Bakin' pancakes, bakin' bakin' pancakes...

Sprout asked if she could have a muffin in her lunch & I said yes, I'd bake some, but while they were baking I got sidetracked & burned them! And of course I didn't have enough ingredients for another batch. But I did have some pancake mix... so I baked some pancake muffins... & they turned out all right! Imagine a dense, pancake flavoured muffin. Next time I'll mix together a little maple syrup & icing sugar to drizzle over them... 

I baked the pancake muffins in a pumpkin shaped Wilton silicone baking mold. I don't know if it's available in this size anymore, but I found a mini-muffin version!  I spritzed the cups with coconut oil so the shaped muffins would pop out easily, poured in pancake mix 2/3 full, & baked them at 350 until they looked ready - about 15 minutes. Side note: Baking pancakes got the bacon pancakes song from Adventure Time in my head :)

I packed Sprout's lunch in her PlanetBox Shuttle. The pumpkin shape got me thinking about a fall theme so I used orange & pumpkin shaped silicone cups, & chose squirrel, acorn, & mushroom picks to embellish her strawberries & carrots, cutting the latter in bite size pieces since she has a loose front tooth, & a mushroom treat box filled with dark chocolate covered raisins. I also gave her some spiced pistachios - she loves those - & some orange Yami yogurt in the PlanetBox's Little Dipper. 

I added some more fun touches with a colourful woodland print cloth napkin, a happy little stainless steel spoon, & a Lunchbox Love note. This one is from Volume 92 & has a joke on the flip side.

I just love that little spoon. I have several - they're my favourite coffee stirring spoons - they make me smile :)

Edited To Add: I forgot to add a pic of Sprout's after school snack. Her loose tooth was really wiggly when she got home from school, too wiggly to bite into anything - but she wanted apples & a peanut butter sandwich - so I used my FunBites cube cutter to make them bite size:

Scrapbook paper background is Perfect Day from Thankful Collection by Bella Blvd from Scrapbook.com

Bats, Cats & Witches' Hats

There are only a few more school days until Hallowe'en, so I packed lots of it into today's lunches:

Beanstalk has a Laptop Lunches bento box packed with ham on honey wheat bat sandwiches & a meathead skeleton, heheh. It was once the stick of a lollipop - a gift from my blogger friend who went dye-free (Biting The Hand That Feeds You). He also has apple wedges, cantaloupe chunks, a granola bar, and some chocolate eyeballs.

Pickle took his yubo. He watched me pack it, and in his own words:

"Yes! I love it! Blog this as my best lunch ever!" 

He especially liked the witch hat sprinkle-topped yogurt:

To make the hat shape, I set a mini cookie cutter on top of the yogurt and sprinkled inside it. It'll probably be all messed up by the time he eats lunch but he saw it so that's okay :) I also added a couple of pumpkin cookies and a little cup of peanut butter we brought home from a restaurant (upside down with a sticker on it), for with his snack. He likes to eat it with a spoon.

Bella got a witchy kitty turkey & cheese sandwich in her EasyLunchbox. On the side she has tomatoes, cantaloupe, and some cookies for snack (there are Fig Newtons under the pumpkin cookie). Oh, and a little chocolate bat.

Sprout is dressing up as Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service for Hallowe'en, so I stuck a witch pick in with her strawberries & carrots. In the EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper (decorated with dry erase marker) she has cheddar cheese. Under the pumpkin cookie and chocolate is an apple juice box.

In the largest section of her Bynto, she has scaredy cat peanut butter sandwiches, stacked, and a witches cauldron filled with star crackers, and a Hallowe'en Lunchbox Love note - they all got one of those.

Oh, I almost forgot! Pickle wanted me to blog a picture of his yubo lunchbox with the Hallowe'en lid on :)

Stuff I used for these lunches:

Candy Corn Pizza

Oh yes, candy corn pizza! I've been waiting a year to make this, since I saw it in my Ghoulish Goodies cookbook last year! 

Mozzarella, tangy sauce brushed over sharp cheddar, and a mix of cheddar and mozza make the candy corn colours. This is Bella's, with more sunburst cherry tomato "pumpkins" by request, and a clementine Jack O'Lantern, inspired by Lunches Fit For a Kid. Birdie & Sprout have the same thing, except they have only 1 slice, and regular red tomatoes, since they pronounced the golden tomatoes "yut" and "yucky",  respectively. On sight. *sigh* Silly picky sproutlets.  Bella got a few pieces of real candy corn too, but not the little girls, they can't be trusted to eat their lunch before their sweets as Bella can :)

Pickle has candy corn peanut butter sandwiches, made with white wheat, regular wheat, and dark wheat bread sections. I think this came out super cute! I wanted to put a chocolate syrup ghost face on his yogurt but didn't want to push my luck, the dark wheat may be asking enough of him...
Maybe tomorrow :)

I'm starting to get into the Hallowe'en spirit! I've had the porch decorated for Fall for a few weeks now - mostly with leaves, and some sunflowers,  then this past weekend we went to the Pumpkin Patch, and now that our pumpkins are out there waiting to be carved, it looks more Hallowe'en-y than just Fall-ish... time to put up the candy corn and Jack O'Lantern light garlands! 

Here we are at the Pumpkin Patch this past Sunday - sans Beanstalk, who preferred to go to a friend's house - he doesn't like the corn maze or hay ride. The rest of us enjoyed it though! It was a beautiful day too.

The cookbook I got the pizza idea from - a gift from my mom,

 along with this other one full of fun Hallowe'en ideas :)

   

Fall Lunch, Time Crunch

It's a really good thing I had most of the lunches made up last night, because my alarm did not go off this morning (since I forgot to set it) and I only had half an hour to get 5 sproutlets fed, ready, packed, and out the door. It was close, but we made it!

Bella took pumpkin shaped pizza quesadillas, with little pumpkins and oak leaves cut from the scraps, oak leaf cheese and cucumber slices, and golden sunburst cherry tomatoes on shamrock picks - meant to look like pumpkins with stems - close enough right? :) We'd never tried the sunburst tomatoes before - they taste just like the red ones but they are orangey-yellow, fun for a change. For a treat, she got butter cookie leaves, and a few little Halloween themed marshmallows that are supposed to look like ghost shapes (the white ones do, saved them for later this month) but we both thought the orange and brown ones looked more like leaves.

Yep, I'm still on a Fall theme kick - it IS my favourite time of year :) Oooh, and I got some Fall-themed muffin tins this weekend - we went to Party City for some Halloween stuff and Sailor Boy saw me eyeing them and laughed and said "Oh just get them, you know you want them" ♥

Anyways, back to today's lunches... 

Bean Sprout & Birdie took snacky bento lunches in their Sassy boxes. Scrabble Cheez-It crackers (I have to say, these crackers are cute but they are not very tasty, we won't buy them again) plus pretzels for Birdie, cheddar and mozzarella cheese, red grape tomatoes and sunburst cherry tomatoes, and baby carrots.

Pickle has his usual yogurt and peanut butter sandwiches of course - a puppy in his doghouse (Lunch Punch) and a bigger dog and bone (Wilton cookie cutters). The bigger dog is a bit muddy, heheh (peanut butter smears, I was messy in my haste this morning).

Beanstalk took a MOMables lunch. No, you don't get to see it, MOMables lunches are for subscribers only :) If you're not familiar with MOMables, check out their website: http://momables.com/ or visit their page on Facebook for more information on this time-saving service. If you've been thinking of trying out a subscription to MOMables, now is a great time to do it! All of October’s subscription fees will be donated towards the Cancer treatment of young Joseph Scott. If you're already a MOMables subscriber but want to help this brave little boy and his family, please join me in donating directly. ♥

Fall for Lunch

Autumn is finally here, my favourite time of year! For the first day of Fall, the sproutlets are getting colourful autumn themed lunches. The vibrant colours of their EasyLunchboxes lids are so fall-ish too! 

Here is Bella's bento - she has cinnamon pumpkin pancakes, covered with "fallen leaves" cut from fruit leather roll-ups, Bugles corn chip "horns o'plenty",  cheese pumpkins & leaves, green & red grapes, and Granny Smith apple wedges. I love this lunch!  ♥ 

Beanstalk didn't want cheese or grapes, but he had peanuts & raisins. 

He also ate most of his fruit leather leaves while I was packing the lunches!

(I gave him a plain un-cut roll to take with him)

Birdie and Sprout both had the same thing as Bella but in smaller portions.

And last of all, for my Pickle's first day of Fall, a pumpkin shaped peanut butter sandwich on white wheat decorated with bite sized whole wheat leaf and acorn mini peanut butter sandwiches. And yogurt and oatmeal cookies as usual :)

Don't the leaf & acorn fruit leather roll-ups look appetizing? So pretty too! I almost wanted to stick them on the windows instead of in the lunches!

Time to start decking my halls for Fall!

Stuff I used to make these Fall Lunches: