Happy Hallowe'en!

The last 2 Hallowe'en lunches of the season! I did have ideas for 2 more that I didn't get to - so I guess now I'm ahead in my plans for next year :)

Skeleton LunchBots Trio! Packed with pistachios in a LunchBots Dips cup, white cheddar popcorn, a skeleton peanut butter sandwich, Granny Smith apple wedges, and a repurposed lollipop stick skeleton with an apple skull.

Spooky yubo! Packed with yogurt bloodshot eyes (with strawberry syrup and candy eyes), peanut butter sandwich ghosts, and chocolate eyeballs.

It's almost trick-or-treating time! How are you spending this All Hallow's Eve? Are you trick-or-treating, answering the door to trick-or-treaters, or hiding in the dark pretending you're not home? Whatever you're doing, I hope you have a safe and happy Hallowe'en!

Birthday Bento for Bella!

My Bella turned 10 today! Last night I baked & decorated "tie-dye" cupcakes for her to share with her class today, and completely forgot to think about her lunch!  Lunch Punch Birthday Cake sandwich cutter to the rescue! That and a bunch of colourful silicone cups made it look like a party in her lunchbox :)

Bella's birthday PlanetBox bento lunch contains:

• mozzarella cheese bites with musical note picks
• cucumber wedges - both in cake / pie slice cups
• a birthday cake turkey & cheese sandwich
• an unfrosted cupcake
• berry rice cakes
• baby carrots
• apple wedges in a butterfly cup
• a little container of caramel dip for the apples

Not too shabby for being packed in a rush... and she loved it ♥

Tie-dye cupcakes are what I called this attempt to salvage a frosting mishap that left me with not enough of any one colour to decorate all the cupcakes... Bonus, the swirling hid my lack of frosting skills!

And I'm told they were a hit with her classmates :) 

Happy Birthday Mia Bella!

In this lunch:

Bats, Cats & Witches' Hats

There are only a few more school days until Hallowe'en, so I packed lots of it into today's lunches:

Beanstalk has a Laptop Lunches bento box packed with ham on honey wheat bat sandwiches & a meathead skeleton, heheh. It was once the stick of a lollipop - a gift from my blogger friend who went dye-free (Biting The Hand That Feeds You). He also has apple wedges, cantaloupe chunks, a granola bar, and some chocolate eyeballs.

Pickle took his yubo. He watched me pack it, and in his own words:

"Yes! I love it! Blog this as my best lunch ever!" 

He especially liked the witch hat sprinkle-topped yogurt:

To make the hat shape, I set a mini cookie cutter on top of the yogurt and sprinkled inside it. It'll probably be all messed up by the time he eats lunch but he saw it so that's okay :) I also added a couple of pumpkin cookies and a little cup of peanut butter we brought home from a restaurant (upside down with a sticker on it), for with his snack. He likes to eat it with a spoon.

Bella got a witchy kitty turkey & cheese sandwich in her EasyLunchbox. On the side she has tomatoes, cantaloupe, and some cookies for snack (there are Fig Newtons under the pumpkin cookie). Oh, and a little chocolate bat.

Sprout is dressing up as Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service for Hallowe'en, so I stuck a witch pick in with her strawberries & carrots. In the EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper (decorated with dry erase marker) she has cheddar cheese. Under the pumpkin cookie and chocolate is an apple juice box.

In the largest section of her Bynto, she has scaredy cat peanut butter sandwiches, stacked, and a witches cauldron filled with star crackers, and a Hallowe'en Lunchbox Love note - they all got one of those.

Oh, I almost forgot! Pickle wanted me to blog a picture of his yubo lunchbox with the Hallowe'en lid on :)

Stuff I used for these lunches:

Edible Geekery : Star Trek Lunches for my little Trekkie

Here are a couple of Star Trek lunches I packed for my 6th grader:

Today he has 2 Starfleet Insignia sandwiches stacked (yes, I know it's sideways, that's how it fits) & a star PB kebab (to use up the scraps), star shaped crackers, a few grapes, fruit leather, & half an apple, packed in a Laptop Lunches bento box. And a Lunchbox Love note ♥ 

It was still dark out when I took that photo at 7:00 this morning!

★ ★ ★

Last week he took the Enterprise & stars PB sandwiches, apples & grapes, space crackers, fruit leather rolls, and a little container of chocolate rocks asteroids, packed in a PlanetBox Launch.

The Enterprise was made with my Star Trek cookie cutters from ThinkGeek. The ship shape was too big for the bread, but my friend and fellow Trekkie, Astrid of Lunches Fit For A Kid, pointed out I could make it in 2 pieces. Of course! The Enterprise's saucer could separate from the ship body after all :)

★ ★ ★

Lunch was Star Trek-tacular!

Heheh, I know, that was terrible, but I couldn't resist ;)

 

Slightly Hallowe'en-ish Bentos

What a rough start to today! Long story short, Pickle got up early and reset my alarm clock so he could commit mischief (that's the long part), and I didn't wake until 5 minutes after Beanstalk was supposed to be at school. Luckily, it's Tuesday, and the school hot lunch is pancakes, which they like.

These are from last week:

Bella's got tomato soup in a Thermos Funtainer, crackers, tomatoes, grapes, Fig newtons & a yogurt pretzel. And a Hallowe'en Lunchbox Love note!

Beanstalk has half an apple, a dinner roll (plain, that's what Mr. Picky likes), grapes, a Clif bar (cut in half & stacked it looks like a brownie treat), & chocolate covered & yogurt pretzels.

Beanstalk got a Lunchbox Love note too. His is not Hallowe'en though. We'd had a difficult morning and I thought he could use a message of love.

Sprout got a muffin, cookie, cheese sandwich squares, stacked, grapes, & carrots. Peeking out from under he rmuffin is a Hallowe'en chocolate, and she got a Lunchbox Love note too, packed joke side up :)

I filled a party platter with healthy snacks to nibble while doing homework:

Update: In response to a comment, here is Beanstalk's lunchbox he chose that day. It was a gift from his grandma, a retro-style metal lunchbox that came filled with a Wii game and accessories :)

Angry Birds Bentos

Pickle is crazy about Angry Birds. I have only made him one Angry Birds lunch though, and it was just a peanut butter sandwich... and I haven't made one since... because he liked it so much he wouldn't eat it, he wanted to keep it!  It's been a while though, so I figured I'd try again :)

When packing a theme lunch, sometimes I wing it, but most of the time I do a little prep the night before,  gathering my non-perishable ingredients, supplies, & containers, so everything is handy in the morning:

Here I have his drink bottle, yubo lunchbox, a packet of fruit snacks, some graham crackers, the cookie stamps for the sandwiches, and a little peanut butter that came with breakfast at a restaurant a few weeks ago that we didn't use so I took it home. In the morning I'd just need to make the sandwiches, add his yogurt and fill his cup. Oh, and that's not an Angry Birds bottle - I put a rubbery bracelet my friend Ludicrous Mama sent him around the lid of his regular Nalgene bottle for fun - it was a perfect fit! 

These are the cookie / pastry stamps up close:

They are shaped cutters with spring-loaded stamps. They squash the bread quite flat, and they are pretty small, so I made his peanut butter sandwiches double decker. Here's his Angry Birds lunch all put together:

I cut out the Red Bird from the tag that was on the bracelet and taped it on the lid of his Chobani Champions honey-nana Greek yogurt. The peanut butter for dipping the Angry Birds grahams is under the fruit snack pouch. 

I packed Angry Birds bentos for Bella & Beanstalk as well. Bella also got Angry Birds PB sandwiches, grahams & a little green cup of peanut butter for dipping them, tomatoes, & cucumbers. I got that cute little green pig bento pick from my friend Ming of Bento, Monsters :)

Beanstalk's lunch was packed in his PlanetBox. His PB sandwich was made with my CuteZcute cutter. I love that thing, it's so versatile, quick & easy! I added a crown to make the Pig King :) He also has Angry Birds grahams & fruit snacks, plus apple wedges and cherry pomegranate fruit leather.

Oh, and before I put the lid on Bella's EasyLunchbox, I added a cloth napkin and a pouch of fruit snacks to the large compartment. That filled the space and held everything in place too. I know she'll love opening this colourful lunch!

I hope Pickle eats his sandwiches!  

This is the one I made him last year, that he insisted on keeping:

It lived in our freezer for a long time :)

Stuff I used for these lunches:

From BentoUSA by All Things For Sale

Creepy crawly, ghoulish & cute... lunch is a hoot!

It's Hallowe'en Blog Hop time...  

For my Bella, I packed a spooky spider Laptop Lunches bento:

She has a spider turkey & cheese on honey wheat sandwich, sitting atop spider graham crackers. The spider's legs are NatureBox Sesame Stix, stuck on with honey. Autumn Royal grapes fill a spider silicone cup surrounded with black & orange caramel corn. She also has grape & Sunburst tomatoes, and a pumpkin & carrot muffin frosted with a spiderweb. 

I also tucked a Hallowe'en Lunchbox Love note in with each kidlet's lunch. 

Beanstalk got a ghoulish Sistema Lunch Cube:

In one side, he has a peanut butter sandwich mummy on a stick & zombie grave, and a string cheese stick through an eyeball cupcake ring. 

In the other side I packed red, black & green grapes, a checkered apple wedge, a pumpkin carrot muffin, and a cup of sweet treats - chocolate covered pretzel, frosted cookies, and chocolate eyeball. I decorated the muffin with some sugar bones arranged like a skeleton torso, but they kind of spread when the muffin rose - I forgot it would do that :)

I don't normally put this many sweets in their lunches, but IS almost Hallowe'en ... and we had fun filling a basket of candy & other treats in Popsies Specialty Sweet Shoppe last week :)

My little kindergartner Sprout has a field trip to the pumpkin patch coming up, so I packed her a pumpkin yubo bento:

In the sandwich box she has a kind of lame Jack O'Lantern peanut butter sandwich, grapes on scarecrow & pumpkin picks, cheddar cheese pumpkins in a pie slice silicone cup (see what I did there?) and a pumpkin salt water taffy. She also has carrots, a carrot pumpkin muffin with a fruit leather face, and a Jack O'Lantern chocolate. 

Birdie had lunch at home,  and asked for a "grilled cheese sandwich not baked"- which means just a cheese sandwich :) Since I didn't need to make it packable, I made this fun owl. The little detail pieces might not survive the ride in a preschooler's lunchbox, but they're just fine served on a plate :)

I made a few small tweaks - like using a tulip cutter & cheese to make feet - but the basic idea for this sandwich, and the instructions for making it, came from Cute Food For Kids. Whooooo wouldn't love this cute owl for lunch?

Now, do you like your pumpkins creepy or cute? 
Click one to jump to the next blog in the hop!

or

It doesn't really matter which - they'll both take you to Veggie-Bento :)
As for whether her lunch is creepy or cute, you'll just have to click to find out!

Fall PlanetBox & Goodbyn Lunches

I'm loving that Fall is here  ♥ I love the crisp, chill air in the morning and all the red & orange leaves :) And this morning it smelled like Fall ! And I wore my sweater boots!  ♥

It's Fall in Beanstalk & Bella's lunchboxes too! Well, the food's not necessarily Fall-ish, but the colours are...

Beanstalk's PlanetBox contains barbecue Pirate's Booty, a Strawberry PB&J Fiber One Chewy bar, red grapes, Granny Smith apple, satsuma orange, beef jerky, and some caramel apple candy corn. 

Bella's Goodbyn contains red grapes, grape tomatoes, spiced almonds in the bigger green container,  candy corn in the smaller green container, Fig Newtons, a turkey & cheddar leaf sandwich, & celery sticks.

It's Muffin Tin Monday! The little girls are actually having alphabetti spaghetti, but here's a Hallowe'eny muffin tin I put out for them to nibble on the side.