Five minutes to inspire.
Every morning, I grab two blank cards, a sharpie and a couple minutes to come up with a drawing to put in my children’s lunch. Originally created to encourage my son and daughter at their new schools is now over ten years running, with thousands of drawings filled with absurd wisdom, recurring characters, dad jokes and a whole lot of love.
2025
My daughter is rocking through sophomore year in high school, handling the house without her brother and continuing to grow into an incredible young woman.
In Progress…
2024
With my son a a senior and my daughter as a freshman in highschool, it was an memorable year captured in over 314 drawings, with my son graduating in spring.
Album coming.
2023
An exciting year of school, camps, swim team and other family fun through the year. I kept my hand busy with over 320 drawings.
Album coming.
2022
Back into normal life and no school morning is complete without their drawings. Got back into action with only 48 drawings this year.
Album coming.
2020
This year starts normal before COVID brought school, and everything else, to a screeching halt. With no camps, school lunches or anything else, it looks like a total of only 88 drawings for the year.
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2019
A busy year of some great things on the schedule, the lunchboxes were filled often with food and over 350 drawings for my kids.
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2018
A full year of school and camp kept the kids, and my hand, very busy and the lunch boxes filled with over 330 drawings.
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2017
This was a fun year of lunch box drawings and I managed to document them all. This year had over 275 drawings, photographed on our wood table for better contrast.
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2016
Up to this year, I was drawing on any paper I could find, with any pen, but this year I started using blank index cards with Sharpie markers for line weight and durability. I started documenting better and have 168 drawings.
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2015
This year is very poorly documented, as I did not think to take photos in these early days. I have recovered only six drawings, with so many lost to desks, backpacks and lunchroom floors.
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2014
In fall of 2014, the lunchbox drawings routine officially began. I was not great about photographing each drawing at the beginning, so I only have 27 drawings from this year.
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My kids have probably long grown out of this tradition, but I still enjoy the daily routine. It is a great habit to start my day drawing and spending dedicated time thinking about my family, two of my favorite things.