Grape Pretzel Trees

This year, after about 13 years of being an at-home mom, my youngest child began school and my oldest child began junior high. It's been an adjustment for all parties involved. Last week, in an effort to aspire to the noble parenting aspiration of healthy after-school snacks, I determined that I, too, would make healthful after-school snacks. School, after all, left my kids starving and surely immuno-weakened due to their fresh exposure to approximately 10 trillion new germs every nanosecond; besides now I had all this time, so I would don my cap of awesome and make some granola bars and orange smoothies and other beautiful and amazing after school snacks. Unfortunately, my cap of awesome got lost somewhere in my junk drawer and I was forced to don my cap of low-end mediocrity (I'm thinking C- ish). So attired, I made not one, not two, not five, but ZERO after school snacks for my kids of healthful or other varieties (it must be noted that once, on grocery shopping day, I did in fact buy a healthy-sounding, Vitamin C boost juice for my children and fed it to them). That's right, Pinterest. Even with you hovering over our shoulders, we can still strive for low-end mediocrity. And we can still succeed.

So maybe next week you'll get that peach, carrot, and orange smoothie, or some tiny granola bars wrapped up in parchment paper and tied with twine (okay, you will really never get any bars wrapped in parchment paper and tied with twine; sorry). But this week you're going to have to settle for something I did for our Mom co-op preschool last year that was kind of cute and a big success. Behold, the grape pretzel tree. The good news is that it's fully attainable even for parents of low-end mediocrity, (or even other parents of higher ability levels should they become so busy making burlap wreaths and upcycling their Tic-Tac containers that they are in rare instances unable to wrap any food items in parchment paper and tie them in twine).

This grape pretzel tree takes about 3 minutes to do, and even if  you cannot sketch out a stick tree on paper, this will still likely end up looking tree-ish. Good luck.

Needed:
Pretzel sticks (stale, broken ones are acceptable)
Grapes (preferably green, but you know, some trees like Japanese maples do have purple leaves)

1. Place your pretzel sticks in a tree like manner. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can copy my perfect design from the picture above if you must.

2. Cut your grapes in halves and position them around the pretzel sticks.

3. See if your children notice you have made a grape tree before they eat it (seriously--I'm curious).