Launching into the Hallowe'en Season

Happy October! I packed Bella a boo-tiful lunch in her PlanetBox Launch: 

Turkey, cheese & cucumber wraps, as she requested, secured with pumpkin & bat picks, carrot fingers with a spider pick, a couple of Oreos in a pumpkin-shaped cup, and a handful of ghostly marshmallows. I love the Hallowe'en picks I used - they're long which is great for little snack kebabs, but easy to trim if I want them shorter,  & you get lots of all 4 in the set : 

I used some for this Hallowee'eny snack tray:

 

Harry Potter School Lunch & Birthday

I had fun making this Harry Potter themed lunch! The sorting hat is grape fruit leather, folded & pinched into shape. I also used a bit of the fruit leather to bind the pepperoni stick & string cheese broom. That's the rest of the stick of string cheese in the cup with a Harry Potter pick. In the triangle cup I stacked 2 Deathly Hallows turkey & cheddar sandwiches. The grapes with the tree picks are meant to be baby Mandrakes :) Mini pumpkin muffins frosted with a Golden Snitch & a lightning bolt complete the theme.

The frosted muffins were a special request from 8th birthday girl Sydney Bean Sprout (below) to bring to school to share with her classmates.

Truthfully, she requested cupcakes - but if you frost a muffin it counts as a cupcake, in my opinion :) I also topped the cream cheese frosting with the little Snitches & lightning bolts that I made by drizzling melted baking melts on parchment paper, so they're plenty sweet!

They turned out so cute! I had enough left over to put one of each of the "cupcakes" in her big sister Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento:

The pepperoni broom was my variation of the popular pretzel & cheese broomsticks Hallowe'en snack. I used a Slim Jim, which is quite a bit wider than a pretzel, so to avoid splitting the string cheese cheese, I used a drinking straw to hollow out a "pilot hole" of sorts in it first.

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It's Throwback Thursday! So here are a couple of pics of Bella & Pickle from Hallowe'ens gone by. Bella dressed up as Hermione Granger in 2013:

Pickle was Harry Potter in 2012:

We all love Harry Potter!

The Ghost Lunch of Hallowe'en Past

Wow, this past October was the busiest Hallowe'en season ever! Between volunteering to help plan & put on the sproutlets' elementary school Fall Festival, planning & shopping for Bella & Sprout's end of October birthdays, & putting together Hallowe'en costumes, I did not find time to blog. I did make some Hallowe'en themed bentos, & photographed a few ... but for the most part, the sproutlets' lunches were just food :)

This ghostly EasyLunchboxes bento is one of the few Hallowe'eny lunches I took a picture of :) The string cheese ghost's wrapper is decorated with marker, & the PB&J sandwich has candy eyes & a chocolate chip mouth. Baby carrots are embellished with a Boo! pick, & a ghost pick hovers over apple wedges with a little cup of caramel dip. 

Cheese + marker = ghost! I made these easy spooky snacks for Sprout's classroom Hallowe'en party contribution:

Bella's day of Hallowe'en lunch was filled with pumpkins & spiders :) In the spider silicone cup she got a Fig Newton & an Oreo embellished with candy eyes, her turkey, ham & cheese wrap is secured with Happy Halloween & spider pick, a spider ring decorates the baby carrots, & cucumber slices with a jack o'lantern pick fill a pumpkin-shaped silicone cup.

This one was barely Hallowe'eny.  It was a dark & dreary pre-daylight savings time morning, I wasn't awake enough to be creative ;) Bella got pepperoni bites, string cheese, turkey & cheddar wrap, 2 cocktail tomatoes,  Fig Newtons, & a Lunchbox Love note.

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The sproutlets in their Hallowe'en costumes:

Bella was Wednesday Addams. I was super impressed with how well she did keeping that deadpan expression, especially for such a naturally smiley girl:

She looked so good! The skeleton behind her is my mom :)

Birdie was Amelia Earhart, in a mini flight suit we got at our NEX.

She loves those aviator goggles!

Pickle was Eggs from The Boxtrolls.  I made the box easy to put on and off, kind of like a cardboard vest - it closes in the back with velcro. Colouring the eggs label was kind of fun :)

Sprout was Annie Oakley, & requested her costume have lots of "cowgirl fringe". For the record, I did not enjoy sewing on that fringe! 

One last picture before going out trick or treating - a silly face group shot - including Beanstalk as a pirate & his buddy as a nerd :)

My little tricksters got lots of treats. A happy Hallowe'en was had by all!

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!

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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