Happy Hallowe'en!

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday when I took Beanstalk to school it was light out - actually the sky was red, it was a beautiful sunrise - but today, at the same time, it was still dark! I waited until right before we left to snap a photo of his lunch, hoping for some light, but nope, I had to use the flash :) Ah well, I'm lucky he let me make him a fun lunch at all - a Hallowe'en treat!

Beanstalk's Hallowe'en PlanetBox Rover contains:

• For snack, a Monster Chocolate Mint Clif Kid Z Bar, which I tucked in the outer pocket of the PlanetBox lunch bag
• A Hallowe'en Lunchbox Love note  
• Bone-shaped WowButter sandwiches
• Organic red seedless grapes with bone picks
• A Jack Skellington WowButter sandwich on a skeleton stick
• A Granny Smith apple wedge graveyard with a zombie hand pick
• Marshmallow skulls - made with Kraft Jet Puffed Snowman Mallows turned upside-down and drawn on with Food Markers

Boo, I forgot to take a photo of the girls' lunches! Ah well, they had pretty simple pumpkin themes with a jack o'lantern Babybel cheese, pumpkin food picks, & lots of orange & green :)

Here's Pickle's pumpkin peanut butter sandwich:

Rather than leave out the pieces of jack o'lantern face,  I squashed those bits of bread flat & put them back in. The smiling pumpkin face still stands out, but Pickle doesn't lose any of his lunch :)

I think he'll like that bit of pumpkin trivia on his Lunchbox Love note. We've seen white pumpkins - the sproutlets call them ghost pumpkins, but I know we haven't seen red or blue ones! We'll be looking for them now!

Happy Hallowe'en!

2 More Sleeps...

... until Hallowe'en Night! 

Lazy snacky bento for Sprout today. Made Hallowe'eny with a ghost cookie cutter, spooky cupcake picks, and colourful cups.

Apples, cheese, carrots & Safeway brand star graham crackers.

Some stuff used to make this lunch:

Birdie's Bats & Spiders

Birdie's preschool class is learning about bats & spiders - perfect for a Hallowe'eny bento! I packed a bunch of them in her Framboise pink Yumbox:

I used our CuteZcute Animal Palz mini sandwich & egg press to make a bat cheese sandwich & hard cooked egg. Spider picks decorate sliced strawberries, and I slipped a spider cupcake ring over one of her baby carrots. Ghostly white yogurt with orange, green & black cupcake sprinkles and matching silicone cups make it Hallowe'en coloured, and she has an orange & green gummy worm stuck with a bat pick for a treat.  :)

Some stuff used to make this lunch:

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Mummy Loves You!

I've been in a bit of a bento slump this week. I've made lunches of course, I just haven't made them fun. Until today. I saw this super cute & simple idea from Artsy Fartsy Mama - crêpe paper wrapped chocolate bar mummies, and I had to make something like them for my kidlets. So they know their mummy loves them ;)

I used Clif Kid Z bars instead of candy bars and sugar eyes instead of googly eyes. And I didn't have any crêpe paper streamers, so I wrapped my mummy bars in first aid tape. I stopped short of one end, opened it,  and folded it under, for easy access at lunch. 

Bella's Mummy Bento is packed in EasyLunchboxes and contains:

• cucumbers slices with a "trick or treat" pick
• a sunburst tomato "pumpkin patch" with leaf bento picks
• cocktail tomatoes (she really loves tomatoes) in spider cups
• the mummified organic Clif Kid Z bar
• tucked beneath the mummy bar, a mozzarella string cheese
• some spider cocktail picks, trimmed in length
• & a Lunchbox Love note with a mummy joke :)

So, what DID the mummy say to the detective?
Let's wrap this up! 

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Some stuff used to make this lunch:

Mabel's Labels!

We've been lucky so far and haven't lost any of our lunch gear - that I know of... but Birdie's left things at preschool... and with 26 little ones in her class, it's quite possible something could go home with another child one of these days. So... we got some labels! Mabel's Labels!

Our Mabel's Labels were easy to apply, just peel & stick. They have some stretch to them so I was even able to apply them to the curved neck of her water bottle. They're also easy to cut - I trimmed a smidge off the length of one. And they really stay on, even through the dishwasher! I'm very happy with them, and so is Birdie :)

Now I want some Mabel's Labels for all my sproutlets' stuff - so I'm super excited about the new Holiday Stocking Stuffer Combos!

Frightful Fall Blog Hop - Skeletons & Spiders!

I just love Pickle's bones lunch! It's not easy to make the same old peanut butter sandwich & yogurt fun, but I think this is, and I had fun with it:

He has his usual PB sammy, cut with a skeleton & bones cookie cutters, mozzarella string cheese cut up and pierced with an R.I.P. pick, and yogurt topped with a drizzle of strawberry syrup & a scattering of sugar bones, packed in his personalized yubo lunchbox. I even found a skeleton joke Lunchbox Love note in our Hallowe'en volume :)

If you saw my earlier post, did you guess what was wrong with Bella's bento? 

It's not the food... She has blue corn tortilla chips, salsa (made by her friend Paige's mom), cantaloupe, mozzarella string cheese, sunburst tomatoes, & baby carrots. And it's not the theme... She has a bento box full of spiders... 

No, it was that I had forgotten I'd need to put a lid on the salsa! And when I did that, I couldn't close the lid of the Laptop Lunches bento box! But, it was an easy fix, I just needed to do a little swapping around of containers :)

I'm not supposed to make cute lunches for 7th grader Beanstalk anymore. So he just has some stuff he likes: fruit , crackers, & Clif bar. The fact that the colours are Hallowe'eny is purely happy coincidence :)

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Now hop over to Bento for Kidlet and see what my buddy Jenn managed to scare up for her Kidlet's lunch!

We're having a blog hop today!

The Bento Bloggers & Friends are having the 1st day of our 3 day Frightful Fall Blog Hop today! The fun begins daily at 7:30am PST / 10:30am EST, Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday. And it will be fun, with 45 Bento Blogs sharing something like 50 Hallowe'en & Fall themed bento lunch ideas!

Here's a preview of one of my bentos, for my Bella:

But it's not exactly the lunch that went to school with her...  I ran into a little snag after I took the photo, and had to make a last-minute change.  Can you guess what it was?  Leave your guess in the comments and come back later to see if you were right  - and to do the blog hop! 

Breaking News! Bella Takes An Egg For Lunch!

Though she loves deviled eggs, Bella's not been a fan of hard-cooked egg in her lunch box - until now, that is! When she saw the cute Animal Palz eggs I had cooked for little sister Birdie's lunches, she said maybe she'd like to have one now.  Not surprisingly, she chose the panda :)

In her sunny yellow-lidded EasyLunchbox:

• CuteZcute Animal Palz panda hard-cooked egg
• grape & sunburst tomatoes
• cucumber slices
• spiced almonds
• chicken & cheese wrap

Plus plenty of panda & flower details ✿

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My bento blogger friends & I are loving the new CuteZcute Animal Palz Mini Sandwich and Egg Press. It's so simple to use, versatile, & adorable! 

• Organized Bites shares her sleeping bat sandwich bento
• One Crafty Thing packs a panda sandwich family 
• Wendolonia packs a panda bento with both egg & sandwiches!
• Following In My Shoes made a batty bento
• I also made a batty sandwich bento!

And lots of fantastic examples chez CuteZcute's Instagram! 

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It's a Monday lunch.

This Monday has been Mondayier than usual. Getting the sproutlets ready for school was a real chore, and I barely had time to pack lunches. Bella was ready to go ahead of time though, the only one who made an effort, so I took a couple of seconds to stick some picks in hers and snap a pic.

She's loving little tomatoes lately. She says they're just the right size for a snack so she likes me to pack more than one so she can have one at recess too. She didn't want a sandwich or a quesadilla and I didn't want to play the suggestion game so Clif bar it is. She did volunteer that she wanted cantaloupe and Fig Newtons - done. Not the most fantastic lunch but it'll fill her belly :)

The tomato picks came from this set. Aren't the little veggies so cute?

Nobody else's lunch was worth documenting, really. Yay Monday.

Braiiiins! Cake for World Zombie Day

It's World Zombie Day! It's also a Saturday, and a soccer day, so no need to pack lunch, we'll probably go out to eat after Sprout's match.

So, instead of a brains bento, I'd like to share this brains cake my friend Peggy made for her boys. It's so disgustingly awesome looking! There's not actually a recipe for the cake, sorry - you could use any red velvet cake recipe or mix - because it's really not about the cake, it's all about the frosting!

Brains Cake 

• Bake a red velvet cake in a Pyrex bowl. Or maybe you have a dome or ball cake pan set.
• Level off the flat side with & turn the cake out onto a plate.
• Tint white frosting gray with a touch of black food colouring.
• Put frosting in a big ziplock bag & trim off the corner.
• Squeeze frosting from bag in a squiggle pattern, one half at a time to make, mirroring your pattern to make brain hemispheres.
• For an extra gory touch, drizzle strawberry syrup on the plate.

Happy Zombie Day! 

Despicable Me's Minions!

I've wanted to make a Twinkie minion for the longest time, ever since my friend Peggy showed me a photo of a Twinkie minion cupcake, ages ago, maybe even years ago. But then I'd never remember to buy Twinkies... and then they were gone, off the market. Phooey! But, then they brought them back, and my friend felt sorry for my sproutlets never having tried them, so she got us some.. We had one cake left over so I split it into 2 minions for Bella & Sprout :)

The Twinkie minions have been all over Pinterest forever - but the sandwich - that design was copied from inspired by this brilliant & adorable bento by Glory's Mischief. As soon as I saw it I knew I was going to have to make my own version of it for my sproutlets - right down to also packing it in a PlanetBox Shuttle. It's so simple & perfect, I love it! ♥ And so did my girls :)

My minion sandwich is a cheese bagel with a bit trimmed off, topped with cheddar, a strip of fruit leather, & Monterey Jack features cut with various circle cookie cutters. And I finally made a Twinkie minion, with sugar eyes, chocolate sprinkles, & a cheese smile. Lastly, golden sunburst tomatoes & baby carrots, to hopefully balance out some of that sugar ;)

Ba-na-na!  Birdie introducing minion Dave to minion Twinkie :)

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Some stuff used to make this lunch: