By the Dawn's Early Light

Bella tried ranch dressing at a friend's recently, and liked it! She says she thinks she'd like to take some in her lunch now & then. We wouldn't use ranch dressing for anything else so I got a pack of single serving dip cups rather than a full bottle that would have to be refrigerated once opened, in case now & then tuns out to be rarely ;) If she does end up asking for it often I'll get the big bottle and send it in our EasyLunchboxes Mini Dippers.

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento box contains:

• a juicy little cocktail tomato
• fat little organic baby carrots
• ranch dip for the carrots
• pepperoni sticks
• mozzarella string cheese 
• parmesan garlic Triscuit Thins
• & a brownie left over from last night's dessert

I just realized this morning, Hallowe'en is in less than 2 weeks! Eek! It's time to start spookifying the lunches! There wasn't time this morning, but I did slip a Hallowe'en Angry Bird cupcake ring over the string cheese, for fun :)

It was the dim morning light that reminded me how late in the year it's getting; all of a sudden it's still fairly dark when my bigger sproutlets leave for school! Look how dark & cold Bella's lunch photo was before I colour corrected it - I wasn't even sure there was enough light to take it!

The streetlights & outside lights were even still on when we got to the school. I felt a little bad for my girl as I watched her cross the parking lot in her winter coat while I got to stay in the warm car, still cozy in my pajamas ;)

School's about to let out now and it's still cold & grey...  Bella & Beanstalk usually walk home, but I think I'll surprise them and pick them up :) 

Special Delivery Lunches : Cupcake & Pirate

I recently had the pleasure of making fun lunches for my friend's little girl & delivering them to her at school while her mother was away for a couple of days. Her little girl is called Bella too, so I just had to use my alphabet stamps in one of the lunches, I already had the name put together! 

Bella's Cute Personalized Lunch contains:

• strawberry Go-Gurt (frozen in an L shape to fit)
• cupcake ham & cheese sandwich made with a Lunch Punch, stamped with her name, & topped with a cherry tomato
• roll of Rockets candy (or Smarties if you're American)
• organic strawberries cut like hearts, with a heart fork pick
• organic green grapes in a pink flower silicone cup

For the other day, she asked if I could make her a lunch like the one I made Birdie on Talk Like A Pirate Day, but without berries, & jelly instead of cheese on her treasure map sandwich. She definitely wanted me to include the jelly bean treasure & chocolate doubloon though! I packed her lunch in an EasyLunchbox with the treasure in a Mini Dipper.

Bella's Pirate Lunch contains:

• mozzarella string cheese through a pirate cupcake ring
• treasure map PB&J embellished with shark sprinkles, food marker, pirate flag, & palm tree cupcake pick
• organic green grapes
• jelly bean & chocolate coin treasure
• organic baby carrots

Both lunches were packed in EasyLunchboxes that she got to keep :) It was fun packing lunches for someone other than my own sproutlets! My friend told me how much her daughter was looking forward to lunch those days, rather than being bummed about having the school lunch, so I really wanted her to like them. And I'm told she loved them ♥

10 Hallowe'en Favourites for Zombie Day!

Today is World Zombie Day!  With Hallowe'en creeping closer,  it's the perfect day for a round-up of some of my favourite un-dead lunches :)

A zombie hand bursts out of it's sandwich grave in this ghoulicious bento! 

It's one of several creepy but cute Hallowe'en lunches.

The dead are rising from this Hallowe'en lunch too!

Here's one of my favourite undead fellows, Jack Skellington!

A zombie hand reaches out & a skeleton crew says Happy Hallowe'en!

These frightful skeleton bones make lively lunch! 

Mummies can be undead too! Wrap up a treat for your little ghoul:

Mummy Loves You!

Here's another yummy mummy ... on a stick ...

... and in  the lunchbox :)

Ghoulish yogurt eyes zombiefy this Happy Hallowe'en lunch:

How about baking up some brains for dessert?

Braiiiins! cake for World Zombie Day

Happy Zombie Day!

Little Twin Lunches

This morning I just could not get my head together! The fridge was full and you know I have 101 lunchbox choices, but I just could not focus on what to pack the sproutlets for lunch. I ended up telling the middle schoolers to buy theirs, and this is what I finally packed for Bean Sprout & Birdie:

Twin lunches! They both got the same lunch in different colours :) Birdie's containers & spork are pink, Sprout's blue. Birdie got a strawberry Go-Gurt, Sprout got blueberry. In their Klip-it Splits they got sliced strawberries & watermelon - thankfully I cut up a bunch of fruits a few days ago - and I filled small lidded containers with Annie's bunny grahams. Not shown are their water bottles & ice packs. And everything fit perfectly in their adorable little Built Gourmet Getaway Mini Totes.

I love these mini versions of the Gourmet Getaway. They're great for small containers that would rattle around in the bigger bag, like our Lunchbots, Sassy boxes, & small but tall tiered bento boxes, like our CuteZcute Baby Bento Buddies. With an ice pack they do an awesome job of keeping lunch cold until well past lunchtime, and they're a good size for smaller lunches in smaller hands, as kindergartner Birdie demonstrates below :)

Oh, I forgot to mention Pickle's lunch! He requested cereal & milk, which would have made his easy if I could have found the Sistema Klip-it bowl he likes taking cereal in. Sailor Boy usually does the dishes and insisted he put it where he always does, but I turned my lunch gear stash upside down and inside out and it was nowhere! I had a really hard time switching gears and packing in a different container too -  it's what I've packed his cereal lunches in for a few years now. Anyways, when we got to school, there it was, he had forgotten it last week - yuck!

Lunchbox Love for Teachers!

Sunday October 5th was World Teachers' Day. Thank you, teachers!

The start of this school year was a bittersweet one for my Bella, who was excited to be starting middle school yet sad to be leaving elementary. She's especially going to miss her 5th grade teacher, who really inspired her & made school & learning so much fun! ♥ The younger sproutlets still attend that elementary school, so Mia Bella does have an opportunity to see her favourite teacher from time to time, if she's with me when I pick them up.

With help from the lovely folks at Say Please, who contributed the Lunchbox Love, we put together a cute thank you gift for her beloved teacher. We filled a Be Kind Mug with a Lunchbox Love for Teachers set, & added a fun ruler themed notepad. Middle school lets out earlier than elementary school, so Bella walked over & met me there to deliver her gift. Her teacher loved it! She's familiar with Lunchbox Love notes, from the ones I put in Mia Bella's lunches, & was thrilled to have some to share with her class :)

Lunchbox Love for Teachers sets includes these 2 volume sets:

• Lunchbox Love for Class Motivation
• Lunchbox Love for Class Kindness
• Lunchbox Love for Class Birthdays

Each 2 volume set includes 24 cards, hopefully enough for a whole class. Any or all of them would make a thoughtful gift for a teacher you know!
Say Please often has a special deal on their home page, but if not, you can use my coupon code, BENTON, for 15% off :)

A big thank you to Bella's teacher, and teachers everywhere! 
I'm so grateful that ALL my little ones have been fortunate to have wonderful teachers who make their school days pleasant as well as educational ♥ 

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. Say Please provided me with Lunchbox Love notes purely out of generosity & to do as I pleased with, & I purchased the mug & notepad myself :)

No Mojo Bentos :)

Today's post is for my friend Nina, who says she can't find her bento mojo. It's not at my house Nina! See, here's what I packed today:

Bella got a turkey & cheese wrap, a couple of peppers, some pepperoni bites, almonds (in the EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper), grapes, tomatoes, & cucumber. The picks are there to secure the wrap, not as decoration ;) Her lunch is packed in an EasyLunchboxes divided container.

Birdie got a Yumbox packed with a Fruit by the Foot (Hallowe'en treat size), strawberries with a bento pick fork, Trix yogurt, mozzarella bites with a bento pick fork & in a little silicone cup to make the section smaller, & Scrabble Cheez-its crackers.  I forgot to put her chewable Lactaid tablet in the centre, oops! And I didn't even make a word with the cracker letters ;) 

First Day of Fall Lunch in PlanetBox

Happy Fall! I have been feeding the sproutlets, just been too busy to blog :) Here's Bella's First Day of Fall lunch from Tuesday last week!

She has pepperoni bites with a maple leaf pick, apple wedges, caramel dip in a Snoopy cup, cucumber slices with an oak leaf pick, a Babybel cheese with Fall carved into the wax, a few Fig newtons, & a Dark Chocolate Caramel Macchiato Balance Bar, packed in her PlanetBox Rover.  Her cloth napkin has a Snoopy & Woodtstock playing in the Fall leaves print :)