A Birdie Bento for my Baby Bird

We haven't called Birdie Baby Bird in a long time... at some point the nickname evolved, but that's how it began - when she was a toddler she liked to chirp, just like a baby bird. I packed her a Birdie-themed PlanetBox Shuttle for lunch:

My friend Venia (of the lovely Organized Bites blog) sent me a birdie sandwich cutter she found at Target. It makes 4 birds (or chicks) that can be arranged as you like. I spread Birdie's cheese sandwiches around her yogurt-filled Little Dipper. I remembered I had some chick-shaped sprinkles in an Easter mix so added a smattering, & glued some sugar eyes on the sandwiches with honey. On the side she has grapes, a clementine, & tomatoes.

Since we planned to take lunch to the lagoon at the park, I added a cloth napkin & a happy little spoon atop the sandwiches, which besides being useful for eating & wiping fingers, fills the empty space & helps keep things from tumbling in a heap when the PlanetBox is carried. 5 year old Birdie's just learning to read so I chose a simple Lunchbox Love note for her:

I love the little bird that's on every Lunchbox Love note ♥

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Some stuff I used to pack this lunch:

Goodbyn Bento Box Round-up

Here's Birdie's last preschool lunch ever! More of a snack, really. The school had a cookout on the last day, so she didn't need to bring anything, but I didn't think she would eat a hot dog & chips (she didn't) so I packed her some applesauce (sprinkled with heart quins), a granola bar (broken in half) & a cheese heart, packed in a Goodbyn snack box.

Since the school year's over, I might as well share the rest of the Goodbyn lunches that never got posted for whatever reason :)

Our Goodbyns are some of my favourite containers to reach for in a rush - they're so colourful they make the lunch look fun even if it's just random things practically thrown in it, so I don't need to take any extra time to be creative or add accessories, unless I want to - see:

Ok, so the hard-cooked egg is shaped like a teddy bear head - but that didn't take any extra effort since I cook & mold eggs in batches ahead of time.  

Pancakes are always a favourite. They can be made ahead & frozen, or purchased that way. Add some fruit, a little dipper of syrup , & a yogurt (not shown), & my little one's lunchbox comes home empty.

Here's an Instagram pic I shared but forgot to blog! I had nothing in mind for lunch that day & was not feeling at all creative so I asked Sprout what she wanted & packed exactly that - ham, grapes, a Go-Gurt, crackers, & iced tea (with reusable CoolStraw), in her purple Bynto, an oldie but goodie :)

Another oldie, from way back in October! This one was for Bella - as the note says - and it appears I swapped the purple Bynto lid for a pink one, maybe for fun, or maybe I was just in a hurry :)

I don't remember what was tucked under the mini bagel! Being October, it might have been a Hallowe'en candy...

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I just bought one of the new Goodbyn Hero lunchboxes, a red one, for Pickle to take to school next year. He's pretty excited about it - he loves red. He's pretty hard on his lunch gear, so if it can hold up to his abuse, it really will be a hero! I'm pretty optimistic;  if it's anything like our other Goodbyn containers, it won't disappoint. I wonder if it will fit in the Goodbyn lunch bag... if it does, I might get one for Birdie too... she loves her blue birdie bag :)

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Some stuff used to make these lunches

   

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.

DIY Pizzables - Fast Food!

Last week Birdie took a fun DIY pizzable lunch, which she loves. Today was her preschool's pizza day, where the school provides a delivery pizza lunch as a treat, and since she loves pizza, I thought she'd be thrilled! But, no, minutes before we had to leave, she asked, "What's my lunch?" and when I told her it was school pizza day, she was not pleased. "I want your kind of pizza lunch." Aw... ♥ So, here is another version of the DIY pizzables lunch, the quickly throw stuff in an EasyLunchbox in less than 3 minutes version :)

She has marinara sauce in a little lidded cup (I love the way Birdie says it, mara-mara sauce), a bagel thin cut in half for her crusts, & shredded cheese to top. On short notice just cheese will have to do :) No time for cute details. Luckily I already had honeydew melon chopped for lunches (I pre-chop fruit to save time) so we made it out the door with time to pause & take a picture even.

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!

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Stuff used to make this lunch:

Spring Blossoms for Birdie

Birdie got a pretty Spring bento lunch today:

She has a blossom egg (made with the flower egg mold I posted about here) , Spring Ritz crackers, cheese blossoms, and honeydew melon grass. It's not a whole lot of food but remember, she's only a preschooler :)

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 Today is a great day for Birdie & me - she slept all through the night, in her own bed! Yay! You may be thinking, so what, isn't she like 5, what's the big deal? Yes, she is 5, but it's a big deal for us, as she's been waking me up every night since her Dad deployed and I'm tired! But not last night, hooray!

I added a Lunchbox Love note to tell her how proud I am of her :)

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Some stuff I used to make this lunch:

Valentine's Day Yumbox

I packed Birdie a simple & sweet pink & red Valentine Yumbox for preschool.

Yogurt with pink sugar, graham cracker stars, cheese, watermelon cubes, raspberries with a heart fork pick, & a red Hershey's Kisses treat. Birdie carries her Yumbox in a BUILT Gourmet Getaway Lunch Tote.

She'd been home from preschool with a cold & cough for a couple of days, so was very happy to be feeling better Valentine's Day and go to school and give her teacher the Valentine she'd made :)

The day before, I'd made my little Valentine this LOVE bento to eat at home, inspired by Anna of Becoming A Bentoholic's much lovelier original version she shared in the Bento Bloggers & friends Valentines Day Hop.

L - Baby carrots & a marshmallow heart
O - Strawberries
V - Cheese sandwich heart
E - Watermelon

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Lunch stuff I used: