I’ve been encouraging the kids at school to bring fruit snacks for birthday treats. They are great for many reasons, the top two being that 1) they are gluten-free (one of my kids has issues) and 2) we can eat them outside and avoid the whole cupcake-crumbs-all-over-faces-and-floor mess that ensues.
Last week one girl brought Fruit By The Foot, and while eco-me was horrified by the wasteful packaging, Inner Junior High Me was all giddy with joy! I remembered what a horrible, horrible mooch I was. I only lived two blocks from school and was the only kid who had permission to walk home to eat lunch, but instead I would hang out in the gym with the cold-lunch crowd and beg my friend Gail for her Fruit Roll-Up. I loved them with an insane passion.
My dad used to make homemade fruit leather in our dehydrator and I think I ate it as fast as he would produce it. Sorry, Dad, but it was good.
Anyway, as I was eating fruit leather in this new, elongated form, I kept thinking that you could make stuff with this! You could weave it into a pouch, wrap it around a cake, knit with it, perhaps? I bought a box this weekend (the cheap kind, of course) and tried to make some ribbon roses.
I learned two things.
1) I was not born with the innate ability to make ribbon roses,
and 2) while watching a YouTube video about how to make ribbon roses, I will eat all my supplies.
Another time, creativity. Another time.