Colourful Garden Lunches

Here are a couple of colourful EasyLunchboxes I packed for Sprout & Birdie. They were kind of inspired by the pretty floral print wax paper I used in them :)

 

Birdie likes elephants so I added an elephant bento pick to her leftover homemade pizza (that she helped make). Since she likes her pizza warmed up I lined that section with wax paper so the lunch helper could easily lift it all out to microwave it. In the smaller compartments she has grapes & cantaloupe embellished with silicone flower & butterfly bento picks. 

Sprout ate all her pizza so no leftovers for her. She has ham rolls secured with silicone butterfly & leaf picks, raspberries, cheddar cheese cut with a flower vegetable cutter,  pistachios, & a granola bar. The granola bars come 2 in a packet, but she typically only eats 1 so I wrapped it in a sheet of wax paper to keep it from getting soggy. The spork is for the berries.

Both bentos have colourful silicone cups - fluted, flowers, hearts, & crimped.

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Most of the bento accessories I used can be purchased at BentoUSA :)

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

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Stuff I used to make this lunch:

   

Hulk PlanetBox Lunch

My middle-schooler Beanstalk surprised me by asking if I would pack him lunch! A rare request. I couldn't resist making it just a little bit fun:

He chose what went into his PlanetBox - grapes, Halo oranges, pistachios & a peanut butter sandwich - then I used one of my Marvel Comics cookie cutter stamps, green & purple silicone muffin cups, and a Marvel Heroes cloth napkin to give it an Incredible Hulk theme :)

Halfway to Homecoming Military Kid Lunch

We've just passed the halfway point of Sailor Boy's deployment, yay! We read one of our favourite deployment comfort books which inspired me to make Bella a "Daddy loves you" lunch with a cucumber deployment chain:

A deployment chain is a paper chain that some military families make when their loved one deploys, to count down the days left until homecoming. ♥ 

When Dad's at Sea, by Mindy Pelton tells the story of a Navy family about to be separated by deployment, and the ways they cope.

One of the fun things they do is make a paper chain with a link for each day the Dad will be away, and hang it on the wall so the little girl can take off a link each night and see she's one day closer to her family being together again! The story's filled with great ideas for staying close during separation :)

Bella's EasyLunchbox is packed with a cucumber chain representing the deployment chain in the book,  cheese-filled tortilla secured with a long heart cocktail pick, tomato with anchor pick, cantaloupe balls with hugs & kisses, & a Lunchbox Love note, all to remind her that her Daddy loves her. 

Now that we are looking forward to Sailor Boy's homecoming, we've started shopping for welcome home gifts for him.  I got us a pair of mugs from Say Please, the folks who make our Lunchbox Love notes - aren't they sweet?

The sproutlets are full of ideas for presents for Daddy - my favourite so far is signing him up to play hockey with his favourite NHL team,  the Detroit Red Wings, haha! They're sure he would be great - they're so proud of him :)  

Here are Beanstalk & Bella a few years ago, ready for their school's Dress As Your Hero Day. They dressed as their Dad ♥

I'm so proud of them, and their Dad!

By coincidence, today happens to be Military Spouse Appreciation Day! 
I've been getting lots of thanks for all I do for my Sailor, and I'd like to say the same to all my fellow spouses, to my parents, and to our extended families and community too, who hold us all up! I couldn't do it alone. Thank you to everyone who supports our military & their families ♥

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Some stuff featured in this post: