Bakin' pancakes, bakin' bakin' pancakes...

Sprout asked if she could have a muffin in her lunch & I said yes, I'd bake some, but while they were baking I got sidetracked & burned them! And of course I didn't have enough ingredients for another batch. But I did have some pancake mix... so I baked some pancake muffins... & they turned out all right! Imagine a dense, pancake flavoured muffin. Next time I'll mix together a little maple syrup & icing sugar to drizzle over them... 

I baked the pancake muffins in a pumpkin shaped Wilton silicone baking mold. I don't know if it's available in this size anymore, but I found a mini-muffin version!  I spritzed the cups with coconut oil so the shaped muffins would pop out easily, poured in pancake mix 2/3 full, & baked them at 350 until they looked ready - about 15 minutes. Side note: Baking pancakes got the bacon pancakes song from Adventure Time in my head :)

I packed Sprout's lunch in her PlanetBox Shuttle. The pumpkin shape got me thinking about a fall theme so I used orange & pumpkin shaped silicone cups, & chose squirrel, acorn, & mushroom picks to embellish her strawberries & carrots, cutting the latter in bite size pieces since she has a loose front tooth, & a mushroom treat box filled with dark chocolate covered raisins. I also gave her some spiced pistachios - she loves those - & some orange Yami yogurt in the PlanetBox's Little Dipper. 

I added some more fun touches with a colourful woodland print cloth napkin, a happy little stainless steel spoon, & a Lunchbox Love note. This one is from Volume 92 & has a joke on the flip side.

I just love that little spoon. I have several - they're my favourite coffee stirring spoons - they make me smile :)

Edited To Add: I forgot to add a pic of Sprout's after school snack. Her loose tooth was really wiggly when she got home from school, too wiggly to bite into anything - but she wanted apples & a peanut butter sandwich - so I used my FunBites cube cutter to make them bite size:

Scrapbook paper background is Perfect Day from Thankful Collection by Bella Blvd from Scrapbook.com

Fall Picks!

Today's Fall-ish bento for Bella was a perfect example of what my friend Kendra refers to as "pickography" - that's when you make a bento with nothing really artistic done to the actual food, no carvings or shapes, just plain food, "where picks and cups and accessories do all the work."  You may know my friend as bloggess Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You (and if you don't, check out her blog).  Pick a theme, any theme... if she doesn't have a pick for it, they probably don't make one!

Bella's EasyLunchbox is packed with carrot sticks, turkey & cheddar wraps secured with Autumn Leaves cupcake picks, a tomato in a yellow flower cup, & grapes embellished with a flexible plastic Sunflower pick:

The picks I chose were inspired by the sunflowers I had seen in the courtyard of her school the week before. Sunflowers make me smile. I hope the simple touches to her lunch made her smile :)

Leafy Fall PlanetBoxes with Lunchbox Love

How I love a fall morning in the Pacific Northwest! I love it being cool enough to make a fire in the wood stove, and how much more enjoyable my coffee is when there's still a bit of a chill in the air and it's not quite light out yet.  I love the fog that makes the world outside my window look soft and dreamy as it grows lighter. And I love the bright colours of the autumn leaves in contrast! 

I put some leaves and warm fall colours in the girls' lunches :)

In the PlanetBox Shuttle, I packed Birdie some yogurt with sprinkles (and a happy little spoon to eat it with), strawberries, and mini peanut butter & cheddar sandwich leaves. Her cloth napkin's print is Peanuts characters playing in the leaves. In the little green Woodstock box she has one of her Hallowe'en candies for a treat.  We love Snoopy & the Peanuts gang :)

Bella's PlanetBox Rover contains leaf-shaped turkey & cheddar quesadillas, Craisins dried cranberries,  cranberry & sage Triscuit crackers, apple wedges, a tube of almonds, babble cheese, and a Hershey's Kiss treat.

It's nearly Thanksgiving, so I got out our Lunchbox Love for Thanksgiving, we had a few notes left from last year. They've added a 4th volume this year! Each volume of 12 notes features thoughtful quotes about gratitude on the front and fun interesting facts about Thanksgiving on the back. 

There's still time to get some Lunchbox Love for Thanksgiving! Besides putting them in lunches,  you could include one (or a set!) with hostess gifts, or even use them as place cards at Thanksgiving dinner :)  And you can use my coupon code, BENTON, to save 15% :)

The note I added to Birdie's PlanetBox reminded me that it's about time to bring out my Little House books for Sprout!

Since it's Movember,  I chose a moustache print napkin for Bella, which I packed atop her quesadillas  & set her Lunchbox Love note on  - I like to save & re-use the notes if they don't get food on them :)

The trivia on the flip side of Bella's note was fitting for her cranberry-filled lunch - it inspired me to add a leaf bento pick to her Babybel cheese :)

That orange tubular container the almonds are in is a repurposed mini M&M's tube! Fits perfectly in that section of the PlanetBox Rover.

Below are the spring-loaded pastry stamps I used to make the leaf mini sandwiches in Birdie's lunch. They make a great impression on the bread! 

Do the colourful sprinkles on the yogurt look like autumn leaves to you?

I think they do... but they are actually turtles! They came in this Sea Accents sugar sprinkles assortment of marine creatures :)

Happy Fall, y'all!

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 :)

Look, Lunch : Fall Theme

Bella's lunch: Clif bar, spiced almonds, whole grain peach Newtons, tomatoes & mozzarella chunks, sweet peppers, packed in EasyLunchboxes.

Pickle's PB sandwich cut with a leaf cookie cutter.

Lunch Guest: Creative Food!

Hi everyone! I am Michelle from Creative Food.  My blog is all about presenting food in a fun and creative way for my daughter, Eliana. I'm so excited to be guest posting here on for Cristi while she is relaxing and enjoying well deserved time with her family!  I have always been such a huge fan of what Cristi does-- she packs the most gorgeous lunches and honestly sometimes I wish she could pack my lunches! :)

So without futher ado.. since we are in still in Fall season (although it is hard to tell because Christmas music is popping up everywhere!) I decided to make a Scarecrow lunch to share with you all today!

To make this Simple Scarecrow all I used my circle cookie cutter and some kitchen scissors.  His head I cut out with the circle cookie cutter and made a sandwich.  The hat and body I used my kitchen scissors to cut the bread crust.  His face is made of mini chocolate chip eyes, a carrot nose, confetti cheeks and a mouth drawn with edible food markers.  His straw hair is made of potato sticks that I stuck under his hat.

So when making him I had thought his hat was too plain so I decided to add some cheese and carrot decorations.. but now looking at him again he looks more like a pilgrim... So he is a Pilgrim Scarecrow! Perfect for Fall/Thanksgiving time  He was really so simple to make and Eliana loved him! She enjoyed her Scarecrow Lunch with some fruit on the side (not pictured).

Thanks again to Cristi for letting me guest post!  I hope you had a wonderful stay-cation!!

For more Creative Fun Food you can find me here:

Facebook :: Pinterest :: Instagram :: Twitter :: Google +

Batty Soup & Sides Bento

This morning was definitely Fall ♥ It was chilly & foggy & a little bit spooky,  the perfect day for a Hallowe'eny bat bento!

Bat Looks Yummy!

Bella took a LunchBots Thermal Insulated Food Container filled with tomato soup and a LunchBots Duo bento box packed with cheese, a mini bat sandwich, and veggie sides. Also included: shiny LunchBots stainless steel cutlery and a little bat trivia LunchBox Love note :

Bat's a fact!

Bat bento picks embellish her cucumber, sunburst tomatoes, orange sweet pepper, & Babybel cheese. And don't you love that fancy little pocket sandwich? It was made with Animal Palz, a totally new sandwich press & egg mold set from CuteZcute you're going to love it! Among other things, it makes the cutest little smiling bat pocket sandwiches you've ever seen!

Lunch is linked to: 

Stuff used to pack this lunch:

A Leafy Lunch

Yesterday we woke up to our first frost, which reminded me that winter will be here soon, and I hadn't yet made my littles an Autumn muffin tin meal! So I did:

They had baby carrots, NatureBox roasted garlic pumpkin seeds, grapes, peach yogurt with sprinkles, peanut butter on honey wheat leaf mini sandwiches, & a couple of sweet treats - a Trader Joe's maple leaf cookie that tastes like waffles & syrup, & a pumpkin spice marshmallow.

We don't have a Trader Joe's nearby; the cookies were a gift from Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You, as were the sprinkles. They're actually sea turtles! But I think they look more like autumn leaves  :)

The little leaf sandwiches were made with pastry stamps. So cute & easy!

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.

Go Green Fall Leaf Lunch

There's no school for the sproutlets today - it's parent/teacher conference time - so I don't need to pack lunches. I have pics of lunches packed but never posted that I can share though... Here's a Fall-themed lunch Bella took recently, packed in her Go Green Lunchbox.

She had a turkey & cheese leaf sandwich, cucumber oak leaves, iced tea in the cute little 8 oz stainless steel bottle, baby carrots, grape tomatoes & grapes, a couple of chocolate chip cookies, and in the little squirrel cup, some spiced almonds. I think I had a "nuts about fall" idea in mind...

Update ~ Someone wanted to know how big the Go Green really is...
It meausres 12" long x 7 ½" wide x 2 ½" tall, but in case that's hard to visualize, here it is with an EasyLunchbox for comparison:

Some stuff I used for this lunch:

●  ●  ●  ● 

   

A Snoopy Yubo Bento for My Boy

The leaves are turning! Fall is here :) It's my favourite time of year!

One of the new cloth napkins I bought for the sproutlets' lunchboxes (from The Red Poppy) is an autumn theme Peanuts print. I love Peanuts. Pickle does too - though I'm not sure he's read any of the comics... but he's seen plenty of the holiday specials, and he loves his Vince Guaraldi Trio CD, Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits. So I knew he'd like a Snoopy lunch :)

Pickle's Snoopy lunch is a dog in the doghouse peanut butter sandwich made with a Lunch Punch Critter Cutter, a bonus PB sandwich bone, Snoopy gummy fruit snacks, & yogurt topped with little yellow bird cupcake sprinkles (ok maybe they are chicks but let's pretend) for Woodstock and his bird friends! And of course, the Peanuts napkin and his new red spork are also packed in his Yubo lunchbox.

Happy Fall y'all!

Nuts About Fall

I'm not ready to for it to be Winter yet! I love Fall! Anyways, it's not officially winter until December 22 :) So here are a few more Autumn-themed lunches for my sproutlets (and a we'll-miss-you-themed one for their Daddy) :

It gets really windy where we live, and there's a lot of Dutch influence around town - even a couple of windmills - so the cookie was perfect - and the crackers behind the cheese leaves remind me of windblown clouds :) Under the windmill is a green dip container with caramel for the checkered apple slices (thanks Bento for Kidlet). The orange muffin cup holds spiced almonds, and the brown one, mixed nuts. Grapes (on leaf picks) and cheddar leaves add colour and yumminess.

The little girls have muffin tins with carrot hearts, a maple sandwich cookie, mixed nuts, applesauce (with an apple leaf on top), grapes, and cheese. I'm betting against them trying the nuts, but, sometimes they surprise me.

I made those lunches up last night, and good thing, because I slept in today and had to scramble this morning - so no pics of what Pickle or Beanstalk took - not that they would be worth posting anyways... I didn't do a thing to them - besides being pressed for time, I was kind of crabby since Sailor Boy left this morning. I had already made up a special lunch for him :

It's a salami, provolone and cheddar sandwich, cut with several different Match & Munch Lunch Punches, grapes, & mixed melon balls. I was going to write something corny on the EasyLunchbox lid, something along the lines of "a piece of my heart will be missing while you're away" ... but I didn't get around to it in time. Ah well, it's a short trip, he'll be home for the holidays, I'll have more chances to be corny :)

 

Bento Lunch #72

Lots of leaves to munch in today's lunch :

Satsuma orange, mmm, do I love these! They're great for lunches since they're so easy to peel, and seedless too! Some cheddar cheese, carrots and apples cut in leaf shapes with Wilton mini cookie cutters - and I broke the oak leaf one on the carrots, boo :(  Under the cheddar maple leaves is a mini muffin cup full of raisins, and for a treat, 2 leaf butter cookies and a maple sandwich cookie - they are Bella's new favourite. They taste like pancakes and syrup in a cookie - yum!

The boys took cereal & milk. We're out of bread and they like having breakfast for lunch so it's all good :) Oh, plus a satsuma orange for Beanstalk, but not for Pickle. I still haven't had any luck getting him to eat any fruit not hidden in a muffin. Oh wait - he did try pumpkin pie over Thanksgiving, that I made with real pumpkin, so there's hope!

Notice my the countdown ticker at the top of the right column? It's counting down until my first giveaway! Make sure you visit my blog December 1st - I promise you, I'm giving away something sweet!

The Cow Won't Jump Over The Moon

Pickle's peanut butter sandwiches make me giggle. It was late when I made them, and I was tired and goofy.  I made him a Hey Diddle Diddle spin-off:

So here we have the cow who jumped over the moon, only that was a long time ago, and now she's a mama cow, and she's trying to get her little calf to go to sleep. And the little dog, the same one who laughed to see such fun, is barking at her from his doghouse, "Hey, Cow, check out that moon, don't you want to jump over it? But the cow is all "Shhh! No! I'm a mama cow now, no more daredevil shenanigans for me!" And the little dog is pouting, saying "Aw, you're no fun anymore." Heheh. Pickle really liked that little story.

________________

For Bella and the little girls, bentos bright with the colours of fall foliage:

Carrots, grapes & cheese for all, plus sweet orange bell peppers and peanut butter sandwich hearts for Bella. I made them each a carrot heart, but I wasn't sure about sending such a pointy pick in 2 year old Birdie's lunch, so I had to come up with another way to hold her carrot heart together...

... and I did:

I cut slits in the carrot heart halves where the picks would go through if I was using picks. You can probably tell where this is going.

Like my happy thumb nail? Sprout & I played nail salon :)

I cut a sliver from another carrot, and using it in lieu of a pick, pushed it through the slits to connect the pieces, then trimmed what was left sticking out.

Ta da! Toddler friendly carrot heart :)

If you missed the original carrot hearts post and want
 to see the full instructions, with picks, click here.

This lunch is linked to: