{"id":805,"date":"2012-09-19T12:21:44","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T12:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2012-11-05T11:53:56","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T11:53:56","slug":"a-peek-inside-my-toolbox-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/?p=805","title":{"rendered":"Making Meals Memorable: A Peek Inside My Toolbox \u2013 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, now that you\u2019ve heard about my passion for making themed meals for your kids<\/a>, are you unsure about how to get started?\u00a0 I\u2019m going to give you a peek into my kitchen (don\u2019t you love snooping through other people\u2019s stuff?) to show you some of the tools I always have on hand for a fun lunch.\u00a0 Also, just so you\u2019re not frightened by the apparent cost of acquiring these supplies \u2013 I am very cheap<\/span> frugal.\u00a0 If I have it here, it\u2019s probably not very expensive.\u00a0 I also live in the middle of nowhere (Don\u2019t believe me?\u00a0 Wal-Mart is literally a half hour drive for us.), so I don\u2019t have many options in terms of stores at which to shop.\u00a0 If I can find these things, chances are you can too.\u00a0 In each section below I\u2019ll give some tips about how to save money when buying these supplies.<\/p>\n

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First, this is my main storage for my supplies \u2013 I\u2019ll show you inside these boxes in a moment.\u00a0 It\u2019s nothing fancy, but I didn\u2019t want to spend any money and I had these boxes on hand.\u00a0 My husband has big feet, so I took one of his gigantic shoeboxes and covered it in a fun wrapping paper; this could easily be done to match your kitchen\u2019s decor.\u00a0 These are stored in one of our upper cabinets that I was able to clean out to make room for these boxes.\u00a0 I wish I had more room, or a better way to organize, but for now this works.<\/p>\n

Inside the \u201cMuffin Cup\u201d box is\u2026\u00a0 ding, ding, ding, you guessed it!<\/p>\n

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This is my current collection of muffin cups.\u00a0 It looks like a lot, but this is what\u2019s built up over three years.\u00a0 As you can see, I have pretty much every major holiday represented, which leads me to my first money-saving tip.\u00a0 Shop at the dollar store!\u00a0 Dollar Tree has packs of muffin cups, packaged with matching food picks, every holiday for only $1!\u00a0 I also keep some basic liners, like the solid-colored or polka dot ones, for days when I don\u2019t want to be \u201ctheme specific\u201d or for when we actually want to make muffins in our muffin cups.\u00a0 A pack will last you a long time, because you\u2019re only using a few each time you serve a themed meal.\u00a0 Some of my favorites, though they are more expensive, are the silicone kind.\u00a0 I love the cups with the little clown feet \u2013 they make any food you put in them more fun!\u00a0 Our newest additions are the square silicone cups.\u00a0 These make great dividers in my son\u2019s lunchbox.\u00a0 Both sets of silicone cups were purchased on Amazon.<\/p>\n

Next up are food picks.\u00a0 These are a great, easy way to add color and carry your theme throughout the meal.\u00a0 These are basically fancy toothpicks used to pick up foods like grapes or other cut fruit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I have a few different kinds.\u00a0 First up are the paper pictures on wooden toothpicks.\u00a0 These come with the muffin cups like I discussed above.\u00a0 Money-saving tip: I have made my own in the past when I wanted some to match a particular theme.\u00a0 Just print off little pictures from the Internet (or use your kids\u2019 stickers!) and tape to the top of a toothpick.\u00a0 The Star Wars picks in the bottom right were made from the boxes of some Disney toys we purchased.\u00a0 The more substantial picks are actually from a party store and are intended for serving appetizers.\u00a0 I have mini forks, two different kinds of plastic toothpicks, and plastic swords.\u00a0 Obviously, the swords are the favorites \u2013 what boy wouldn\u2019t love to eat his grapes from a sword?\u00a0 They also go great in a pirate-themed lunch.<\/p>\n

I often use cookie cutters and sandwich cutters to easily incorporate a theme into a lunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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These are my cookie cutters.\u00a0 I have them divided into zip top bags labeled Holiday, Geometric Shapes, Random, Animals and Transportation.\u00a0 I have a few boxed sets that I keep separately and I just got a great set of mini alphabet\/number cutters made by Wilton (they\u2019re the little letters at the bottom of the photo).\u00a0 Now, buying all these cookie cutters could get pricey, but I have only purchased a few of these.\u00a0 I was visiting my mom\u2019s best friend and telling her about the meals I make for my kids.\u00a0 She was cleaning out her kitchen at the time and coincidentally, was getting rid of all her cookie cutters.\u00a0 She even gave me some antique six-sided cutters \u2013 really cool!\u00a0 My husband\u2019s mother and aunt picked up the box sets for me as gifts.\u00a0 The cookie cutters that I did purchase were all on sale; several were found at a kitchen store that was going out of business.\u00a0 So, my money-saving tip for these: ask around.\u00a0 You may have some relatives that have lots of cookie cutters they\u2019re not using anymore.\u00a0 Otherwise, look for sales.\u00a0 If your knife skills are better than mine, you could even print out simple shapes from the Internet, lay them on top of your food and cut around them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Sandwich cutters are basically thicker cookie cutters, normally about the size of a piece of bread.\u00a0 The Star Wars and Mickey Mouse cutters are heavy-duty metal (purchased from Williams Sonoma and Walt Disney World).\u00a0 The star, butterfly, puzzle and dinosaur are cheap plastic and are readily available at Wal-Mart.\u00a0 The red Mickey face is a toast-imprinter that we purchased at Walt Disney World.\u00a0 You press it into a piece of bread, and then the face will show up after it\u2019s toasted.\u00a0 My newest acquisitions are the pink heart cutter and the green square cutter at the bottom (they\u2019re so new I haven\u2019t even use the pink one yet).\u00a0 These are from funbites.com and are used to quickly cut foods into small shapes.\u00a0 So far, I\u2019ve used the green one to cut my 1-year-old\u2019s toast, but I am planning to make tiny sandwiches, quickly cut pancakes and cut shapes from fruit.\u00a0 Who knows what else I\u2019ll dream up?<\/p>\n

Next time I\u2019ll showcase a few more random items that don\u2019t make appearances as often, but are still really fun.\u00a0 Remember, it doesn\u2019t take much to make your meals memorable!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, now that you\u2019ve heard about my passion for making themed meals for your kids, are you unsure about how to get started?\u00a0 I\u2019m going to give you a peek into my kitchen (don\u2019t you love snooping through other people\u2019s Continue reading Making Meals Memorable: A Peek Inside My Toolbox \u2013 Part 1<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,578],"tags":[220,218,185,186,187,219,217,221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/2061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodietales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}