A Relevant Elephant Lunch

August 12th was World Elephant Day!  I'm behind in blogging (it's summertime... vacation!)  but that's okay, all of August is Elephant Awareness Month, so this lunch is still relevant... << I so wanted to say relephant but it looks too funny! There I said it anyways ;)

Our Figue Purple Yumbox is packed with pink elephants & some of my princess's current favourite eats: granola bars, strawberry hearts, cheddar cubes, pepperoni bites, & apple wedges. Decorations include a pink princess fork, pink elephant fork pick, elephant princess bento pick, & circus elephant bento pick.

Longtime readers know that my Birdie loves elephants. Click here to see all my sproutlets' elephant lunches. I hope that elephants will continue to be around for her to love for the rest of her life, but I'm worried they might not be! Because the world’s elephants are in trouble and need our help. My sweet Birdie gave some of her savings to help her beloved elephants ♥  and if everyone else who appreciates these amazing, intelligent, caring & feeling creatures does what they can to help, we can save them!

Cutie Monkey Bean Yumbox

Sprout's nickname is only one of an assortment of nicknames, all stemming from her very first, given to her in utero, by Sailor Boy :) Not long after suggesting Sydney for her first name, he commented that in her ultrasound photo she looked like a little kidney bean... then suggested we use bean for her middle name - he thought Sydney Bean would be adorable! I agreed it would be adorable to us, but perhaps not so much to her, one day. We did settle on a lovely middle name, but she also became Daddy's Little Sydney Bean. And as she grew, so did his list of nicknames for her: Sydney Bean Sprout, Bean Sprout, Sprout, Monkey Bean, & Cutie Monkey Bean.

So I always think of her when I see cute monkey things. Like the funny little monkey face forked bento pick I put in her Yumbox today:

Sprout aka Cutie Monkey Bean's Purple Yumbox contains:

• Strawberries - finally, the grocery store had some nice-looking ripe ones - it must be Spring somewhere!
• Green grapes, also nicer than any I've found in weeks :)
• Annie's Homegrown Bernie's Farm cheddar crackers
• Mozzarella string cheese with heart fork picks
• Grape gelatin made with real juice
• & a Hi-Chew candy treat, with the monkey pick stuck in it 

I also included a Light My Fire spork, but it doesn't fit in her Yumbox. Her Yumbox fits in her Thirty-One Chillicious lunch box though, with room for the spork, an ice pack, & her drink :)

Popcorn Makes It Fun :)

As much as I love this time of year, whoa, is it busy! I'm still making the sproutlets lunches, just feeling too swamped & scattered to put much thought into them :) But the littles haven't seemed to mind.  Here's Sprout's lunch from today, packed in her purple Yumbox. I thought it was rather plain (and a little grain heavy), but when Sprout saw it, she shouted "Yay! Popcorn!"  I guess popcorn makes it fun! 

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 ;) 

A Hobbit Day Riddle Lunch

Today is Hobbit Day, and this week is Tolkien Week! Why? Because September 22nd is both Bilbo & Frodo Baggins' birthday, and Tolkien week, celebrating authors J. R. R. Tolkien & his son Christopher, is always the calendar week in which it falls :) And wow, The Hobbit was first published September 21st 1937... 77 years ago yesterday!

In observance of all this, I've packed a Hobbit Riddle bento lunch for Bella. In Chapter 5 of the Hobbit,  Riddles in the Dark,  the hobbit Bilbo Baggins & the creature Gollum trade riddles; 3 of them are represented within:

1. Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.

2 .Thirty white horses on a red hill, First they champ, Then they stamp, Then they stand still.

3. A box without hinges, key, or lid, Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

I also added a Lunchbox Love note Riddle:

By perfect chance, that was the first card I took out of the box - I love that the answer is the same as the answer to one of the riddles in the lunch, which I also wrote on the note's blank flip side!

Bella's Riddle lunch is packed in a Frutti Blue Yumbox Panino. Obviously, her turkey & cheddar tortilla sandwich is a hobbit hole door (with pepperoni doorknob), as is her Babybel cheese, no riddle there!  In the center section she has pepperoni chunks with a ring pick. In the top right section, she has an egg in the shape of a fish... the answer to riddles 1 & 3 in one! In the bottom right section, she has cucumber chunks & sunburst tomatoes, on teeth picks... the answer to riddle number 2 ;)

Bella, her brother, & her friend who we were giving a ride to school all got a peek at her lunch while I took the photo, but I didn't tell them what riddles were represented, so we had a fun conversation on the drive to school while they tried to remember all the riddles in chapter 5 & figure out which ones went with the lunch - and they did!

It's been a couple of years since I made a Hobbit themed lunch! Last time was the day An Unexpected Journey came out in theatres!
The Hobbit Bento : An Unexpected Lunch

Talk Like A Pirate Day Treasure Lunch!

Yo-ho-ho! Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day!  'Tis one o' me favourite days t' fix fancy grub fer me little sprogs, an I've amassed a fair bit o' pirate bento booty t' make it fun & easy :)

Avast! Wha' do ye reckon o' this, me hearties? Won't me smallest scallywag be sure t' love diggin' in t' this treasure lunch?!

Birdie's midday meal be packed in our new Frutti Blue Yumbox Panino. Arr! She's gone off veggies so I doubled th' fruit, t' keep th' scurvy at bay! Mixed berries 'n green grapes - plus one wee carrot stuck through a pirate cupcake ring - just in case th' wee wench might eat it, aye!

Me girly''s sandwich pirate isle be made of cheddar cheese & peanut butter, cut with a special promotional Lunch Punch Landwich cutter. 'Tis embellished with a tropical tree & a pirate flag pick, an X drawn with food marker, an' surrounded by sugar shark-infested water :) The shark cupcake sprinkles are affixed with dabs o' PB.

'Tis a special day so she gets to splurge with a special treasure treat of a few jelly belly jewels an' a chocolate doubloonie ;) Arr!

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day, mateys!

Yumbox Lunch Before & After

Yesterday was Birdie's first day of Kindergarten! It wasn't her real first day of school though, in my opinion, that will be Monday, when I actually drop her off and leave. Yesterday, parents stayed, and learned about the school rules & practices, took a tour, and got to know the kindergarten teacher. I failed to pay attention to details when I read the notice about it, so I didn't catch the part about her not needing a lunch, and packed her this Yumbox:

Oh well,  we took it back home with us :) And I got to see how lunch in the Yumbox looks by lunchtime, after being packed in a lunchbag (usually sideways) then a backpack, tossed in the back of the van with all the other sproutlets' backpacks, or jostled about while my independent child put the backpack on herself to walk, the trip to school, then sitting in the backpack hanging on the classroom wall for 2 ½ hours, until it's taken out (often turned upside down in the process) & opened by the small child:

Awesome! Everything still in it's own section, even the yogurt with strawberry syrup! Some stuck to the lid but I expected that - and you can see how the silicone seal in the lid did it's job :) 

Birdie's lunch was decorated with elephant picks, and contained yogurt with a drizzle of strawberry syrup,  popcorn, strawberries, & a Clif bar,  which she asked for,  plus red grapes, which I added since she didn't want a vegetable. She's kind of gone off them lately - even baby carrots :(  I baked some carrot muffins for after school snack though, she likes those. 

Stuff I used to pack this lunch: 

Picks shown may not be the same colours as the ones in my lunch, they come in assorted colors, so if you're looking for particular colours, there's an "order comments" section in the checkout process where you can say so - the folks at BentoUSA are awesome and will do their best to honour your request :) 

Sweet New Yumbox Panino!

We've got a new Yumbox, the Panino!  6th grader Bella's excited about this new Yumbox! It has fewer sections in a different configuration than the Original Yumbox, but they're larger, & more suited to the kinds of lunches she likes. The dip/treat well in the center holds more too. Bella loves the Frutti Blue, it's one of her favourite hues! Here's her first lunch in the Panino:

Bella's Yumbox Panino contains:

• Heart-shaped peanut butter sandwiches embossed with a love note! I used my cookie message stamp set.
• Tomato wedges, as requested, with little bento forks that match the Lunchbox Love note I chose; sweets for my sweet ♥ 
• A handful of her Daddy's pistachios, she loves those. 
• Grapes, with a little purple koala pick in them just for cuteness :)

●  ●  ●  ● 

Stuff used to make this lunch:

Heart-y Happy Nuts

When I saw the adorable decorated pistachios in this football bento by Becoming A Bentoholic and this Valentines Day bento by Eclectic Lamb, I made a mental note to draw on some for my girls. It only took a few minutes to colour them, while I was drinking my morning coffee :)

Seven year old Sprout got pink & purple hearts on her pistachios, strawberry yogurt, grapes, strawberries sliced like hearts, Craisins, & a Jammie Dodger cookie, packed in her Framboise Pink Yumbox.

11 year old Bella got smiley-faced pistachios, a smiley-faced string cheese, Balance bar, grapes, tomatoes, carrots, & a Jammie Dodger cookie. I packed her lunch in one of our EasyLunchboxes, whcih have transparent lids, but I thought it would be fun if the smiley faces were a surprise, so I covered everything with her cloth napkin topped with a Lunchbox Love note :)

Frozen lunch! Do you want to eat a snowman?

"Olaf!" Birdie exclaimed as soon as she opened her Yumbox. "He has a carrot nose!" Yes, as soon as I saw the bag of teeny tiny "petite" baby carrots* at the grocery, I knew they would be perfect for an Olaf the Snowman nose.

Birdie's preschool lunch is packed in Yumbox and contains:

• apple slices on a snowflake cupcake pick
• plain yogurt with a little blue sanding sugar swirled into it, topped with snowflake cupcake sprinkles
• honeydew melon balls 
• Kellogg's Disney Frozen fruit snacks in Anna & Elsa packet**
• Ritz crackers (the last of the limited winter snowflake shaped ones, specially saved for a Frozen lunch)
• stack of cheese slices & carrot styled as Olaf the snowman 

To make Olaf, I cut a slice of cheese into quarter-sized circles, stacked them, and skewered them on a pair of eyes bento pick. I cut a square of cheese for his tooth and wedged a tiny petite carrot between the tooth and the eyes. Birdie was easily able to pick up the whole stack of cheese by the eyes and pull the slices off the pick to top her crackers with them :)

Some of the stuff I used to make this lunch:

* Grimmway Farms Petite carrots are baby finger sized versions of peeled baby carrots. In case you've heard any not so nice things about bagged baby carrots, here's an informative post from Lisa of 100 Days of Real Food: The Truth About Baby Carrots

** The Kellogg's Disney Frozen fruit snacks had Anna & Elsa on the box but only 6 of the packets in the box of 10 had Anna & Elsa on them. 2 pictured Ariel, Snow White & Cinderella, and 2 pictured Rapunzel, Belle, & Aurora. The fruit snacks in the packets were a mixture of Frozen & other Disney Princess shapes. This has been the case with all the Disney Princess fruit snacks I've purchased, which you might want to keep in mind if buying fruit snacks for goody bags to match a party theme, for example.

Friendly Critters

Friendly food picks & colourful baking cups brighten a simple lunch:

Sprout's Yumbox contains:

• raspberries
• honey ham rolls
• Ritz Spring crackers
• Granny Smith apple chunks
• & a crunchy granola bar

●  ●  ●  ● 

Stuff I used to make this lunch:

   

Yumbox DIY Pizzable!

Apparently enough time has gone by since our Momables Lunchbox Wars pizza lunch makeover for Birdie to forget that she doesn't like Lunchables, since she asked for one as we passed them in the grocery the other day. Even though we taste-tested several for the Lunchbox Wars series I did for Momables, they are still inexplicably drawn to those little boxed lunches - go figure.  I reminded her that she doesn't like them and that I can make a better one. So we added the necessary ingredients to our list, and today, I did!

Birdie's fun DIY pizza lunch, or "pizzable",  is packed in a Yumbox, which keeps all the ingredients, wet & dry, perfectly separate:

Her Yumbox pizza bento contains:

• bagel thins, cut in quarters
• shredded cheese
• marinara sauce
• mini turkey pepperonis
• & honeydew melon balls with alphabet picks

I also included a little spoon for spreading the sauce, & a Lunchbox Love note ♥ The other side of the note has a fun fact about belly button lint, which Birdie was talking about yesterday, so she'll like that :)

Click to see another version of our pizzables & a DIY pizza muffin tin meal!

●  ●  ●  ●

Stuff used to make this lunch: