kids would love the most and why.  Once you’ve entered by leaving a comment, you can gain additional entries like this:

• Follow @SpiltMilkMoms on Twitter and tweet ” WIN a set of Lunch Punch Sandwich Cutters for your Back-to-School crew http://tinyurl.com/27ktr5c @SpiltMilkMoms #giveaway #contest “ .
• If you ‘Like’ Lunch Punch on Facebook, leave us a comment letting us know for one extra entry.
• If you ‘Like’ Spilt Milk Moms on Facebook, leave us a comment letting us know for one extra entry.
• Mention this giveaway on your blog for one extra entry.

This giveaway ends at 12:01am PST on Tuesday, September 7th, and the winner will be selected using Random.org.  The winner will have 7 days to respond to our notification email before another winner is selected.  This giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.

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When I saw a friend using Bambu Kids’ Utensils to feed her little guy, I admired them so profusely that she felt sorry for me and brought me a set next time she came to visit.  My plastic baby utensils have been collecting dust ever since!  Little K loves to hold his own utensils now, and these are the perfect shape and size for little mouths and hands.  And with no sharp edges, I don’t even have to worry when Little K refuses to relinquish his fork!

Bambu Kids Utensil Sets are made with certified organic bamboo using absolutely no bleaches or dyes, and are finished with a natural food safe oil.  Did you know that bamboo isn’t a wood?  Bamboo is actually a species of grass.  As the Bambu site explains, bamboo is an amazing renewable resource – it’s one of the fastest growing plants on earth, it needs no replanting, and it grows without fertilizer or pesticide.  So Bambu Kids’ Utensils are not only a perfect alternative to plastic, but a great non-timber alternative as well.  The minimal, recyclable packaging used by Bambu makes this product completely eco-friendly!

I love a company that gives back!  Bambu prides themselves on their socially responsible business practices, from prioritizing the social well-being of their workers, to their commitment to pledge 1% of sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment.

Each Bambu Kids Utensil Set, which includes one fork and one spoon, retails for $9.99 CAD.  Bambu products are available from a number of online and retail locations, including great online retailer Raspberry Kids (enter discount code spiltmilk15 at checkout to receive 15% off of your Raspberry Kids purchase!).

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One thing that makes a lovely and useful gift is a utensil set, especially if it is engraved. I still have a baby spoon of my own with my inital on it. I starting thinking that this would make a good shower gift to keep on hand, because it is gender neutral, useful, and works with any parents’ personal style. I came across the sweet Fabler stainless steel fork, nice and spoon set for only $4.99 at Ikea. You just can’t beat that price!! They are nicely sized, not too tiny, and have a good weight. I stocked up on a few boxes while I was there, just to have on hand for future gift giving.

Now here is the extra special part: I took the cutlery set into my local mall and had it engraved with the baby’s initials, which cost me about the same as the set, but this is what elevates the gift to heirloom quality! Prices will vary depending on the engraving store, but I think this makes such a perfect gift for any baby boy or girl.

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Summer is here and I’ve stopped buying popsicles and started making them using Kinderville Little Bites Ice Pop Molds!

One of my issues with buying commercial frozen treats are the ingredients.  Your typical freezie-type treat, for example, contains: simulated flavours, Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose (a ‘stabilizer’ – whatever that is), Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate, and food colouring.  I don’t know about you, but I have an issue with ingredients I can’t pronounce, and none of them sound very organic.  My other problem with your run-of-the-mill popsicles and freezies are that little hands have trouble holding onto them, and my son, almost three, usually ends up wearing most of his treat.

Kinderville makes a fabulous set of popsicle molds that resolves all of these issues.  Their Little Bites Ice Pop Molds come in sets of four (one each of the four colours pictured above), hold 3.5 fluid ounces, and are five inches tall.  They are made out of BPA-free, non-leaching silicone, and are dishwasher and freezer safe.  To make homemade popsicles, simply fill the molds up to the fill line with whatever ingredients you want (my favourite is organic mango/orange juice), seal by pushing down the lid, and place into your freezer lid-down.  When your popsicles are thoroughly frozen and ready to be eaten, just take them out of the freezer, pull off the lid, and warm the sides of the mold with your hand until you can push the popsicle up to the top.  The shape of the molds are perfect for small hands, and their rims help keep the popsicles where they belong – in the mold and off your child’s clothes (WAY less tears that way, too)!

You can purchase Little Bites Ice Pop Molds from Kinderville’s online store for $16.99 USD or from other online retailers including Raspberry Kids for $24.99 CAD (use discount code spiltmilk15 at checkout for 15% off!).

Need some popsicle recipes?  Here are some great ones – happy homemade summer treats!

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Kinderville was kind enough to provide us with one set of Little Bites Ice Pop Molds to give away to ONE lucky reader!  Thanks, Kinderville!

To Enter: Leave us a comment HERE (one per day only, please) telling us what kind of homemade popsicles you would make if you owned a set of Little Bites Ice Pop Molds .  Once you’ve entered by leaving a comment, you can gain additional entries like this:

• Follow @Kinderville and @SpiltMilkMoms on Twitter and tweet ” Summer’s here! WIN a set of Kinderville Little Bites Ice Pop Molds @SpiltMilkMoms http://tinyurl.com/22ocy5e #giveaway #contest “ and leave us a link for extra daily entries.
• If you ‘Like’ Kinderville on Facebook , leave us a comment for one extra entry.
• If you ‘Like’ Spilt Milk Moms on Facebook, leave us a comment for one extra entry.
• Mention this giveaway on your blog and leave us the link for one extra entry.

This giveaway ends at 12:01am PST on Tuesday, July 20th, and the winner will be selected using Random.org.  The winner will have 7 days to respond to our notification email before another winner is selected.  This giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.

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One of my favourite things about travelling is the search for products and ideas we don’t have here at home. I was in the UK last March and I fell in love with the absolutely gorgeous and colourful kitchenware by London design darlings Joseph Joseph. When I got home, I immediately contacted them to find out where I could get my hands on them and they very kindly sent me their Nest 8 food preparation bowl set (above) and their Index Chopping Boards (below).

The Nest 8 bowls are comprised of a large mixing bowl, a colander, a sieve, a small mixing bowl (with liquid measures and a pour spout), and four measuring cups all neatly nestled together. There are so many things I love about these – the two bowls are non-slip, they all have handles for easy carrying, they fit together easily and perfectly, and they are GORGEOUS to look at. My only issue with them is that the plastic is harder and the texture more plastic-y than I had expected, sometimes making them feel like a toy. In fact, when I first received them they were highjacked by Little Miss as a temporary drum set! That said, I’ve been using them for ages and I love them. They would make an absolutely perfect housewarming gift and bring a really fun splash of colour into any kitchen.

Have you ever had that experience where you have remembered something incorrectly for so long that, despite drilling the correct thing into your head repeatedly, when you have to remember the right answer you convince yourself the right answer is the wrong one and choose the wrong one as the “correct” answer? I do that pretty much every day with cutting boards. We have a selection of cutting boards and the plastic one is for meat, but I always get it wrong and end up using the wooden ones by accident. This freaks my germaphobic husband right out, and we have had more than one massive fight over cutting boards. This is why I am in LOVE with Joseph Joseph’s Index Cutting Boards. See those little tabs at the top? They each have a symbol on them – a carrot for veggies, a steaming bowl for cooked food, a steak for raw meat, and a little fishy for … you guessed it, fish! Goodbye any chance of cross contamination, and as I never have to think and rethink about which cutting board I’m using , this means Husbando and I can fight about other things (like whether or not it is imperative that I have own an iPad). I heart these cutting board with all my might and I also think they look mighty stylish on my counter!

Now for some reason these items are a lot more expensive in Canada – the bowls are £35 in the UK and $50 in the US, but cost $84 in Canada, while the chopping boards cost £42 GBP, $65 USD and $79 CDN. Those of you residing in the US and the UK can buy them directly from the Joseph Joseph site, and if you live in Canada you can purchase them through online retailer Amazon* (or you could buy them when you’re out of the country on holiday – just sayin’!).

*This is an Amazon affiliate link, meaning that should you make a purchase will receive a percentage back.

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I love eating out in restaurants – who doesn’t enjoy a night off from cooking dinner?  What I don’t love is having to put my toddler’s dinner directly onto a restaurant table (wiped countless times with a dirty dishrag), because anything within reach – including plates, bowls, silverware, and napkins gets immediately tossed onto the floor.  Such a fun game.  Our fourth son has just turned one, and is exerting his independence by politely refusing to be spoon-fed.  Okay, I lied.  He grabs the spoon full of food and throws it on the floor, which means we’re in the midst of the finger-food stage.  After cringing through my first three sons’ toddlerhood visits to restaurants as they ate their germ-laden finger food off of restaurant tables, I was absolutely ecstatic when Neat Solutions agreed to send me samples of their Table Toppers to try out.

Table Toppers are BPA-free, PVC-free, phthalate-free, biodegradable, stick-able, disposable placemats.  Did you get all of that?  Quite simply, they’re a little sheet of neat!  There’s a peel-off strip on each of the four sides on the back of each placemat, which allows you to stick the Table Topper directly to any table.  Although Little K dedicated at least 5 minutes to picking at the edges of his placemat, he never succeeded in outsmarting the Table Topper.  It stayed stuck!  Because Table Toppers are disposable (and biodegradable!), you don’t even have to wipe them down when your little one is finished eating – just get up and go.  Besides not having to cook for once, the whole point of eating out is to not have to clean up, right?

As the Neat Solutions website explains, Table Toppers are not only easy to use, but are completely safe as well.  The company does not use lead or other heavy metal in their printing inks, the plastics used are 100% FDA approved polyethylene, and they are reverse printed on the bottom of the mat so your little one’s food never touches the actual print!

Table Toppers come in a seven designs (all are biodegradable except the Neat Solutions design shown on the site), and are available from a number of retail, e-tail, and catalogue retailers for around $9.99CAD for a 20-pack.

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One of the first gifts during my pregnancy was a nursing pillow from Canadian company Nneka.  Though it may have been premature to think of nursing, I came to love this pillow before my baby even arrived!

The Nneka pillow is shaped like a log, and is filled with 100% buckwheat hull (so it’s like a big beanbag).  The advantage of having a straight pillow (unlike most nursing pillows, which are curved) is that it can be used to support a pregnant belly during those awkward and somewhat painful pre-natal nights.  Another plus of this pillow is that you can remove some of the filling – perfect for customizing the amount of support you would like when you are using it as a support pillow.  I removed about a mason-jar-sized amount during the pre-natal phase. Once the baby was born, I refilled the pillow, and found it extremely supportive during breastfeeding.  Because the pillow is flexible, you can adjust the pillow’s position to accommodate the baby.  Another use for the Nneka during the newborn phase is to use it to prevent the baby from rolling around on a bed or sofa (of course you would follow all other necessary safety precautions in these scenarios!).

Now that my baby is older (7 months), he can appreciate the adorable pattern on the pillow cover – mine has little cars and buses, and he is fascinated by them.  The pillow also has other uses once the baby is older – I often use it to support his back when he is seated so he does not topple backward.  This would be the only time when I wish the pillow was curved, to support him on all sides – but placing other pillows on his sides also does the trick.

The Nneka was created by a mom from Quebec.  According to their website, you will use this pillow at least 1740 times – you want to be sure you are buying a quality pillow, and I certainly feel that mine is!  It can be purchased from Nneka’s website or from other online retailers, listed on the company’s site (about $60CAD).

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