Welcome to the Boneyard

Oh, how I love Halloween. SO much. This year October has been even busier than usual for me, as I just started a new job and have been working quite a lot in addition to going to school and taking care of home and the kids. I am keeping quite busy and barely know which direction I'm moving in lately. Not that I'm complaining - I love it! The blog has been much too quiet lately. But when the lovely BBF'ers were planning up a triple-play Halloween Hop, there was no way I could resist that super fun action!

For my part, I made a Boneyard lunch for Beaker. As are all of his meals, this lunch is gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, peanut-free, egg-free, shellfish-free, and garlic-free. It's also a super simple meal, in a perfect size for a preschoolers little hands and tummy. There is plenty of scary this time of year, but no need for allergies or picky preschoolers to cause a fright!

To start, we have creepy-cool frozen yogurt skull and bones with frozen blueberries. Packing the yogurt and blueberries in while still frozen helps to keep the rest of the lunch at a nice cool temperature. By the time lunch rolls around, the blueberries have thawed a little and the yogurt has softened slightly, making a delicious and easy to eat dessert, which is also healthy. It tastes like a yummy blueberry ice cream, but has all of the nutrients, calcium, and protein of a fruity yogurt. Double WIN, nothing frightful about that!

The simple grave is made from a gluten, soy, and nut free vegan double chocolate zucchini muffin, topped with a rice cracker gravestone.

Beaker also has a broccoli floret 'grassy hill', with bites of leftover grilled pork chop and crunchy apple pieces. 

Making delicious, healthy, and fun lunches doesn't have to take a scary amount of time, either. This lunch took about twelve minutes to pack up, including the amount of work-time it took to prep the yogurt ahead of time.. Freezing the bones was pretty simple - just scoop some of your favorite yogurt into a silicone ice cube tray in a fun shape (skull and bones, in this case) and slip into the freezer for a few hours. I usually keep a tray or three in the freezer covered with plastic wrap for easy grab-and-go when needed or a fast after school snack for the kids. The muffins I also make ahead and freeze in large batches every now and again when I have a little extra time. Super time saver right there!

Have a happy happy Halloween!

Now click the button to see what spook-tacular fun awaits at What the Girls Are Having, and see the rest of the fang-ulous lunches on the hop!

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Two Days in One!

Getting back into the swing of things! 

It always takes a few days to recover from a vacation. And it seems like the better the vacation, the longer it takes to re-adjust to normal life. This week has definitely been no exception to that rule. We've been getting back in to our normal daily schedules, slowly but surely. The first day back from vacation, the kids all got lunch at school. Yesterday and today I packed lunches for [some of] them, as usual.

Bean's lunch from yesterday got us back into the Halloween theme. Only a few more days left until the big day!

She has turkey and cream cheese rolls on whole wheat tortilla, with spider ring decorations and bone picks, a peeled clementine, WELCH'S Fruit Snacks, Mixed Fruit (Google Affiliate Ad), frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, and Spiderman Cheez Its in a spider silicone cup, all tucked into an Easy Lunchbox.

Princess has a similar lunch of turkey and cream cheese rolls with bone picks, Spiderman CheezIts, a peeled clementine, fruit snacks, frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, and sweet bell pepper strips in a frog bento box.

I bought this frog bento box last year on clearance for $2.50 at Old Navy. Somewhere in the photo gallery is a pic from a lunch last year of the box all put together. 

I love the trick of freezing yogurt in silicone ice trays. It is so easy to pop a couple of pieces out and tuck them in a lunch. They don't stay frozen all day, but if I put them in the lunches in the morning right before the kids leave for school and put an ice pack in to the insulated lunch bags to keep everything cold, the frozen yogurt shapes are still firm enough to be an almost ice-cream-like treat at lunch time. I like using the Greek yogurt better than regular, because it has less sugar and more protein. And I think it just tastes better.

For today, all five kids requested lunches. Usually Brick and G-man prefer to get their lunch at school. Brick wanted Italian pasta salad for lunch, but specified NO veggies. Blah, how can you eat pasta salad with no veggies?! I pulled some partial packages of pasta out of the pantry and put the salad together, leaving half with no veggies and half the regular way.

Brick has his meat-and-cheese Italian pasta salad with Ritz crackers, summer sausage, cheddar cheese, and a cupcake leftover from his birthday dinner. Plastic spider rings from the Dollar Tree (and all of the orange - seriously, this a very orangey lunch!) add a little touch of Halloween.

For G-man, I packed a Biscoff spread sandwich made with Halloween cookie stamps and decorating gel. Biscoff spread is a nut-free peanut butter alternative made with cookies. It's really just smushed cookies made into a spread. I'm pretty sure it is completely devoid of any health benefits. It's more of a dessert than a protein source. But it's nut-free and safe for sending to school, and G-man ate every bite. Usually he just kind of pokes at his lunches. So, I packed in some cheddar and summer sausage slices to add a little protein, and some Ritz crackers for him to make sandwiches out of.

On top of the cupcake I used red decorating gel and "bloody bones" candy to make a bloody mess. He thought that was way cool.

The Halloween cookie stamps make drawing on the sandwich easy. I just had to follow the outline stamped in to the bread.

Bean was very impressed with the mummy lunch I made for Princess last week and requested one of her own. She has a round turkey sandwich with provolone 'bandage' strips on top, grapes, frozen Greek yogurt, and a cupcake with a sugar pumpkin.

Princess has frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, a cupcake with a skull-and-bones sugar decoration, cheddar and summer sausage strips, sweet bell pepper stripes and a couple of grape tomatoes, and a tombstone/grave Biscoff sandwich.

The sandwich is made with Biscoff spread, bloody bones candy, wheat bread, and decorating gel. Super easy, though not exactly healthy eating!

Beaker wanted a fishy lunch today. He has a fishy shaped peanut butter sandwich with Goldfish crackers and cupcake Goldfish grahams, and cheddar and summer sausage strips. He also had a bowl of grapes on the side.

Still working on putting together a big Vacation Bento blog post. Should have that done by tomorrow! 

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