How can summer be over already? I can hardly believe how fast it went! The kids have said goodbye to late nights, lazy mornings, and long days with nothing to do but play and whine about being bored. Last week, we greeted the return of early bedtimes, morning alarms, back-packs full of school supplies, and of course, packed lunches.

Ah, the dreaded packed lunches — the bane of my existence as a parent. I actually haven’t had a break from them because I’ve been packing Ayla’s  lunches all through the summer for daycare, but at least I haven’t had to worry about packing anything for the boys…until now. Luckily, I’ve trained the older two to pack their own snacks and I usually take care of the main meal, which tends to be soup or leftovers in a thermos or a sandwich.

Ayla loves bagels in her lunch. I’ve been spreading Wowbutter on her bagels, but that gets a little boring, so I bought some berry flavoured whipped cream cheese for a change. I forgot that Ayla, being three, hates change. She was less than thrilled about trying the berry cream cheese, but I happened to love the stuff. It’s like cheese cake in spreadable form! How can you not love that? I loved it so much I wanted to make my own homemade version in order to enjoy berry whipped cream cheese whenever I want.

I thought my creation turned out really well. The boys wouldn’t eat it because they hate cream cheese, but I did win Ayla over eventually. She has finally accepted the berry cream cheese into her heart and happily eats it on bagels and as a dip for fruit in her lunch.

Since we’re on the topic of back-to-school lunches, I wanted to mention some handy products that I’ve had the opportunity to try recently.  TrudeauMaison gave me some fun to-go containers to try out in our packed lunches. I found their stuff was super sturdy, and I especially loved the Fuel Snack’N Dip container to store the berry whipped cream cheese as a fruit dip with apples. It even comes with a handy little spreader.

{TIP}: To keep apples from going brown, soak them in a cup of water and a tablespoon of lemon juice for a few minutes before packing, or you can just hide the browning while adding to the flavour by sprinkling the slices with cinnamon.

And to label our new containers, I received a stylish set of labels from Kidecals. Ayla chose a butterfly on her labels, because she adores all things to do with butterflies. We’ve only been using them for a few weeks, but so far they’re holding up very well to multiple dish-washings. If you don’t have kids who need school labels, they also have a wide variety of other types of personalized labels, like luggage tags, keyboard stickers, and even canning labels.

If you want to try Kidecals labels for yourself, feel free to use this 15% discount code: summersavings. It’s good until Oct 28 2016.

Another product I got to try recently was Epicure instant pudding mixes, and I think they’re fantastic for packing in kids’ lunches as a healthier alternative to pudding snacks. Just divide them into small containers and pop them into lunch boxes. They’re free of hydrogenated oils and colors, and they come in chocolate, vanilla, and my favourite – salted caramel. The kids actually hated the salted caramel, I think because it has a hint of coffee flavour, but I really enjoyed it. They loved the chocolate and vanilla, though.

As if life wasn’t busy enough right now with back-to-school (not to mention the boys both have birthdays this month), we also have a new puppy! Her name is Skye, and she’s an Australian Shepherd/Boxer mix. She’s making my photo-shoots rather difficult, because she likes to get into everything.

But how can I resist that adorable face?? I didn’t even want a puppy, but as soon as I saw her, I was hooked. She’s just a sweetheart, and good company for my when I work at home all day by myself.

If you follow me on Instagram or Snapchat, you’ll notice I post lots of photos of her and not as much food lately. I like showing off my fur-baby. No more real babies for me!

Do you have any pets? Are you a cat or a dog person? I can’t decide, because I have both now!