Wendy Copley's Blog, page 2

Oh My Gouache!

Oh my gouache! I’ve recently been messing around with a new-to-me material – gouache. If you don’t know — and I didn’t a few weeks ago — gouache is very similar to watercolor but it is more heavily pigmented. This gives it an opaque, matte finish. (And if you’re not sure, it’s pronounced “gwash”.)

This house is the first thing I’ve tried painting with it, besides just goofing around with swatches to get a feel for the paint. I’m actually not very happy with the piece. I hate that pink color – I wanted something much lighter. And I hate the one dimensional nature of the colors. Frankly, I think it all looks pretty childish. But that’s because I’m in what Ira Glass calls “The Gap” – the space between what you’d like to be able to do and what you’re capable of doing. I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted to make and this DOES NOT match. But I have no formal painting education, so it’s what I expected. Pretty much everything I know about painting I’ve learned from a handful of YouTube videos. I haven’t put in the hours or experimentation that I need to put into painting to get experiential skills. And this medium is brand new to me. I find gouache much more difficult to work with than watercolor. It’s hard to get the paint to the consistency I want and my color mixing is all over the map.

What do I like about this painting?
I love the flowers in the boxes.
I like the shape of the house.
I like the cobbled path out front.
I like that I tried really hard and I learned a lot while I was making it.

Are you struggling to learn something new? Are you in the gap right now? Tell me about it so I don’t feel alone.

Plan with Me – March 2019

I started bullet journaling to keep myself organized a looooooong time ago. Five years ago, to be exact. Since then, I’ve been more or less devoted to it at various times. I find that my planning is pretty sparse during the summer months in particular. But like so many people the new year always gives me a spark of organization and I always recommit to my planning ways.

This year when I rededicated myself to my Bujo — as we bullet journal obsessed refer to it — I took a few minutes to think about how I wanted to use my journal. In particular, I’ve been looking for a place to do more sketching and painting and I was hoping to be able to combine that with my daily planner pages.

When I looked around for a planner that could handle both types of pages, I found the Archer & Olive journal. This book has 160gsm paper that promises no ghosting or bleeding through with most pens, inks and even paints. Perfect!

While I waited for my new journal to arrive, I dug into Pinterest for new layout ideas and I found a billion or so. It was so inspiring that I decided to move away from my boring, old practical bullet journal and try doing some more of the pretty doodle-y stuff I was finding online.

My first full monthly and weekly spread in my bullet journal had a daisy theme and it was super fun to put together. Watch me draw it out in this video:

Here are some close-ups of the layouts in the video:

Supplies used for these layouts:

Archer and Olive A5 dot grid notebook Sakura Pigman Micron 05: https://amzn.to/2HdQdnl Dear Lily Designs Bullet Journal 5mm Bundle Dear Lily Designs Rectangle Box Tool 5mm Kelly Purkey Cobble Hill stamps Kelly Purkey Brooklyn Heights stamps Yellow/Orange Zebra Mildliner Grey Zebra Mildliner Studio Calico Power Suit dye ink

(This post may contain affiliate links.)

Traveler’s Notebook Layout – Jump

Today I’m sharing a quick layout I made in my most recent traveler’s notebook — a page about Augie and his buddy jumping on our new trampoline!

I walk you through my process in the video below:

If you don’t want to watch the video, here is a quick run-down of how I put the page together:

I started off by selecting a pretty simple spread in my most recent Studio Calico traveler’s notebook (from the December 2018 kit). The left side was pre-printed with a simple blue stripe and the right side had a grid pattern. I used a nice solid alphabet to stamp the word “jump” all over the grid side in teal and light blue ink. Then I taped down the photos which were all about 2 x 3 inches.

I added some simple journaling on a few tickets that were included with the same Studio Calico kit (not a lot to say about kids jumping on a trampoline). Finally, I pulled some dimensional stickers from my stash and added them to the layout in three clusters to form a visual triangle.

Supplies used on this layout:

Studio Calico Stay Tuned Traveler’s Notebook insert
11 x 17 Quadrille Pad
Ali Edwards Sans Serif Lowercase Alphabet 6×8 Stamp Set
I print all my photos at home on an Epson PictureMate

(Some of the links above are affiliate links.)

And here is a handy sketch of my layout:

Rick and Morty Birthday Card Using Watercolors and Free Coloring Pages

Yesterday was Wyatt’s 14th birthday so I made him this fun Rick and Morty Card. Do you know how hard it is to find a pre-made Rick and Morty card? It’s pretty hard!

But no worries — I had fun painting a portal background and making a couple figures by printing and coloring them with my Copic markers. See how I did it in the video below:

Here are the supplies I used to make this card:

6 x 9 inch watercolor paper
Sakura portable watercolor set
Rick and Morty coloring page
Neenah solar white 80 lb. paper
Assorted Copic markers
Kelly Purkey Admit One alphabet stamps: no longer available (sorry!)
Hero Arts white embossing powder
1 inch foam tape

Here are a couple more close-up views of the card!

This video includes affiliate links. Thanks for supporting my small business!

Fun, Snacky Lunches for Grown-ups

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Yumbox. All opinions are my own and all lunches were eaten by my family.

We’re going to change things up a little bit today and talk about packing lunches for adults! Believe it or not, I started this whole bento thing by packing work lunches for myself — not my kids. (Check out my first bento ever here!) That lunch was packed with leftovers from dinner the night before — which is pretty much my favorite thing to eat for lunch — but I also like lunches with a lot of variety. After all, what’s the point of buying a wonderful lunch box with lots of compartments if you don’t put something different in each one? After much thought and creative brainstorming I came up with a name for these meals: Snacky Lunches

(Truly, you are dazzled by my creative naming abilities, are you not?)

Nowadays I work from home living the glamorous life of a freelanceer, so I don’t need to pack lunches very often (or change out of my pajamas) but my husband goes to work in an office so I pack a lot of lunches for him. He is also a big fan of the Snacky Lunch and I’ve come up with several themed meals he’s particularly fond of. (I eat them too!) I like to pack these in the Yumbox Tapas ($32) with the 5 section tray because it holds enough food for an adult’s appetite but it’s also got a bunch of those little compartments I love so much. Here are some ideas for you (or your partner if you are as sweet as I am and pack them lunches sometimes):

Snacky Lunch #1: Chicken Salad Dippers

This lunch is pretty basic: lots of fruits and veggies with a little chicken salad and some crackers to keep your motor running all afternoon. I start by making a chicken salad: dice some leftover roasted chicken and a similar amount of apple, then mix in a small handful of dried cranberries and a few toasted nuts (I use pecans and almonds interchangeably in this recipe). Add a dollop of mayo to hold it all together. I’ll also add a shake of curry powder sometimes too. (Not too much!) Pack it into the Yumbox with some whole wheat crackers, grapes, berries and a selection of raw veggies. I used cucumbers, radish, snap peas and carrots but you can use whatever you like/have in the fridge. Squirt some ranch dressing in the dip container for the veggies.

Snacky Lunch #2: Mediterranean Mezze

This is probably Zach’s favorite lunch of all the stuff I pack for him and I try to keep a lot of these items on hand to throw quick lunches together for him. Cut a whole wheat pita into wedges and put those in the largest section of the Yumbox. You can toast them and let them cool if you have time in the morning. Pita chips are even easier. Add some hummus or tzatziki to the dip well. Chop a little cucumber and mix it with grape tomatoes. Then dice some feta cheese and mix it together with pitted kalamata olives. For an extra special treat, pick up a few dolmas from the deli or salad bar while you’re at the grocery store and add those to the lunch box too.  At lunch time you can dip the pita into the hummus or spread it on the bread and sprinkle it with the veggies, cheese and olives and eat it like a tiny slice of pizza. So amazing!

Snacky Lunch #3: Knock-off Protein Box

When we are out and about, Zach and I both like to grab the Protein Bistro Box at Starbucks for a quick and generally nutritious lunch. (Healthier than a slice of lemon loaf, amirite?) The thing is, those boxes are hecka easy to make at home and if you make a big batch of eggs at the beginning of the week you can pack them in less than five minutes in the morning. The hardest part of this is the sliced apple because you don’t want it to turn brown. My trick: sprinkle the slices with Fruit Fresh powder and they’ll stay white until lunch time or longer. (The air-tight lid on this container helps a lot too.) Fill up the rest of the box with pre-washed grapes, wheat crackers, peanut butter, Babybel cheese and a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

Snacky Lunch #4: Antipasti

Finally, I’m going to share one of my very favorite meals: the antipasti platter. Aw geez, I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. I started eating this meal at a local restaurant about 20 years ago and I’ve been recreating it for fast dinners at home ever since. The backbone is melon wrapped with strips of prosciutto, then I add a few super flavorful sides. One is small balls of fresh mozzarella mixed with halved cherry tomatoes and a sprinkle of balsamic. The other is a mix of marinated artichoke hearts and strips of roasted red peppers — both pulled straight from jars in the fridge. I also added some flatbread crackers and a little goat cheese to spread on it.

What do you pack when you make snacky lunches?

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Yumbox. Find the Yumbox Tapas on the Yumbox website or at Amazon.com.

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The Week in Bentos: Back to School 2017

The kids are just wrapping up their last day of school (they’ll be home any minute!) and barring any unforeseen playground disasters, I think it’s safe to say we had a pretty good week.  And I think my back-to-school lunch game was pretty strong, if I do say so myself! Here are the lunches the kids had this week — along with a few that my husband enjoyed.

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

I already posted about Monday’s lunches. See them over here.

Tuesday

The Augster wanted another pretzel Tuesday and he was jealous of Wyatt’s prosciutto and melon from Monday so he had both of those in his lunch along with cucumber sticks and some cookies. A few people have asked where I found the soft pretzels. I found them in the snack area in the freezer section of our grocery store. The brand I’ve been buying is SuperPretzel and they are just the right size for lunch boxes.

I packed this in our Yumbox Panino.

I made my husband, Zach, a grown-up version of a Lunchable for his bento. I started by grabbing our big LunchBots Cinco, then filled it with jack cheese, deli turkey roll-ups, cucumber sticks, cheddar, cantaloupe, strawberries and a few whole grain pita chips.

Wednesday

We had tacos for dinner on Tuesday (of course), so Wyatt had the leftovers for lunch on Wednesday. I filled our Hydro Flask thermal jar with piping hot chicken, then packed a LunchBots with the accompaniments: shredded jack cheese, lettuce and street taco sized tortillas.

Augie wasn’t into the idea of leftovers, so I went back to basics for his lunch: cucumber slices, strawberries, turkey meatballs, pita chips, yellow tomatoes and a few gummy bears. This was packed in our new emoji Yumbox. SO CUTE!

Zach also nixed leftovers so I made him a kind of deconstructed Greek salad in our bigger Yumbox Tapas box: strawberries, tomatoes, kalamata olives, cucumber sticks, feta cheese, marinated artichoke hearts and those pita chips again.

This lunch was very well received and Zach texted to thank me for packing it, then thanked me again when he got home. It’s super gratifying to make him lunches because he is always so grateful. I could get used to that….

Thursday

Augie was super picky about lunch on Thursday and said no to school lunch and the first three main dish ideas I suggested. I was starting to get pretty frustrated but then he asked me for the yellow rice we had leftover from dinner the night before which is a favorite and is very filling. Score! I warmed that up and packed it into our LunchBots thermal jar, then added cukes, blueberries and melon in a couple of Splash Pods.

 

Friday

This morning Augie wanted something simple again, so I gave him half a bagel with strawberry jam, some berries, cucumbers and carrot sticks. I packed it in our PlanetBox Shuttle.

My eighth grader and my husband had basically the same lunch today. This is my husband’s – I forgot to take a photo of Wyatt’s lunch. They both had leftover Italian beef sandwiches as their main dish. I packed all the components separately so the sandwiches wouldn’t get soggy between leaving the house and sitting down for lunch: hoagie bun with a slice of provolone cheese tucked inside, peperoncinis, and the beef filling. Wyatt doesn’t have access to a microwave so his filling went into a thermos for a nice hot sandwich. My husband warmed his up at work. Packed in a Bentology bento box.

Interested in packing bento lunches yourself? My book is filled with cute ideas, fun techniques and step-by-step instructions showing how you can make them yourself:

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First Day of School Bentos: Eclipse Edition

Today was the first day of school for my boys and it was the day of the big eclipse that went all the way across North America (and parts of South and Central America too). We were all very excited — or maybe it was just me — and after a reminder from a friend, I realized that I had to pack an eclipse lunch for Augie’s first day of school.

We had a pretty full fridge so it wasn’t very hard for me to come up with an eclipse lunch even though I hadn’t planned in advance. I ended up sending blackberries to represent the darkness of night in the middle of the day, cantaloupe suns being blocked out by fruit leather moons, deli turkey roll ups with a cheese 2017, a couple mini oatmeal cookies and a soft pretzel dude wearing eclipse glasses. Safety first! I packed it all into our PlanetBox Rover (appropriate for the theme!).

It was also my eight grader’s first day of school, but as we’ve previously discussed he is no longer into cute lunches, so I kept his a lot more simple. I chose a middle-schooler-approved EasyLunchboxes bento and filled it up with two soft pretzels, blackberries and some cantaloupe chunks with strips of prosciutto wrapped around them.

Unfortunately, our eclipse experience was a total bust. The sun was supposed to be 76% blocked where we are, but this is what the sky looked like:

It was 100% grey and overcast! I’m no quitter though, so I made some pinhole viewers out of cereal boxes anyway in hopes that I might be able to see something.

But the sky was so overcast that I couldn’t even figure out where the sun was in the sky. All I saw in the bottom of my cereal box view was the bottom of a cereal box. The NASA live stream had some pretty good pictures though!

How was your eclipse? Did you see anything?

 

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How to Pack a Bento Lunch for a Teen or Middle Schooler

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Yumbox. All opinions are my own.

In just a few weeks, I’ll have a teenager living in my house. What the heck?! I started packing this kid’s lunches ten years ago when he was just a little three-year-old heading off to preschool. In those ten years I’ve learned a lot about packing lunches and a lot of things have changed. The days of using cookie cutters and teddy bear picks are long gone, for example. And as he’s grown, so has his appetite. I used to pack his lunches in tiny Japanese bento boxes but now he needs something that will accommodate a lot more food. And way back then, his dad and I were the sole deciders of what foods he ate, but now the other kids at his lunch table — and his own changing tastes — play a big part in what he eats.

Last school year — his first in middle school — was a bit of an adjustment for both of us, but after a few months a basic set of rules began to coalesce.

1. Lunch Gear is VERY important.

His lunch box needs to be big enough to fit all the food he eats, but it also can not be embarrassing! We found that the Yumbox Tapas ($32) fits both these criteria.

It’s about 50% bigger than a regular Yumbox (which has been a favorite around here for a long time) but the tray has more sedate illustrations than the smaller Yumboxes. In other words, it’s not too cutesy for a teenage boy.

Another feature I love about the Yumbox Tapas, is that you can buy an additional four compartment tray ($16) and swap it for the five compartment tray depending on what your needs are on any particular day. When you want a lot of variety, you can use the tray with more compartments. If you want a big sandwich or a salad, you just pop in the four compartment tray. This is a big change from the previous Yumboxes because although they have 4 and 6 compartment options in the smaller size lunch box, you have to buy an entirely separate lunch set — outer box and tray — in order for the leak-resistant lid to work. The Tapas lid is designed to work with either of the trays — a nice way to save money.

I should also note that the Tapas is too big to fit in most of our old lunch bags. That’s fine with my kid though because again, they have all been deemed too dorky for middle school. Instead we are using the Yumbox Poche — a simple navy blue pouch that is big enough to hold the lunch box, but slim enough to easily fit in his extremely crowded backpack. Win-win.

2. Nothing Cute. EVER.

If you think a cute lunch box is bad, it’s nothing compared to cute food in a lunch box. This one was an easy adjustment because he started saying no to most cute stuff in his lunches back in third grade and they’ve been completely cookie cutter and decorative pick free for several years now.

But that’s not to say that I don’t try to make lunches for my son look nice. I still aim for a lot of color and variety in his bentos and I like to add visual interest by arranging the food attractively. Here I’ve packed a fancy version of a Lunchable with neat fans of crackers, salami and gouda cheese slices, bright rainbow carrot coins, two kinds of berries and some small cookies. Nothing over-the-top, but the way it’s arranged makes you want to dive right in.

And my son must have absorbed a lot of these techniques over the years without realizing it because I’ve noticed that when he packs his own lunch (about half the time) he also tends to present it in a way that looks really pretty and appetizing. (But don’t tell him I used the word “pretty”, OK?)

3. Pack Junk Food, but Not Too Junky

It’s an understatement to say that the kids who my son eats lunch with influence the meals he wants. As they get older, kids definitely started to notice what others are packing in their lunches and junk food is the  direction it all seems to be headed in. (It doesn’t help that the school cafeteria serves burgers, chips, and pizza almost exclusively.) Of course kids want these foods — they taste good! But I want my son to eat nourishing food, so my challenge as a parent is to try to find a middle space where he’s getting what the other kids have but he’s also eating lunches that have some nutritional value.

One lunch that has been going over well is DIY tacos. I fill the lunch box with mini tortillas, roasted chicken tossed with a little salsa and sides of sour cream, chopped tomato and shredded lettuce to top it all off.

Another idea: soft pretzels (purchased from the freezer section at the grocery store), sliced cucumbers, melon wrapped with prosciutto (regular ham works too) and a few gummies for a treat. (Oh yeah, did I mention that I’ve eased up on my treat rules? I have.)

4. Ask What They Want

This one seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how often I head to the grocery store without asking my son what he’d like in his lunch. That is a very dumb strategy on my part because as he’s gotten older his tastes have changed and it’s opened up a lot of options for lunches. Sure, there are still times he answers “potato chips and Pop Tarts” when I ask him what he’d like in his lunches for the coming week, but there are also times when he tells me he wants a few salads. Yes — SALADS!

It’s pretty easy to buy a salad kit and pack the big section of the Yumbox with lettuce, cheese and croutons. The dressing goes on the side so the salad doesn’t get soggy and I throw in some rotisserie chicken for a little protein. Some unsweetened yogurt with a dollup of jam is a nice treat to round it all out.

I know what you’re going to ask — do the dressing and yogurt get all over everything? Nope! The Yumbox Tapas is leak-resistant which means that runny stuff doesn’t go all over, but liquids might. I tested this lunch and the creamy dressing and thick yogurt stayed put. We’ve had mixed results with liquid-y vinaigrette though, so be sure you test stuff out before putting it in a backpack with that important paper!

Have you changed how you pack lunches as your kids have gotten older? Got any tips to share? Leave them in the comments!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Yumbox. Find the Yumbox Tapas on the Yumbox website or at Amazon.com.

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Golden State Warriors Championship Bento Box

(This post contains affiliate links)

Wahooooo! My beloved Warriors won the NBA playoffs this week and they are officially the champs!

We were all on a high after Monday night’s game, so of course I had to make Augie a Warriors lunch for day camp yesterday. I hadn’t planned this lunch in advance so I didn’t buy anything special to make this lunch — I just used stuff I already had in my kitchen.

I started by grabbing our brand new Neptune Blue Yumbox Panino (thanks for sending me this sample, Yumbox!) because it was the absolute perfect shade of Warriors blue. Next, I chopped a yellow nectarine into chunks and sprinkled them with a few blueberries for more blue and gold.

I wanted to add in the initials for the Warriors somewhere in the lunch box and I had been planning to use cheese or fruit leather to cut them out but we were out of both so instead I peeled a cucumber and cut the letters from the skin. Augie didn’t eat these, but they gave a nice effect.

Next, I made a quick sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich and drew a basketball on it with food coloring markers. I always mess up the black lines when I’m drawing a basketball, so this time I dug up a basketball sticker and copied it. I think it came out pretty well!

And last, but not least, I put a few gummy bears in the treat compartment. I made sure to get a few blue and yellow bears on top!

Yay Warriors!

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Cute Stuff from BentoUSA

(This post contains affiliate links.)

The postman delivered a big box of fun stuff from BentoUSA today! Yay!

I was busy with some other stuff when it arrived, so I decided to open it with Augie when he got home from school. And then I decided to do a spur of the moment Facebook Live unboxing video. You can check it out and get a peek at everything that came in my order (there was a lot!) in the video below. Plus, get a quick look at how I “organize” my bento stuff!

(Pretty cool how the thumbnail for this video is a messy pile of cookie cutters, isn’t it? This isn’t the stuff that came in my order — it’s how I “organize” some of my bento stuff!)

BentoUSA is my favorite place to buy bento supplies because they have a huge selection of items, their prices are reasonable compared to other online stores and the shipping is only $6 (or free if you spend enough money). If you are just beginning to pack bento lunches, it is a great place to shop if you want to build your stash.

For reference, here are links to the goodies I showed in my video:

Squirrel, bear, seal and whale cutter/stamper set
Sleeping dog sandwich cutter
Emoji rings
Sleeping cat sandwich cutter
Back-to-school rings
Batman rings
St. Patrick’s Day rings
Silly eyes decorative picks
Kawaii Bento book by Shirley Wong
Cheeseburger bento box
Extra cute vehicle decorative picks
Animals in tea cups decorative picks
Heart picks
Halloween picks
Hat picks (Because there’s nothing better than a meatball wearing a hat…)

FYI: I’m a BentoUSA affiliate, but they did not ask me to say all this stuff or send me anything for free. I’m a happy customer and I’d like to spread the word to my bento-obsessed friends!

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