Tequilamonky's Tips - Goodbyn lunchboxes

Continuing with my plan to tell you about something that has been a great help since home educating, this week I want to write about Goodbyn Lunchboxes.

Now it may seem a strange thing that when we finally decided to home educate one of the first things I went searching for was lunch boxes! Lunch boxes tend to be thought of as something you need for taking to school or work. The thing is that I knew right off the bat we would be doing a lot of travelling and visiting. My children are both hands-on type people and the best learning experiences for them are when they can actually touch and see what we're learning about. I knew that every week we would do at least one visit to a museum or place of interest, plus the home ed groups, trips to the woods or the beach etc. Our money is limited and taking your own lunch is always the cheaper option so an easy to use, portable lunch box each was the best bet.

I do a lot of research before I buy anything, checking prices, value and also previous customer reviews. All of that led me to Goodbyn. I liked that their lunch boxes came all-in-one and despite being plastic were at least free of BPAs and Phthalates. There are not lots of fiddly little containers to contend with or lose, they are easy to use and clean and they look fun with stickers so we could personalise them. I ordered ones with ears in blue and pink for the children and a smaller sized "Bynto" for me.

Each comes with it's own water bottle with a slot to store it in; if you fill and then freeze the bottle it also acts as an ice pack to keep everything cool! The different sized slots mean I can pack all sorts of different things without them getting mixed up. It also means the children can choose a wide variety of foods to eat as and when they like. Kind of like a portable monkey platter! This is one of Papaya's lunches she took a photo of...

As you can see she has fruit salad, chocolate biscuits, llama crackers, ham and salad sandwich and dried fruit. The "sandwich slot" could just as easily have pasta in it though and the clever lid means there is no fear of the fruit salad juices and the pasta juices getting all mixed up. Everything stays separate I have even put hummus or yoghurt in the slots before without it travelling where it shouldn't. As you don't need to wrap everything separately I find it much easier to pack healthy lunches rather than just crisps and chocolate bars. The boxes even come with a leaflet giving suggestions on what to pack. 

You can see the lunches I packed for a day out in the first photo above and here is another lunch, this time my son's that he decided to helpfully do a video guide to on a snowy drive to a home ed group!

The best part? After use you just tip away any leftovers ("what are they?" my children ask!) and the whole thing can be put in the dishwasher!

I ordered our boxes direct from the Goodbyn website. They arrived quickly and were surprisingly good value.

Since ordering them, Goodbyn have actually introduced an additional new system to their range called Mix and Match involving lots of smaller boxes. I'm not sure about that; as I said before the advantage to me of the boxes was that it did come all in one piece without lots of fiddly bits to lose. I just hope it doesn't mean they stop the larger size box completely. The box isn't too big to carry around, yet holds a lot of food, if I pack carefully I can even put in enough food for my children for a whole day! I would be prepared to give the new system a try though if they fancied sending it to me ;)

Tequilamonky's Tips - Rain Splats

To continue my plan to each week write about something we've found useful since home educating, and with the weather having changed from freezing to pouring, it seems a perfect time to write about the kids' super rain boots..... Splats!

I first read about Splats in the Metro last September and was intrigued by this new idea of flexible boots rather than stiff cumbersome wellies. Up until this point we had been using Hunter wellies which are amazingly hard-wearing and long-lasting, but rather stiff and difficult to move about in. As my two are likely to be doing anything in their wellies from climbing trees to going down slides, Splats sounded like a good option. They were both due new wellies anyway and the price was around the same I was expecting to pay for a decent pair of normal wellies, so I went ahead and got them a pair each; Ocean Blue for Povey and Hot Pink for Papaya to co-ordinate with their Didriksons waterproofs.

As soon as they arrived (nice and quickly I might add!) I could see these boots were something special. Gorgeously bright colours, with lots of high visibility reflective details. They are really well made, strong seams and a solid but flexible sole. They do take a bit of pulling to get on (and I should say here that a friend whose son has very high arches found they didn't quite fit him) but once on are nice and flexible around the ankle whilst still tight enough to stop water getting in.

The boots biggest advantage over standard wellies is of course that they are comfortable and light-weight, with a slip resistant sole, as demonstrated by Papaya here...

In all other ways they perform just as well as standard wellies would and we have thoroughly tested them over the past 8 months in heavy rain.....

.....Autumn leaves in city streets....

....and even at the beach!

One of my favourite things about them though is how good they look. As they look just like a pair of funky boots instead of wellies they're perfect for occasions where you'll be going inside and out, like all the museums we visit! I like the look of them so much I wish they did them in adult sizes too!

Cleaning them is easy too. We use Enjo microfibre cloths and gloves at home so if the boots have got muddy I just wipe them over with the plus line duoglove and leave them to dry. Then I give them a quick top-up of the Tarrago Nano Protector spray recommended on their website.

These aren't winter boots, although by getting them a size bigger for my two I was able to layer up with thick socks during the snow and the kids seemed perfectly warm enough. I did notice on the box of the boots that they plan to bring out "Snow Splats" in the future, as well as "Sun Splats" for the summer, so I'll be intrigued to see what they're like when they are available. For now the Rain Splats are doing the trick and seem to work for most occasions!

Next week I'll tell you about the kids' groovy lunchboxes from Goodbyn.

Tequilamonky's Tips - Didriksons

There are a few things that we've bought since home educating which, whilst not at all necessary to be able to home educate, have certainly proved extremely useful in our family and for the way we do things. Each of them have had other people ask us about them so I decided to try and do a blog post each week about them.

Since we seem to be stuck in some kind of Narnia-esque forever-winter (and the snow is still here in APRIL!) I thought a good place to start would be with Didriksons' waterproofs and winter coats.

We were first introduced to Didriksons by Inwoods where my children currently attend every Friday. The parents there have pretty much tried all brands of waterproofs and most have come up short against the all-day mud/rain/snow etc. However Didriksons stood up to it all! Aside from being totally waterproof, and in the case of the winter coats super warm, they are thoughtfully designed with all the clever little technical details you want like pockets, removable fur in the hood, reflective stickers and taped seams. They also last for ages as not only do they have clever velcro, poppers and zips to shrink to fit a smaller child, but they also have special hidden seams inside enabling the clothes to "grow" with your child.

My favourite thing about them is that if your child decides to fish out huge branches from a lake say.....

....or roll down a muddy hill.....

....and ends up totally caked in mud, they are also machine washable!

Our sets get an awful lot of use as you can see from these photos from over the past year.

Both my children have the Slaskeman storm system set (jacket and dungarees) and then Papaya has the Jarvis winter coat and Povey the Devon coat. They are surprisingly good value, we get ours from two great websites run by lovely, friendly people, Little Outdoor Kids and Viking Kids.

Next week I'll blog about their natural counterpart.... Splats boots!