Snoopy's You Can Be Anything! Review & Giveaway + Peanuts Christmas Lunches!

Our family was recently given the opportunity to try out a new interactive book app called "Snoopy's You Can be Anything!" and several copies of the app to give away too! We love Snoopy and the Peanuts gang ♥ I made Birdie a festive Snoopy themed muffin tin snack to enjoy after we read the book :)

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Snoopy's You Can Be Anything! 
Review & Giveaway

What a fun book & app starring our favourite loveable beagle Snoopy!

With sound effects, animation, and narration if you like, this interactive & customizeable app really brings Snoopy's inspiring message to life. In the story, Snoopy shows kids that they can be anything - a dancer, a surgeon, a grocery store clerk, a world-famous anything they can think of ... really! The professions aren't limited to what's on the page - in the app's Create Mode, kids can personalize the story, add their names, and even change Snoopy's costume! They can also save their story creations, or share them with family & friends through email, Facebook and Twitter :)

Birdie has been enjoying Snoopy's You Can Be Anything! so I'm very pleased to be able to offer 3 of my readers their own copy of the app, compliments of StoryPanda. Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good Luck!

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Snoopy Christmas Muffin Tin 

It's Christmastime, so Birdie's tin has both a Snoopy and a holiday theme, with both healthy stuff and treats.  She has raspberries, mozzarella, carrots & popcorn decorated with bento picks & cupcake rings, graham stars & rainbow chocolate covered sunflower seeds (I think they look like Christmas lights) & a pouch of Snoopy gummy fruit snacks.  Oh, and eggnog in a Peanuts cup!

What Peanuts fan wouldn't love a snack of popcorn topped with the world's most famous beagle's smiling mug?

Here are a few more Peanuts Christmas Lunches 

by some of my bento blogger friends:

I'm in love with Organized Bites' sweet rosemary & tomato Charlie Brown tree, and starry Peace On Earth theme.

I'm really digging Becoming a Bentoholic's salami Snoopy doghouse, and the Christmas lights & character accents make it so colourful & cute.

Lunchbox Dad's festive Peanuts themed feast is filled with delightful details.

I asked my fellow bento bloggers if they had any Peanuts lunches to share...
Good grief, there sure are a lot of Peanuts fans among my bento friends!

I'm almost sorry I asked, heh ♥ So here are even more Peanuts lunches:

Snoopy Bento by Wendolonia

You Blockhead! by Bento For Kidlet

Charlie Brown Feast by Organized Bites

Great Pumpkin Kids Lunch by Glory's Mischief

Snoopy Kids School Lunch by Glory's Mischief

It's Been 63 Years, Charlie Brown by Organized Bites

Snoopy At Christmastime by What's In Our Lunch Bags?

The Peanuts Gang In A PlanetBox by Becoming a Bentoholic

It's Your Anniversary, Charlie Brown! by BentOnBetterLunches

It's the Geat Gumpkin Charlie Brown! by Dreams, Schemes & Bento Themes

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Bento by Dreams, Schemes & Bento Themes

Charlie Brown Thanksgiving by What's In Our Lunch Bags?

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving by Becoming a Bentoholic

Happy Birthday, Peanuts! by What's In Our Lunch Bags?

A Snoopy yubo Bento by BentOnBetterLunches

Charlie Brown & Lucy Bento by Eclectic Lamb

Snoopy Autumn Bento by Bento, Monsters

Snoopy On A Winter Night by Bento Days

Snoopy Bento by Little Miss Bento

Snoopy Bento by Diana Rambles

Snoopy Bento by Eclectic Lamb

Happy Holidays!

Lunch Guest: Loving Lunches!

G'Day, I'm Jackie from Loving Lunches (yes, I'm Australian). I'm loving the opportunity to guest post for Cristi while she gets some well deserved family time! To be honest I'm quite nervous, Cristi is one of my Bento idols and I still get a little giddy when I see her name pop up on my screen. I had intended to do a Monkeys in Suits lunch for you today, with lots of geeky references, but I'm afraid I'm only on geek level 1 and failed you there. I did however make sure I included some peanut butter for Pickle. Anyway, here's lunch!

Today's muffin tin was made for my Miss M, now 3 1/2 and contains

• banana/peanut butter/nutella smoothie (in a Take & Toss cup)
• bow-tie pasta (because bow-ties are cool... hey hey, I got one in there!) with tomato dipping sauce (using these silicon food cups)
• half a banana (I do keep wanting to sing *bzthhhhpppfft, half a banana*) with some almonds & yoghurt covered sultanas
• mashed banana/peanut butter monkey sandwiches with Nutella and peanut butter detail
• yoghurt and almonds (in a cute little banana silicon cup)
• monkey egg

When thinking on ingredients I knew I wanted to include peanut butter, and my inspiration for this lunch came from my new Animal Palz monkey, so banana was a must. Why not combine the two? I remember having banana sandwiches as a kid and earlier this year I rediscovered the joys of banana smoothies. So half a mashed banana and peanut butter it was.

I then added some Nutella and had a mummy sample with the bread offcuts.

The leftovers were wizzed with some milk and voila - smoothie. The other half of the banana ended up in the lunch so there was no waste there either.

Thank you for letting me share some Loving Lunches love with you today. I do believe you will be returning to your regular program by this time next week :-)

Rabbit Food

I packed bunny rabbits for Pickle today, so I had rabbits on my mind when I made his sisters'. All the vegetables would make good rabbit food too!

The little girls got "rabbit food" muffin tins filled with:

• Annie's Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks
• yogurt with rabbit head sprinkles
• a spoon for the yogurt, and a dip cup of peanut butter
• celery sticks to dip in the peanut butter
• rabbit sandwiches (PB for Sprout, cheese for Birdie)
• baby carrots with leaf picks

I left the bunny fruit gummies in the packet so they wouldn't be tempted to nibble on them right away. It worked, they ate up their veggies & sandwiches before they asked me to open it  :)

In the main section of her EasyLunchbox, Bella has a cheddar & turkey flatbread wrap, celery sticks & a dip cup of peanut butter, & a mozzarella string cheese. In the smaller sections she has baby carrots with leaf pick stems, & cucumber slices in a flower cup, with a bunny pick.

Pickle has a whole warren of mini peanut butter rabbit sandwiches. His stamped sandwiches were inspired by a beautiful fruit platter by Bentos On The Bayou. The stamped melon bears reminded me that I have the same set of cutters & stamps, which includes a bunny, a bear, & an elephant too!

Bella was sneezing a lot while getting ready for school - allergies - so I added this Lunchbox Love note with a fact about sneezes  :)

Some of the stuff I used to make these lunches:

Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge : Monster Muffins & Nutty Greek Yogurt Dip

When I offer a new food to my preschooler, I find that when I "hide" it among familiar foods she's less likely to flat out refuse it, so I try to make the new food just one of many small portions. Muffin tin meals are perfect for that!

Believe it or not,  Birdie's never eaten a pear! I don't like pears, so they're not a fruit I buy unless a recipe calls for it (I do like how they taste, just not their texture) and I recently realized I've never offered them to my 4 year old. Perfect - I wanted a new food to score bonus points in my Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge meal - pears it is :)

I decided to offer the pears with similar fruits I know she likes, apples, and something yummy to dip them in.  The Crunch a Color formula for a healthy lunch is 3 colors + a protein + a healthy grain. No processed foods. Birdie's not much of a meat eater so a greek yogurt & nut butter dip was just the thing for her protein. Celery sticks would go well with that too.

Nut Butter Greek Yogurt Dip 1 cup greek yogurt  1 cup nut butter (I used almond butter)  1 Tbsp honey  1 tsp cinnamon Stir all ingredients together & serve with fruit, veggies, graham crackers... whatever sounds good to you!

Birdie loves muffins so for her healthy grain portion I baked a batch of carrot bran ones and gave some of them monster faces :) I haven't made monster muffins in ages! I featured some in one of my first blog posts! That batch had cheese teeth & craisin eyes. Today I made the teeth with almond slivers and the eyes with cheese & candy coated sunflower seeds.

The monster muffins inspired a monster theme for the muffin tin meal!  I put a funny creature cupcake topper ring on a celery stick, and some octopi bento picks in the almond butter dip became baby monsters taking a mud bath :)

So how did Birdie's muffin tin meal score? Using the cards from our Crunch A Color Healthy Eating Game, I calculated the points:

Red - apples - 5 points

Liquid - water (not shown) - 5 points

Green - apples - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - pears - 5 points

Try a New Food - pears - 5 points x 2 = 10 points

Healthy Grains - carrot bran muffin - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - if carrots in the muffins count - 10 points

Green - celery - 10 points

Protein - almond butter & yogurt- 10 points

Bonus - calcium rich protein - yogurt in dip - 1 point

66 points, not too shabby for a simple lunch! It could have scored more points with a little more colour... but there's always dinner  :) 

Most importantly, lunch was a winner with my little sproutlet :

Are you wondering if she liked the pears? No, she didn't - but she tried them!

Thanks Crunch a Color for including me in this Challenge!

Tuesday, No Groceries Blues Day

Our fridge has a case of the blues right now, it's feeling a little low - on fresh fruit, cheese, & milk, that is. The pantry's sad & lonely too...  Luckily Tuesdays are always breakfast for lunch day at school, so Bella, Pickle & Sprout can have pancakes, yogurt & fruit, while Birdie & I do a big shop and stock up. Maybe I'll pack Birdie a Beaba tray of snacky foods to go - if I can scrounge up enough miscellaneous munchies.

Something like this one I packed her last week:

I love the Beaba tray as a sort of muffin tin meal to go. The 7 little cups each hold about 2oz of food, it fits in our BuiltNY insulated lunch totes, and it has a lid! It's made for freezing portions of baby food, and I never would have thought of using it for a lunch - thanks to my friend Karen of What's In Our Lunch Bags? for the idea! You can see the lid in her posts.

Birdie loves her "Beaba bites" lunches. I should probably get another tray, for the summer, when Sprout's out of school - she's going to want one too.  But which colour....

Star Trek Muffin Tin

Boldly going where no muffin tin meal has gone before :)

Birdie's muffin tin meal contains:

• Trader Joe's yogurt vanilla cookies
• Pacific Rose apple wedges
• Organic baby carrots
• Cantaloupe stars
• Cheese stars
• Ranch seasoned star crackers

Lately Birdie's been leaving cantaloupe uneaten, claiming she doesn't like it. I don't buy that, since she used to eat it without complaint - so I keep offering it. Today, she ate it! "I like this cantaloupe when it's stars," she informed me. Stellar!

Some stuff used to make this tin:

Love our Earth, Love our Oceans

Happy Earth Day!  Last year I put a little planet earth in each lunchbox, but this year I chose a different theme, ocean life, because of course, one of the most important parts of taking care of our earth is taking care of our oceans!

The sproutlets have always enjoyed nature programs about the ocean and marine life, and some new favourite family films are the whale tales Big Miracle & Free Willy. They also love Winter the dolphin, so whales & dolphins were an easy choice for their Earth day lunches.

Beanstalk's Laptop Lunches bento box contains:

• a Lunch Punch whale peanut butter sandwich
• blue gummy fish swimming in Veggie Stick waves 
• green & purple grapes with an orca whale cupcake pick
• half a Granny Smith apple decorated with a fruit leather spouting whale & waves
• a GreenPaxx reusable straw (for the yogurt drink not shown) folded and tucked into itself
• and a Lunchbox Love note. Bella got this one last year - Yep, we recycle our Lunchbox Love :) 

I'm sure the trip to school buried the fish among the Veggie Sticks, but that's okay, they'll have been a surprise when he came across them :)

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento contains: 

• blue gelatin
• green & purple grapes
• cheese tortilla heart roll-ups
• baby carrot hearts
• romaine, raddichio & cucumber salad
• a Lunchbox Love note - a new one :) 
• a Light My Fire spork
• and a whale print Red Poppy cloth napkin

I love how these heart roll-ups turned out ♥ I made them by folding a tortilla in half to make a crease before covering it with cheese,  rolling in each side towards the crease, slicing 2" pieces & securing with a skewer.

I made a batch of Earth Day muffins! They're apple streusel, coloured green, with blue sugar sprinkles added to the streusel topping.  They smelled so good we couldn't wait for Earth Day, and had some for dessert last night :)

Pickle wanted to take one with his lunch as well:

Pickle's yubo lunchbox contains:

• dolphin peanut butter sandwiches
• an Earth Day apple streusel muffin
• vanilla yogurt coloured blue & green, topped with dolphin sprinkles

It's Muffin Tin Monday!

The little girls' tins contain:

• earth day apple streusel muffins
• green & purple grapes
• broccoli trees
• dolphin cheese atop starfish crackers
• whale peanut butter sandwiches
• vanilla yogurt coloured blue with dolphin sprinkles
• baby carrot hearts

Some stuff used to make these lunches: