I Love You To Pieces :)

Today is the last day of April, which has been Autism Awareness Month,  so I made my Pickle a puzzle sandwich with our beloved Lunch Punch Match & Munch cutters. When I serve him a puzzle sandwich at home I tell him I love him to pieces; I hope thinks of that when he gets one at school ♥

Sometimes I do mess them up though... like today... I left some of the puzzle tabs in the cutter! Too much peanut butter, bread too soft, in too much of a hurry? Who knows... and Pickle won't care! After all, perfect pieces don't taste any better than messy ones :)

Pickle also has yogurt with multicoloured star sprinkles, and an oatmeal cookie cut in quarters to fit the yubo cup. He'll like that, he'll count it as a puzzle, like he did when he did the same thing :)

Pickle's lunch was made with this stuff:

Panda Power!

Panda lunches for Bella, Sprout & Pickle:

Bella has a cheese sandwich panda, carrots, golden Sunburst tomatoes, Fig Newtons, & in the little panda cup, dried strawberries.

Bean Sprout has a Nutella sandwich panda, carrots, strawberries, animal crackers, & in the little panda cup, dried strawberries. 

Pickle has a panda in a house peanut butter sandwich,  in a Lunch Blox sandwich box. He also has yogurt & string cheese (not shown).

The panda lunches were made with our CuteZCute Animal Friends Food Deco Cutter and Stamp Kit and some of these other things:

Lunch is Linked to :
 

Cute & hasty, plain but tasty :)

Bella's lunch has a few cute details inspired by the faceplate of her yubo lunchbox - blossom & star bento picks through the cheese & tomatoes, and silicone cups that match the fairies' colours separating them from the carrots & cucumbers. A fairy sticker decorates the bottom of her jell-o cup :) This was a hastily made lunch with nothing particularly creative about it yet all 3 girls oohed when they saw it ♥

To make up for amping up the cute factor on Beanstalk's Earth Day lunch, I kept the next one plain & simple. He asked for apples & a Clif bar in his Laptop Lunch and I added Veggie Sticks & grapes. "Don't make it cute!" he reminded me grumpily, and just for that I added a Lunchbox Love note :)

Pickle's peanut butter sandwich was going to be a tic tac toe, before I realized that would mean nothing to him since he's not familiar with the game! He likes squares though, so I'm sure he was happy enough with it as is.

Some stuff used for these lunches:

Friends Share: Disposable Field Trip Lunches

Yes, that's right, I packed a completely disposable lunch. Bella's class was going on a field trip and they were asked to bring disposable lunches. Disposable doesn't have to mean it must be thrown in the trash though - I had saved some recyclable containers for things like this, so most of this could be thrown in a recycling bin if there was one available.

I wanted to pack her some fresh fruit, veggies & a sandwich, but the requested plastic zipper bag wouldn't offer much protection from bruising and squashing. 

A plastic clamshell strawberry basket would! I decorated the basket & bottle with duct tape, both for fun & to cover the original labels :)

Bella's berry basket bento lunch contains:

• A turkey & cheddar flatbread sandwich
• Grape tomatoes on toothpicks to keep them from rolling around 
• A Gala apple
• Stretch Island raspberry fruit snacks
• Raspberry lemonade
• Clif Kid Z bar (snack for the bus ride home)

I was able to fit everything in the berry clamshell, which I then packed in the requested plastic zipper bag that Mia Bella had labelled with her name.  Squash-Proof!

Bella said she didn't want to throw it away even though she could - and there wasn't a recycling bin - so she brought the berry basket and bottle back home with her to use another time ♥

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Some of my bento blogging friends have shared some great ideas to make the most of those disposable field trip lunch days!

Karen of What's In Our Lunch Bags? packed

 take out sauce cups for a snacky lunch! 

Jenn of Bento for Kidlet turned a

 boring brown bag into a work of art!

Nina of Mamabelly's Lunches With Love 

made lunch better with Doc McStuffins

Have you packed any disposable bento lunches?  I'd love it if you'd share them! Here's a button to place in your post if you do :) You are also welcome to use it if I shared your post ♥

<a href="http://www.bentonbetterlunches.com/search/label/Friends%20Share"><img src="http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h35/merrycrismess/BentOnBetterLunches/friendsshare150.png"/></a>

All pictures belong to their blog owners. Click on them or their attached links to see the full posts on the original sites. (If you would prefer not to be featured, please let me know and I will remove your image.)

Impossible Astronaut Day

It's Impossible Astronaut Day! How many times have you already seen this lunch? I'm hoping that you've forgotten so I can get away with posting it again (I'm sick and don't feel like making food).  But if it does look familiar... 

... then you saw my guest post on Bento for Kidlet... or did you look away? 

If you're a Doctor Who fan, you'll know what's up with the tally marks, but if not... well, sorry, one does not simply explain Doctor Who :)  Just try to look past them at Bella's yummy lunch of:

• cheese tortilla TARDIS sandwich
• romaine lettuce, cabbage & carrot salad
• green & red grapes
• cucumber & carrot "jammy dodgers"
• cheesy star crackers
• yogurt star cookies & real Jelly Babies

Lunch is packed in our PlanetBox Launch Lunchbox.

Now, click the button to go see what Eileen of Robot Squirrel and the Monkeys has made... quick, before you forget!

Love our Earth, Love our Oceans

Happy Earth Day!  Last year I put a little planet earth in each lunchbox, but this year I chose a different theme, ocean life, because of course, one of the most important parts of taking care of our earth is taking care of our oceans!

The sproutlets have always enjoyed nature programs about the ocean and marine life, and some new favourite family films are the whale tales Big Miracle & Free Willy. They also love Winter the dolphin, so whales & dolphins were an easy choice for their Earth day lunches.

Beanstalk's Laptop Lunches bento box contains:

• a Lunch Punch whale peanut butter sandwich
• blue gummy fish swimming in Veggie Stick waves 
• green & purple grapes with an orca whale cupcake pick
• half a Granny Smith apple decorated with a fruit leather spouting whale & waves
• a GreenPaxx reusable straw (for the yogurt drink not shown) folded and tucked into itself
• and a Lunchbox Love note. Bella got this one last year - Yep, we recycle our Lunchbox Love :) 

I'm sure the trip to school buried the fish among the Veggie Sticks, but that's okay, they'll have been a surprise when he came across them :)

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento contains: 

• blue gelatin
• green & purple grapes
• cheese tortilla heart roll-ups
• baby carrot hearts
• romaine, raddichio & cucumber salad
• a Lunchbox Love note - a new one :) 
• a Light My Fire spork
• and a whale print Red Poppy cloth napkin

I love how these heart roll-ups turned out ♥ I made them by folding a tortilla in half to make a crease before covering it with cheese,  rolling in each side towards the crease, slicing 2" pieces & securing with a skewer.

I made a batch of Earth Day muffins! They're apple streusel, coloured green, with blue sugar sprinkles added to the streusel topping.  They smelled so good we couldn't wait for Earth Day, and had some for dessert last night :)

Pickle wanted to take one with his lunch as well:

Pickle's yubo lunchbox contains:

• dolphin peanut butter sandwiches
• an Earth Day apple streusel muffin
• vanilla yogurt coloured blue & green, topped with dolphin sprinkles

It's Muffin Tin Monday!

The little girls' tins contain:

• earth day apple streusel muffins
• green & purple grapes
• broccoli trees
• dolphin cheese atop starfish crackers
• whale peanut butter sandwiches
• vanilla yogurt coloured blue with dolphin sprinkles
• baby carrot hearts

Some stuff used to make these lunches:

Friends Share: Nursery Rhyme Time

I had a nursery rhyme in mind when I packed this lunch:

Hey diddle diddle, the cat & the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon ...

Bella's Go Green Lunch Box contains:

• Fig Newtons
• Cow peanut butter sandwich
• Apple moons
• Horizon Organic milk
• Cheddar moons & mozzarella cubes
• Sunburst tomatoes & baby carrots

Some of my bento blogging friends have also made nursery rhyme inspired bentos & bentos that bring to mind nursery rhymes, that I'd like to share:

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall ...

Visit Bento Days to read more about or comment on this bento!

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock ...

Visit Eats Amazing to read more about or comment on this bento!

Mary had a little lamb, with fleece as white as snow ...

Visit Eclectic Lamb to read more about or comment on this bento!

The itsy bitsy spider, crawled up the water spout ...

Visit Bento-logy to read more about or comment on this bento!

Have you made any nursery rhyme or related bentos?  I'd love it if you'd share them! Here's a button to place in your post if you do :) You are also welcome to use it if I shared your post ♥

<a href="http://www.bentonbetterlunches.com/search/label/Friends%20Share"><img src="http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h35/merrycrismess/BentOnBetterLunches/friendsshare150.png"/></a>

All pictures belong to their blog owners. Click on them or their attached links to see the full posts on the original sites. (If you would prefer not to be featured, please let me know and I will remove your image.)