Blurry Flurry PlanetBox

If Bella's snowflake bento looks a little dark & blurry, it's because I took the photo out on our front porch before sunrise this morning, by the glow of the Christmas lights :) You can see them reflected here & there in the shiny stainless steel of the PlanetBox:

Mia Bella's blurry flurry of snowflakes PlanetBox Rover contains:

• turkey & asiago cheese roll-ups
• cucumber snowflakes
• white cheddar popcorn
• a frosted gingerbread snowflake
• flaky Ritz crackers
• a foil-wrapped Dove Promises Snowflake chocolate treat
• & a Lunchbox Love note to remind her that she's awesome :)

The cucumbers were cut with a mini snowflake cookie cutter, the roll-ups are secured with a Happy Holidays cupcake pick and red & white snowflake picks made of trimmed drink stirrers, and the gingerbread was a gift from a neighbour (that I frosted with cookie icing to show the detail).

This post is part of the Bento Bloggers & Friends holiday blog hop! 
Click the button to hop over & see What's In Our Lunch Bags? I know, some of you just came from there...  but surprise, there's moooore!

Look! Gnome Lunch!

Bella requested a Clif bar & fruit for lunch today. I made it cute:

Her EasyLunchbox contains a Clif bar decorated with a garden gnome cupcake pick, sunburst & cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe, dried strawberries, and in the little mushroom box, a surprise chocolate treat.

Some of the stuff I used to make this lunch cute:

Thank you to my buddy erin of feeling a little lunchy for the gnome picks!

Frosty First Day of School

Yes, you read that right :) 3 year old Birdie just started preschool this week! Her first holiday bento lunch is a Frosty one, packed in one of her Goodbyn Mix & Match boxes:

She has yogurt in the dip cup, a cheese snowflake atop the lid, apple wedges, a snowflake peanut butter sandwich, grapes, & a snowman chocolate treat.

Can't forget the spoon! And even though Birdie can't read yet, a Lunchbox Love note for one of her teachers to read to her  ♥ 

I love the Goodbyn's transparent lids that let the cuteness peek out :)

Some stuff used in this lunch:

The Powerpuff Obsession Continues...

According to my 6 year old Sydney Bean, better known on the blog as Sprout, this lunch "looks pretty good but it would look better with a Powerpuff Girl."

Better?

"Yes, but next time don't eat a strawberry!" 

 (Well I had to make room for the cupcake pick didn't I?)

Some stuff used for this lunch:

Gingerbread Men!

Sometimes a lunch gets something stuck in my head. All morning I've had this singsong line from the nursery tale running through my head: Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man! *sigh*  The best remedy for an annoying earworm is sometimes another earworm... maybe I should go play some Duran Duran - Rio usually does the trick ;)

A friend sent us some adorable gingerbread man/peppermint sweet cupcake picks, which inspired gingerbread man lunches that came out decidedly holiday-ish... and it's not even December, this is early for me! 

Pickle's yubo lunchbox (with handy dandy drink holder attached) contains peanut butter sandwich gingerbread man, a pocket sandwich, & a spiral sandwich speared with one of the cupcake picks. He also has a pandan wafer straw broken in half, a peanut butter cookie & a gingerbread man. His yogurt even has tiny gingerbread men sprinkles!

I went easy on the cute for 6th grader Beanstalk's LunchBots Trio bento, and skipped the cupcake pick :) He has pistachios in a LunchBots Dip, grapes, a peanut butter sandwich "cookie" topped with a pandan wafer straw & a mini gingerbread man, a granola bar, and some yogurt raisins. 

There was meant to be apple slices in place of his granola bar... but we didn't have the apple I thought we did (or someone snacked on it after I last looked).

Bella's EasyLunchbox is full of cuteness, with heart-speared red & green grapes, cantaloupe balls + cupcake pick, mini gingerbread men cookies, baby carrots, & gingerbread man sandwiches.

These gingerbread men are savoury and sweet - they're turkey & cheddar on wheat, with bento pick buttons & candy sprinkle features :) 

Stuff used for these lunches:

Powerpuff Girls Bentos!

Sugar & spice & everything nice... 

That's what these Powerpuff Girls bento lunches are made of! 

Sprout & Birdie adore the Powerpuff Girls. Birdie's favourite is Bubbles "because she has ponytails" and Sprout likes Blossom "because she's a genius and she wears pink".

Bubbles is in the blue cup with some green grapes and a baby carrot, Buttercup's in the green cup with apple wedges, and Blossom's pink heart-shaped cup holds organic strawberry hearts (I splurged, they looked nicer ... and yum, they have so much flavour!)

I wasn't about to colour the yogurt black like Chemical X so I topped it with colourful sprinkles instead; they're the sugar. I turned Powerpuff Girls baking cups inside out so the print shows, and filled them with Annie's Homegrown Cinnamon Bunny Grahams for the spice. And the fruit is everything nice :)

Remember Bunny, the 4th Powerpuff Girl? 

I sometimes feel like I'm cheating a little when I use cupcake picks to make a theme lunch instead of creating it all with the food... but then I remember there's no bento police or panel of judges, the only people I'm trying to impress are my sproutlets,  and they're easy, they already think I'm a superhero ♥ 

Besides, it saves time, and they're cheap and reusable :) 

♥  ♥  ♥  ♥ 

Tip:  You don't need to buy specialty bento picks & cutters to decorate your lunches. Check out baking supply shops for mini cookie cutters, pastry stamps, & cupcake picks. They often have popular characters and seasonal themes not even available as bento picks. Sometimes you can find matching paper baking cups too!