So we take baby steps towards our new lifestyle. My daughter has always taken packed lunches to school and they go in a reusable lunch cooler. But her snacks were going to school in brown paper bags. Now that we are halfway through the year, and we have our system down, it's time to change things up and focus on being more responsible about her snack tote. So I whipped-up a fabric snack sack for her. It took me a couple of hours one morning to sew it up and was completely worth it. She loves it and now, with the fabric name label I put on it, we don't have to take the time to write her name on her lunch sack anymore. (I know that sounds like a ridiculously small thing, but if you have to get children off to school in the morning, I know you totally get how every short-cut helps!)
I found the tutorial for the lunch sack in the great book, Lunch Bags!: 25 Handmade Sacks & Wraps to Sew Today (Design Collective)
. I felt a bit silly buying an entire book about lunch sacks, but once I got it, I'm happy I made the investment. There are tons of great patterns for different lunch bags and I'm thinking family members may be seeing totes as future gifts. Plus there are also fabric sandwich wraps and snack bag tutorials, both of which will be made as my family's next step in being responsible to the Earth.2/21/12 Update: I had a lot of readers ask for the fabric line I used. It's a Japanese line of fabric. I purchased it at Spice Berry Cottage's Etsy Shop. She has some similiar fabric available here. You can also search Etsy under "Supplies" with keywords like "Russian Nesting Doll Fabric" or "Matryoshka Fabric". Hope that helps!
