Rainbow Bright & Slightly Spooky

Bella got muffin cups in her lunch today, a rainbow selection :)

I didn't have any blue food so I put blue seal picks playing with cheese balls in the blue cup ;) Ham roll-ups in the pink, carrot stars in the red, cheddar hearts & bunny crackers in the orange,  sweet bell pepper in the yellow, & celery in the green. All things I know she likes. I think the celery looks like it's smiling :)

When I pack things that might tip or spill and make a mess, I like to fill the empty space with something to keep things from moving around. Most of the time I use a cloth napkin - it acts like tissue paper does in a gift box, keeping things in their place. Today I used lettuce - it's like edible tissue paper - plus it will help the veggies stay moist, and Bella likes lettuce so she'll probably eat it!

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I made Pickle's lunch slightly spooky and a little more fun than usual. He was sort of upset this morning and didn't want to go to school, so I promised him a treat in his lunch to look forward to. He loves plain milk chocolate, especially if it has the Hershey's brand on it, so he'll be happy to find the Hershey's chocolate ghost. He also got bat peanut butter sandwiches, a few marshmallow ghosts, and a bowl of Cheerios with a little bottle of milk. Fun!

I know I've said it before, but I just love this Sistema container! Cereal on the bottom, sandwiches and treats in the tray, all separated, sealed, and compact.   I just had to buy another one with pink trim for Bella's salad lunches :)

Hey, I have a button now, if anyone wants to link to me! 

<center> <a href="http://bentonbetterlunches.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h35/merrycrismess/BentOnBetterLunches/BentOnBetterLunchesButton1.png"/></a></center> A big thank you Charlene of Bentos for Bella &
Honeysuckle Designs for making it for me! Happy Monday everyone!

Angry Birds Sandwich

Here I go, hopping on the Angry Birds lunch wagon! Not sure what took me so long, Pickle is crazy about the game :) I've never played it myself, but I'm familiar with the characters - who isn't ?

Pickle's favourite is the Red Bird, so he was a given, and I decided to make a little King Pig as well to make the lunch more filling. I'm really pleased with how it turned out! Completely edible, and no artificial colouring :) 

The Red Bird's body is a peanut butter sandwich made from wheat and white wheat bread. I used dark wheat for his tail feathers, pupils, and eyebrows, and wheat crust for his beak. His features are "glued" on with peanut butter. 

The Pig King is a peanut butter sandwich on wheat, with white wheat features. His pupils, nostrils, and crown are made from crust. I used different sized drinking straws to cut the little circles.

This sandwich was time consuming, but fun! I don't normally do this much - a quick press of my trusty Lunch Punches is more my speed for the average school day - but since there is no school today (conferences again) Pickle had lunch at home,  and it was the perfect opportunity for me to get to see him opening a special lunch.

It's very plain to see that he absolutely loved it :)

    

In fact, he loved it so much, he refused to eat it - he wants to save it! I had to make him a plain peanut butter sandwich to eat. *sigh* Lesson learned - make the lunch look good enough to eat, not too good to eat!

Looking for Angry Birds lunch ideas? Look no further!

This week's Bento of the Week theme was Angry Birds!

Last Minute Lunchables

There's no school today because of parent/teacher conferences, and we had the other half of yesterday's candy corn pizza to warm up,  so I didn't give any thought to lunch...  until Sailor Boy reminded me, minutes before we needed to leave the house - that the little girls still had preschool. Gah! Fortunately they were already dressed. Here's what I hastily packed in their lunches:

They can't all be works of art, right...  and I had to leave myself enough time to snap a photo ;)

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. ♥