MomAbles Makes Healthy Lunches Easy

Are you eating healthier going into the new year? We find our school hot lunches to be really bad as far as fitting with our lifestyle. More often than not, Matthew will come home with a stomach ache when he eats school lunches! Plus, they aren't cheap, running me about $85 a month. But packing healthy school lunches is a challenge when you're a busy mom. Seriously, now that I work at home I feel I have less time than when I went away to work in an office all day for the man!!! Add to that our paleo eating, and well, packing lunches for Matthew is a challenge. The boy can eat only so many gluten-free almond butter sandwiches with apple slices before he revolts. Then I heard about MOMables! MOMables makes healthy lunches easy! I was recently lucky enough to try out MOMables meal plans and a versatile lunchbox set from EasyLunchboxes.com. 

Each week, MOMables releases recipes that help parents make fresh school lunches and real food appealing to kids with weekly meal plans. MOMables was founded by Laura Fuentes, a mom of 3, to solve the “what’s to pack” dilemma. The website is filled with free recipes and how-to posts that answer all of the lunch packing dilemmas. 

MOMables offers two meal plans. A Classic Meal Plan and a Grain Free Meal Plan. Both are filled with easy to make recipes for busy families. Each weekly plan has 2 family sized meals and 3 single lunch ideas. One of the things that differentiate MOMables from the rest is that they include a picture of many of their meals, especially those that are packed for lunch. I chose the grain-free plan as it was the easiest to adapt to paleo. Over the 12 weeks I've been using MOMables, there has only been a handful of substitutions I had to make to create a more paleo menu. I love how thoughtful and inventive the recipes are! Matthew's fave was the ham and pineapple spears from the menu a few weeks ago. Each meal plan membership can be purchased at a 3 month subscription ($24)  or a yearly membership ($79). To receive a sample meal plan, click here. You can also find over 400 free recipes here.

To carry the lunches, I got an awesome lunch set from EasyLunchboxes.com, including an insulated lunchbox and lots of handy containers for all of Matt's healthy food. I wanted to personalize the lunch box so I used my Sizzix eclips2 to cut a stencil to apply Matt's name onto the fabric lunch box.

The Sizzix eclips2 did a great job on cutting the stencil. I had a craft fail moment though when I put too much paint on the stencil and the paint bled! No worries, there's a fix for that, which I share in this handy dandy tutorial video:

Thanks goodness the whole industrial/graffiti look is in, right? Matthew loves his lunchbox and I'm thinking about letting him doodle on the bag with the paint pens. Maybe.

Supplies:

• Lunchbox from EasyLunchboxes.com
• Sizzix eclips2 Die Cutting System
• Tulip Fabric Paint
• Aleene's Repositionable Spray Adhesive
• Elmer's Paint Pens
• Cardstock
• Foam Stencil Brush or Foam Paint Brush (you can even use a sponge)

Author: Jennifer Priest

It started with jewelry, beading, sewing, home decor, painting, basket weaving, pottery, and cross-stitch. Marry that to an entrepreneurial spirit & at 9 years old a girl is selling her wares at craft fairs as far as her parents and grandparents would drive her. These days, Jennifer enjoys crafts of all genres from sewing to scrapbooking to jewelry with a little dabbling in the mixed media world. Her style is approachable and she wants everyone who sees her work to feel that they too can embrace creativity and make their home and life beautiful.