May The 4th Be With You Favourites!

My Star Wars fans are buying lunch at school,  but I did find a way to use one of our Star Wars food accessories... in Bella's hair ! Here are my favourite past May the 4th Be With You bentos,  & Bella's braid :)

Enjoy Your Lunch, You Will

Ham Solo PlanetBox

Origami Yoda EasyLunchbox

Sarlacc Pit Bean Dip PlanetBox

Which is your favourite?

Here's Bella's Stormtrooper cupcake ring repurposed as hair accessory :)

Happy Star Wars Day!

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

Launching into the Hallowe'en Season

Happy October! I packed Bella a boo-tiful lunch in her PlanetBox Launch: 

Turkey, cheese & cucumber wraps, as she requested, secured with pumpkin & bat picks, carrot fingers with a spider pick, a couple of Oreos in a pumpkin-shaped cup, and a handful of ghostly marshmallows. I love the Hallowe'en picks I used - they're long which is great for little snack kebabs, but easy to trim if I want them shorter,  & you get lots of all 4 in the set : 

I used some for this Hallowee'eny snack tray:

 

Back To School with yubo for my Bigger Boy!

This Back To School lunch I made for Pickle may be the last one of his that I blog! He's decided that now that he's in middle school, he's too old for themed bentos & shaped sandwiches, and wants plain lunches.  But I packed him this one (possibly) last special lunch anyways :)

He has a Babybel cheese with a check mark carved in the wax, Oreos with a chalkboard pick stuck in the frosting of one, yogurt with chocoladehagel (sprinkles), a notebook paper peanut butter sandwich embellished with food markers, stacked atop a second plain sandwich, & a Lunchbox Love note.

Everything pictured plus a drink, napkin, & spork is packed in his new, more grown up, yubo tote. It's less bulky than the yubo lunchbox, but still the perfect size for all the yubo containers, & more:

The yubo ice pack fits perfectly in the new soft-sided Tote, along with the same container combination as can be packed in the hard-sided yubo, as well as additional yubo container(s), accessories and/or a drink.

Something else that's new for middle school is that Pickle doesn't have an aide sitting with him,  encouraging him to eat tidily & helping him pack up when he's finished.  He likes to squish his food - it's an autism/sensory thing - plus he's neither the neatest of eaters, nor very good about remembering to put the lids back on his containers, & frequently brings home a messy lunch bag covered inside & out with smushed Oreo smears & spilled yogurt. So I was pretty thrilled with the ability to completely unsnap the yubo Tote & wipe it down, or even machine wash it. No scrubbing crud out of seams, yay!

I really like that when the yubo tote is completely unsnapped it becomes a placemat. Having a messy kid myself makes me more than a bit squeamish about eating on shared surfaces... who knows what germs are lurking there ready to leap onto my lunch, heheh... so this is a great feature for me :)

See all the lunchboxes & accessories yubo has to offer at getyubo.com

● ● ● ● ●

Just in case anyone's wondering about the bottle in Pickle's lunch, it's this:

It's called Bot-L, by Fred & Friends, & it's one of his favourites.  I like it well enough - it doesn't leak - but it's not insulated, & I have to hand wash it...
so I don't love it quite as much as Pickle does ;)

Disclosure: I received no monetary compensation for this post. I was offered a complimentary yubo tote to review with no obligation to endorse. This post does contain affiliate links to products I used. All opinions & images are my own. 

Fall Picks!

Today's Fall-ish bento for Bella was a perfect example of what my friend Kendra refers to as "pickography" - that's when you make a bento with nothing really artistic done to the actual food, no carvings or shapes, just plain food, "where picks and cups and accessories do all the work."  You may know my friend as bloggess Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You (and if you don't, check out her blog).  Pick a theme, any theme... if she doesn't have a pick for it, they probably don't make one!

Bella's EasyLunchbox is packed with carrot sticks, turkey & cheddar wraps secured with Autumn Leaves cupcake picks, a tomato in a yellow flower cup, & grapes embellished with a flexible plastic Sunflower pick:

The picks I chose were inspired by the sunflowers I had seen in the courtyard of her school the week before. Sunflowers make me smile. I hope the simple touches to her lunch made her smile :)