#MCM - A sweet and sexy tutorial

This little blog of mine is not strictly for mental health talk. I also LOVE everything crafty, theme-y, and homemade and I like to share my adventures and misadventures with the rest of you.  Today is a special "tutorial" about a little sweet and sexy something I do for my hubby.  You better believe that he helps my mental health immensely and doing things for others helps my mental health as well, so maybe this is more about mental health than I thought!

A little backstory- When I first moved in with Eddie in 2009, I had no idea what nutrition looked or tasted like or nothing close to cooking. I went back to college, AGAIN, for the 3rd time lol because I love learning and I wanted to know how make nutritious meals, etc.  I had been struggling with eating disorders since the age of fifteen (bulimia and anorexia) and when I moved across the country to California from Michigan to live and move in to our house, he made it very clear that if I went back to my eating disorder ways at all, he would ship me back home. YIKES! I needed to learn how to eat healthy and FAST. Between the new Costco membership, not over exercising or starving myself, I was packing on the pounds.  I am not kidding when I say 40 pounds in 3 months. So if you are even thinking about dabbling in disordered eating, DON'T! Among the hundreds of other reasons, your metabolism goes bonkers and hangs on to every single calorie that you consume like it's the last thing you'll ever eat.  So that's why I went back to school to become a certified nutritionist and completed an amazing internship with the county which concluded a job offer! (unfortunately, budget cuts dissolved my department before I had a chance to sign on).  I still use my degree though, and my favorite thing to do is make my husband's lunches! I love making little notes, putting embarrassing stickers on things and making nutritional things easier for him to eat.  Such as chocolate.  He LOVES dark chocolate! I wanted to find a way to personalize a couple pieces of dark chocolate wrapped up for each lunch without it being an entire candy bar.  So this is what I came up with!

*To find out if Dark Chocolate is good for your mental health, see the bit at the end of this page- added in later.

first I get an extra large dark chocolate bar from Trader Joe's. Love that place! Here's a link for something similar from there but I purchase the extra large bar that is a available all year around: https://www.traderjoes.com/fearless-flyer/article/3339

I also use pieces of heavy duty aluminum foil: https://www.amazon.com/Reynolds-Pitmasters-Strength-Aluminum-Packaging/dp/B06XQ3KXYZ/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_121_lp_t_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SRFD5XR9XYMP98AMP5FR

I break the chocolate into 1, 2, or 3 pieces at time and wrap them in foil.  Then I find cute scrap pictures of pinup girls and wrap them around the foil! I try to line them up so something "fun" is right on top.  He loves these!  If you are a pin up girl enthusiast like me, I use old pin up girl themed calendars, books, and tear out the pages and cut the pictures out.  If you need any, let me know! I have hundreds! I mean seriously! Help! 

Here's some pictures to show you my easy process: 

break apart the chocolate to individually wrap

cut pictures and characters that match the size of the chocolate bar

Tape it together!

This cutie went inside the wrapping, but the name of the old school men's magazine shows on the front.

TAH-DAH!!

It's like a peep show for his lunch! Va-Va-Voom!

*Someone messaged me asking if dark chocolate was good for mental health? That's a fantastic question!  I love receiving messages from anyone btw, whether it's for questions, advice for or from me, or pretty much anything you want! I'm about as open as I can be with out my organs falling out!

I learned when studying nutrition in college that all of your info should come from somewhere peer based and scientific, such as pubmed but in order to keep things light and less A.P.A. Format, I pulled a quote from Psychology Today magazine

This article was written about dark chocolate specifically and feel free to read the whole thing (I LOVE this magazine btw, highly recommend!) , but I chose one main quote to highlight:

"So, the bottom line here is that eating dark chocolate is good for your memory, blood pressure, and your mood. It helps alleviate depression and also acts as an anti-inflammatory, which means that it is good for your brain. And if it is good for your brain...it is good for you." -PT