You just can’t go wrong with chocolate as a stocking stuffer, well at least not for me, or my kids, or my husband for that matter.  There are two chocolate companies, that have chocolates with Holiday Themes, Route29 and Bloomsberry.

Route 29 is more retro looking, and has cool packaging ideas.  Chocolate caramel pops, and caramels in ornament boxes or peppermint bark in a store front box and even cinnamon licorice reindeer, really cool stuff.   The caramel pops are really cool peppermint caramel or gingerbread covered in chocolate for the holiday flavors, plus vanilla in milk chocolate, or chocolate in dark chocolate for all year.  The caramel tree ornaments are available in Cinnamon/Sugar Double-Up Caramel and Peppermint/Chocolate Double up Caramel.  Their caramels are so delicious, it’s difficult to describe how good they really are.  I loved the cinnamon/sugar double up myself, but the peppermint caramels are really good too.  There are also Mini-tubs with vanilla caramels, fruit caramels and vanilla and chocolate caramels.  The Uptown snackers are cute with little small business on the front.  The chocolate Peppermint Bark (White and Dark chocolate sprinkled with peppermint bits) had Dee’s Barkmint Store on the front of it.  These treats are sure to please!

Bloomsberry Chocolate is more of a message chocolate.  You can send the message you feel about the season or the holidays by the different types of wrapping on the chocolate bars.  For Thanksgiving you’d get one that says Stuff the Turkey - Eat Some Chocolate.(Hmm, which turkey are we referring to)  There’s another titled Holiday Hell or another that says Peace on Earth or  Hannakah Nosh - eight days of Chocolate.  These are thick 3.5 oz chocolate bars, most are 55 % dark unless they are milk chocolate. That’s sure to put you in a good mood, I’m sure it helped mine. Bloomsberry even has Emergency Chocolates, which is probably just what your college kid needs right before finals, right?

There’s a Lime & Salt microwave popcorn sample available on Walmart’s website.  Send one to your dorm kid, it would be a fun movie night treat.  My daughter just thanked me for the Bearnaked Granola sample she received in her mailbox.  This popcorn sample is thanks to Freebies 4 Mom.  Hurry up though because it was gone when I checked last week. If their stock is out when you try, come back again later and try again, which is what I did.

Look, here’s another good sample your kids will love you for at Chocolate Bytes.

Fruitabu Smooshed Fruit Twirls would be my number one choice for my kids to receive for Halloween if they went trick or treating.  I wish these had been available back when my kids were small.  They are very similar to those roll up things but they are made with smooshed organic fruit. Grape is fantastic, but Strawberry and Apple are delicious too.  Fruitabu products contain 90 percent fruit and juice without artificial flavor, color or preservatives.  My son ate them when he arrived home from school everyday and my husband and I tried them and we enjoyed them also.  My daughter was disappointed when she came home from college and found almost nothing left for her. One twirl is a whole serving of fruit, and there’s a half serving in a fruit flat.  My daughter called the fruit flat a fruit jerky because of the way it looked, but she said she liked them and no they aren’t spicy like jerky, just flat.

 Fruitabu also has Smooshed Fruit Splooshers which are like applesauce in a tube.  When my son was young he came home and asked me to make sure I put a spoon in his lunch.  I asked what was wrong with using a cafeteria one and he replied that they don’t like having to give him a spoon when he is bringing a lunch and he has to wait until everyone in line has their food before they ask to have hands raised for utensils. With the Sploosher you can just eat the applesauce from the packaging by squeezing it into your mouth.  No spoon needed.  I think these are great treats, and I wouldn’t mind my kids having them after meals or as snacks after schools, but get those twirls for Halloween, they’re perfect.  Maybe you can swap Fruit Twirls for a less desirable candy, I’ll bet they’d do it. 

Fruitabu can be found at local stores like Kroger’s and Giant Eagle. 

Bringing lunch to work or school is a great way to reduce costs and also make sure you get to eat what you like.  You can control the portion size, the foods you want to eat, how it’s prepared.  Have it your way. 

I don’t think lunches need to be bland though or even one hundred percent homemade.  Sometimes you need to supplement it with something fun and tasty a nice treat.  This week besides leftovers, I’ve added a couple of treats.

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For Healthy Snacks week, I’d like to introduce you to Probugs kids drinks and Kefir products.  Probugs is a drink for kids, that has the consistency of yogurt drinks, with natural fruit flavoring.  Even though my kids are older, they tried the Probugs drinks, enjoyed them, and went back for more.  They said the blueberry, had a slightly sour blueberry taste like you had real blueberries in it, not the fake blueberry taste.  The drinks came in individual pouches with a no spill spout kids could drink in the car or for a snack.  My kids had to try squeezing to see if they could get it to spurt (they’re teenagers, what do you want?) and while they could, it was much easier to control and didn’t cause a big mess like holding a juice box often does.  The pro bugs name stands for the probiotics contained in the kefir based drink.

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