Today the Kidlet’s school is having thier annual “Run for the Arts” event.  Students collect pledges, then run laps for 30 minutes and collect the funds.  This money pays for additional art education / productions; this year each class is getting a visit with a local artist with hands-on fun.  It’s a worthy thing.  I know this.  PPS funding for music and arts and even physical education is essentially non-existant.  We are fortunate that our neighborhood has a lot of parent volunteers and enough wealthier families that the school raises enough money to provide these things.  Still.  I hate pledge drives.  Even in a less shaky economy, its no fun asking people for money, even your family and friends.  Perhaps especially your family and friends since they have a harder time saying no!  We ended up deciding how much total we could donate, and then split it up and pledged a little for each person we’d normally have gone to.

The kindergarteners were so cute this morning when I dropped off my kidlet.  They are so excited about this run!  Running laps for 30 minutes in the cold doesn’t sound like MY idea of fun, but hey, whatever floats thier boats.  Half of them had on special running outfits, and all were bragging and one-upping on how many laps they would run.  Anywhoo, since today is Run for the Arts, I focused on that for the kidlet’s lunch. 

PB and J circle sandwich, cheese running shoe with spaghetti laces, strawberries and blackberries, carrot “Run!”, cauliflower and broccoli.

Time spent: 20 minutes.  Around 10 to make the shoe and carrot letters, and 10 for assembly this morning.  The shoe was really easy.  I used a paper template to cut the same shape out of 3 slices of cheese (using the quilling tool, which I just drag through the cheese; it takes seconds.  MUCH faster than trying to do it with an exacto, knife or scissors.  It only works on soft things like cheese and bologna though, since its not a sharp edged tool), then cut 2 of the slices into smaller pieces –  laying them on top of each other so they would match and would fit together like a puzzle.  Then I mixed and matched the pieces and layered those on the third (whole) cheese shoe which I used as the base.  I used a small round pastry tip to make the lace holes and threaded the spaghetti through.

I think the shoe was actually easier than the letters, even though I have alphabet cutters for those!  It’s tough to get those tiny little letters out of the cutter without ripping/breaking them.

Posted by Kristen in Bento