February is Heart Month

Just 2 sproutlets took packed lunches today, Pickle & Sprout:

Sprout has graham cracker stars, baby carrots, honey ham rolls, & cheddar & mozzarella bites.  Silicone muffin cups, a conversation heart cupcake ring, & some heart bento picks make it pretty ♥ 

Pickle has a sandwich stamped with a heart, cookies, & yogurt with a swirl of strawberry syrup. Both sproutlets got Lunchbox Love notes. 

 ♥   ♥   ♥   ♥   ♥ 

I found those 2 particular Lunchbox Love cards quite amusing when I looked at my lunch photos - especially in the order they appear here ;)

 ♥   ♥   ♥   ♥   ♥ 

I used heart bento picks from these sets:

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 :)

●  ●  ●  ● 

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

Left-behind Basic Bento Lunches

Here are some school lunches I never blogged for reasons:

Cheese quesadillas for my little monkey Mia Bella, with honey ham rolled & secured with monkey bento picks, & cucumber slices, some cut with a flower shaped cutter, packed in our Leaflet tight bento box.

Ham roll-ups again, this time secured with cocktail swords, a mini bagel, grape tomatoes, carrots & celery sticks, packed in EasyLunchboxes. There was probably cheese in the bagel, but I don't remember for sure...

Cherry tomatoes, concord grapes, celery & carrot sticks, topped with cheddar cheese stars. I remember this one because she was still hungry when she got home, it would have been better as a side bento with some soup!

A classic Beanstalk's choice bento from ages ago, all fruit & grain. Quaker Whole Hearts cereal, Clif KidZ bar, & Granny Smith apple wedges. 

And, another fruit & grain Lock & Lock lunch. Grapes, star crackers, mini bagel, & harlequin apple. My boy's a creature of habit...

These are all pretty basic bentos, nothing amazing about them, but I think they're good examples of how basic doesn't have to be boring - small touches like a couple of cute picks, a little detail with a paring knife, something cut with a cookie cutter, or even just arranging the food in a pattern, can make an ordinary lunch a little more appealing :)

●  ●  ●  ●

Some stuff I used for these lunches:

Rainy Day Monday

Have you ever forgotten it was a holiday and made school lunches?

It's raining this Memorial Day Monday, perfect day to make umbrella sandwiches for Pickle, using the sticks I saved from the Lindt chocolate carrots the sproutlets got in their Easter baskets: 

One of Bella's favourite rainy day lunches is soup & veggie sides.  She has cream of potato soup in a Thermos Foogo (really keeps it hot all day!) and a Light My Fire spork, cucumbers, sweet peppers, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and Ritz crackers.

Sprout loves hearts in her lunch. Her Goodbyn Bynto is packed with cheddar hearts, peanut butter sandwich hearts, baby carrots, and strawberry hearts.

Little sister Birdie wanted the same thing as her big sis. I gave her triangle shaped cheese made from the scraps of Sprout's hearts.

The adorable cloth napkins are from The Red Poppy on Etsy. 

Other stuff used to make these lunches:

Linked to Bento for Kidlet's last Meatless Monday of the school year:

Taking It Easy

I've had flu this week, so the sproutlets have either packed their own lunches - and not bothered with photos - or had school lunch. I'm a bit better today, and back to making lunch - but I'm still taking it easy :)

Beanstalk's Lock & Lock bento box contains exactly what he asked for - ham, space goldfish crackers, half an apple, & two Oreos (in an EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper). I chose the sword and Eat Me picks for fun. He can't call those too cute can he? I don't think so...

Bella asked for a "plain" turkey & cheddar croissant sandwich. The cheese inside is actually cut in a big heart shape - I know she'll look too, to make sure it's "plain" :)  On the side she has canteloupe and a sliced roma tomato. In the heart mini muffin cups she has a marshmallow and some dried strawberries.

I know, Valentine's Day is over... but I like hearts, and so does my Bella ♥

Some stuff used for these lunches:

Skipped Over Soup 'n Sides Lunch

Somehow this colourful little soup & sides lunch of Bella's from before the Winter Break got skipped over and never posted :(

I *think* it was chicken noodle soup in the Thermos. And I forgot to ask Bella but I bet she & her friends had a laugh over the trivia on that Lunchbox Love note! And no, I didn't know that... did you?

In the Lock & Lock divided bento box she has a snacky side dish for the soup: cucumber slices, snowflake Ritz crackers, carrots, celery, tomatoes & grapes. Not many of each... I'm thinking this may have been the day of her class party when I knew there would be lots of treats later.

Winter Break hasn't ended yet here, my kidlets don't go back until Monday. This has been a long break, I'm probably out of practice packing lunch... I'd better get back in the habit of getting up earlier if I don't want to start the 2013 school year in a scramble!

Happy New Year!

A Lovely Lock & Lock for Sprout

Sprout wanted to take her Hello Kitty lunch box today, which only holds our smaller lunch containers like our Japanese bento boxes, the Sassy box, LunchBots, Lock&Lock, and Goodbyn Mix & Match. She chose the Lock&Lock four square box, because "it has the easy lid".

I prettied it up with some colourful square silicone cups, and filled it with her choices for today: Granny Smith apple wedges, strawberries, Parmesan Garlic Triscuit Thin Crisps, and cheddar cheese.

Last time I packed her a full-size ice pack, Sprout complained that her lunch was too cold, so this time I put a single "ice pillow" in just the cheese section. I bought several water-filled pillow ice sheets and carefully cut them into smaller sizes as needed for perfect fit cold packs in various containers.

I didn't take pics of the other sproutlets' lunches today. We were rushed. 

Happy Monday!

Stuff used for this lunch (or similar):

Slightly Hallowe'en-ish Bentos

What a rough start to today! Long story short, Pickle got up early and reset my alarm clock so he could commit mischief (that's the long part), and I didn't wake until 5 minutes after Beanstalk was supposed to be at school. Luckily, it's Tuesday, and the school hot lunch is pancakes, which they like.

These are from last week:

Bella's got tomato soup in a Thermos Funtainer, crackers, tomatoes, grapes, Fig newtons & a yogurt pretzel. And a Hallowe'en Lunchbox Love note!

Beanstalk has half an apple, a dinner roll (plain, that's what Mr. Picky likes), grapes, a Clif bar (cut in half & stacked it looks like a brownie treat), & chocolate covered & yogurt pretzels.

Beanstalk got a Lunchbox Love note too. His is not Hallowe'en though. We'd had a difficult morning and I thought he could use a message of love.

Sprout got a muffin, cookie, cheese sandwich squares, stacked, grapes, & carrots. Peeking out from under he rmuffin is a Hallowe'en chocolate, and she got a Lunchbox Love note too, packed joke side up :)

I filled a party platter with healthy snacks to nibble while doing homework:

Update: In response to a comment, here is Beanstalk's lunchbox he chose that day. It was a gift from his grandma, a retro-style metal lunchbox that came filled with a Wii game and accessories :)