St. Patrick's Day Lunches

Céad míle fáilte! If you were here earlier when I hadn't posted ALL the lunches - it's thankful I am you've returned :)

Birdie & Sprout will be at a friend's for lunch, but I packed them each a shamrock & rainbows snack to take with them.

They will be so thrilled to have Lucky Charms cereal! I never buy it for them anymore since they only eat the Charms (marshmallows), and leave all the Luck (cereal) - today is their lucky day :) They also have grapes, celery sticks with a peanut butter dip, and melon gelatin topped with an apple fruit leather shamrock. I love how their snack boxes turned out, they are so cute!

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Bella loves a holiday lunch, so lots of shamrocks went into hers. She also loves rainbows, so I packed her a rainbow of grapes & tomatoes :) Under the rainbow is a pot of gold cheddar cheese, and turkey.

There's even a shamrock at the bottom of the cup the slices of carrot gold are in :) Underneath them are some celery sticks, and in the little clover-leaf container, almond butter to dip them in. She also got a stack of English cucumber shamrocks.

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Beanstalk on the other hand, does not usually like a special holiday lunch. But like it or not, I packed him a St. Patrick's Day PlanetBox. He would definitely not like rainbows, shamrocks & pots of gold, but I thought he might think it was cool if his lunch reflected a bit of his ancestry. I'm not of Irish descent, but his great-grandparents on his Dad's side emigrated from Ireland.

OK so I did sneak a couple of shamrocks in his - but they're subtle, not cutesy. I doubt the melon gelatin shamrock is even recognizable without being told that's what it's supposed to be :) He has lots of green: green gelatin, green checkered apple, green grapes, green repurposed M&M's container (filled with spiced almonds)...

I tried to make some yogurt coated pretzels look like the Flag of Ireland... well, at least they have the colours of the flag :) Green & orange fruit leather rolls flanking a yogurt coated granola bar are also meant to look flag-like. The white stripe looked kind of bare... then I looked down at my hand, at the Claddagh ring his Dad gave me our first Christmas together - perfect! I cut it out of apricot fruit leather.

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It's Tuesday, Breakfast for Lunch at school, so Pickle's having his usual pancake hot lunch, no shamrock sandwich for him.  But Sailor Boy got a St. Patrick's Day lunch! I packed him a hearts of romaine salad with cucumbers and green peppers, which are also on the shamrock chicken skewers. I couldn't resist putting his vinaigrette in the little rainbow container - especially once I'd decided to cut the pineapple into gold coins :)

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Thanks for hopping by! But don't stop here! Follow the rainbow on my page and the one on the next, and so on, until you get back to me! If you've been looking for fun St.Patrick's Day lunch ideas, you're in luck, our blog hop is your pot of gold! Do you know what the colours of the Flag of Ireland represent? I didn't! Hop over to Keeley McGuire , admire her fantastic lunches, and find out!

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Stuff I used for these lunches:

More stuff In My Cupboards

Brunch Bunch

Today the girls' lunches are kind of brunchy. Beanstalk's would have been as well if he hadn't spotted me packing the waffle sandwich and vetoed it. Ah well, it didn't go to waste - breakfast for me!

Bella has a cream cheese and strawberries and whole wheat waffle sandwich (open-face for pic), one of my favourites from our MOMables menus. So - Bella says she doesn't like strawberries, but I'm being a mean mama and pretending I forgot... because she likes all things strawberry flavoured, I'm sure she'd like the berries themselves if she just gave them a chance! And she can always pick them off right? On the side she has apple wedges, celery sticks and my new love, Justin's Maple Almond Butter, for dipping.

Beanstalk's PlanetBox is packed with yogurt (This is new, woohoo! Just got him to try it yesterday!), raisins, yogurt pretzels, half a Clif Kid Z Bar, and apple wedges.Usually his cloth napkin is tucked into a pocket of his lunchbox but since he vetoed the waffle I had an empty space so I wrapped it around his spoon. Can't have an empty space! :)

Pickle has a Pac-Man peanut butter sandwich. The bread dots are stuck to the bottom of the sandwich box with daubs of peanut butter. He has this game on his iPod and was excited to see it as his lunch. The bread had a bit of an air bubble and he insisted I turn it into an eye for Pac-Man :)

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Sprout & Birdie have brunchy muffin tin meals of waffle & cream cheese sandwiches, yogurt, sunshine juice, apple, cheese omelet, and strawberries.

Don't think Birdie even noticed all the heart shapes. Cute lunches and mums with cameras can't compete with Pingu & Shaun the Sheep! Yes, I’m letting them watch TV while they eat - but how else would I get this post written? :)

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Oh, one last thing! Congratulations to Nina of Mamabelly's Lunches With Love, she won my Super Healthy Kids Giveaway! Nina chose the original Healthy Habits plate - maybe we'll see it on her blog!

Some stuff in today's post:


More stuff I used In My Cupboards :)

Lock & Lock Bento Lunchbox Round-Up

Here are some almost forgotten Lock & Lock bentos of Beanstalk's. I think most of them are from when I did Rainbow Week - they didn't "go" :)

Checkered apple, white cheddar Cheez-its, Clif Kid Z bar

Green & red grapes, honey ham rolls, Clif Kid Z bar, white wheat bagel 

Mozzarella string cheese, parmesan goldfish, Clif bar,  ham rolls, carrots

Goldfish crackers, Granny Smith apples, Clif bar, & ham

Quaker Whole Hearts cereal, apples, chocolate milk, Clif Bar

 Apple, Clif Z Bar, and peanut butter sandwich squares. 

Beanstalk requested this lunch after seeing my post about 

his little sisters' "Hip To Be Square" muffin tin meal:

Not a lot of variety here is there? It can be a challenge to make the same foods look different! He's eating more variety now - yesterday he tried yogurt! Hooray!

DIY Cupcake Toppers - Dr. Seuss Birthday!

We had Pickle's birthday party last weekend. I can't share pics from the party since there were other people's children in every shot - but just envision lots of red, turquoise, and yellow balloons hovering above lots of kids painting ceramics. We had his party at Paint Your World, a local ceramic and glass art studio. It was lots of fun!  Oh, I did take an Instagram of the balloons :)

Did I mention it was a surprise party? Yes, Pickle requested a surprise party this year - which was why we had it a week after his birthday, and not at home :) He also requested a Dr. Seuss party. While the birthday package at Paint Your World included cupcakes, they didn't do themes - so I made my own Dr. Seuss themed cupcake toppers! Along with the balloons, and Dr. Seuss paper plates & napkins, it was plenty Seussian.

I'd seen adorable Dr. Seuss cupcake toppers, even printable ones, on Etsy etc, but since I was short on time and funds, I decided to just make them myself, the cheapest way possible. You can't get much cheaper than free! Which was what these ones were, since they used stuff I already had - just paper, food picks (toothpicks would work too) and a printer :)

To make them, I used photos of the party plates (snagged from the stock photos on the party store website) that I printed 16 to a page and cut out. I taped a food pick to the back of a circle printed with one plate design, and glued one of the other plate design over it,  back to back. Easy peasy!

Not perfect, (can you tell I don't own a circle cutter?) but not too shabby!

I ended up using different picks than the ones shown with the supplies, I thought yellow and turquoise would match better - not that it mattered, since the picks didn't show at all once they were stuck in the cupcakes :) 

Thank you Pickle's Grandpa who thought to take a picture of the Cat in the Hat cupcakes before they were handed out!

A Bunch of Bentos

Today I woke up feeling twice my age. Much too creaky to be creative.

Bella got popcorn, yogurt pretzels, a ham & cheddar bagelwich, red grapes, & golden globe tomatoes in her EasyLunchbox.

Beanstalk got yogurt pretzels, raisins, a ham bagelwich, popcorn & red grapes on the vine in his PlanetBox.

By the time I packed Pickle's lunch, my coffee and pain relief had kicked in, so he got a creative sandwich :) I told him this peanut butter sandwich is out of this world ;) Bella was jealous that he got a theme, so I promised her a better lunch tomorrow... she asked for a princess theme... I'll have to visit Biting The Hand That Feeds You for some princess lunch ideas!

Birdie asked for a fishie eggie, so that's what she got, plus some pretzel & cheese goldfish crackers, a cheddar dolphin, and red grapes.

Sprout had the same lunch as Birdie, but with star egg & cheese shapes.

This bento is mine! It's a mini omelet made with cheese scraps from the sproutlets' bentos, red grapes, more cheddar cheese scraps, and leftover asparagus. Yummy :) I submitted it to my LEGO lunch box to maybe be a guest lunch box, so we'll see...

Don't miss my Super Healthy Kids plate giveaway!

And several of my fellow lunch bloggers are hosting giveaways too:

Bobbi's Bentos - FunBites Giveaway

Family Fresh Meals - MOMables Giveaway

Bento School Lunches - Coach Purse Giveaway

Crazy?...Maybe! - MOMables Giveaway - Ending Saturday!

Lots of chances to win great stuff!

Some stuff I used to make these lunches:

More stuff I used In My Cupboards :)