Smile for the Camera!

School picture day! Time to dress up nice, fancy up your hair, smile your brightest smile... and then look messy, awkward, and unkempt by the time the photographer snaps the pic. I do love to chronical their tense, faked smiles from every year though. 

Beaker's Smiling Lunch includes:

Happy bunny hard boiled egg with carrot disks

Starry watermelon and apple slices

Cheery gummy bears

Sweet yogurt

Smiling gluten free granola bar

When you lunch reminds you to put on a happy face!

Inside the Planet Box inner dish is tasty yogurt topped with brightly colored sprinkles. 

Happy (Belated) Halloween!

Between sports and school and work and house and other work and a myriad of other, we have been keeping busy here. We're putting the Chaos in, for sure! I'm still packing lunches every day for Beaker, though I've slacked on the pictures and posting portion. A little back log to share!

This is how we Halloween:

Frightful lunch includes:

Grapes from beyond the grave

Watchful carrots (they're good for your monster eyes)

Meat rolls

Gluten Free mint chocolate cookies

Rice crackers

Soft cheese

The mint chocolate cookies are amazing. I forget the brand name, but they taste like Girl Scouts Thin Mints and are completely safe for Beaker!

The weather was monsterous this year. It poured rain for most of Halloween. We darted out to do a little Trick or Treating during a slight break in the clouds. My mini beasties still had lots of fun with their friends!

Bean was a dark fairy, Beaker was a little vampire, and Lulu was a creepy doll.

Sailing Away

Arr! More pirate lunches, ahoy!

In this lunch:

Watermelon pieces

Blueberries

Greek yogurt

Sandwich with Udi's GF bread

GF pie piece

Van's GF cheese crackers

Our little pirate friend is hanging out on a gluten free ham and cheese sandwich. X marks the spot in a square of gf pie, which Beaker declared the best EVER (not homemade though - I can't remember the brand name, but they are little individual pies sold at a local store). And a treasure chest of golden crunchy 'coins' is tucked in below the X.

I really love the silicone tray I used to make this frozen Greek yogurt skull. It gets a ton of use here! I keep a bag of frozen yogurt shapes in the freezer, and when the kids want a cold snack they can just pull a skull or some bones out of the bag and enjoy. I love how freezing yogurt makes it seem like a sweet treat dessert, but it has a nice pack of calcium and protein, too! And freezing it into shapes is just an extra fun bonus.

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Perfect Parade Lunch

#throwbackthursday much? Ha!

I actually made these lunches close to a year ago, and never got around to posting them. I was just poking around, trying to convince myself to get back into the swing of blog, and stumbled over this draft from last summer.

It's Parade Season again here, which means several lunches on the run for Beaker and the Chaos Leader (aka Me). Bean and G-man are both in the marching band at school, which makes Beaker and I their personal cheering section.

The first Parade Season after Beaker was diagnosed with food allergies, I misjudged how long the parades can be and only packed Beaker a light snack. Hours later he was hot and starving and miserable, and there was nothing anywhere nearby that I knew was safe to feed him. Never making that mistake again! 

These tasty on-the-go lunches I packed up for a parade last year:

Each has a cup of tuna fish tossed with sour cream and mayo, topped with pepper. The little spoon is perfect for scooping the tuna onto the rice crackers - delicious, and way more fun than a boring tuna sandwich!

The lunches also include mini pickles, blueberries, orange slices, and cut fruit bars - an allergy safe Enjoy Life bar for Beaker and a NutriGrain bar for me.

As you can see from the pic, the Easy Lunchboxes are completely perfect for a curbside picnic! They fit easily inside a regular insulated lunch bag, with an ice pack tucked inside to keep the tuna salad nice and cold. The whole lunch was easily balanced on Beaker's lap, so he could watch the parade while happily eating his lunch. This is one of my favorite things about Easy Lunchboxes - they're perfect for on-the-go meals and fit everything neatly in one container, without a bunch of fiddly pieces to juggle.

SO much better than hauling a hangry kid around!

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Harry Potter and the Bento Blog Hop

We are huge Harry Potter fans here. We have been ever since Brick was tiny!

We first discovered Harry Potter when Brick was four. A friend mentioned that her son liked the books, and hey, did you know they just put out a movie? We bought the first book and read it to Brick and G-man (who was a tiny toddler, barely over a year old at the time) at night before bed.

We were all instantly hooked.

We went out immediately, before even finishing Sorcerer's Stone, and bought Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkahban from the bookstore. We also bought the first movie, which had just been released to DVD. It was an instant hit with all of us, and became a favorite. We blew through all three books in lightning speed, and then impatiently waited for Goblet of Fire to be released in paperback.... then bought it in hardcover, because we couldn't wait to read it!

We pre-ordered Order of the Phoenix so it was delivered fresh to our door the day it was released. I won the coin flip, so I got to read it first. I spent the next three days curled up in bed with Bean (who was brand new, just a few months old), burning through the whole book. Then waited impatiently for the Dude to finish it so I could read it again! Four year old Brick was reading the second book all by himself. Harry Potter was the first book he ever read independently.

When Half-Blood Prince came out, we took Brick, G, and Bean to their first midnight release party. Bean fell asleep on Dude's shoulder and Brick read the last few chapters of the fifth book while in line waiting to buy the sixth. G and I almost missed the unveiling because we had to potty - little fetus Lulu was playing a drum solo on my bladder in anticipation. A couple of months later Brick started first grade and the teacher didn't believe us when we told her that he had already read the entire Harry Potter series on his own.

But the best was when Deathly Hallows came out. We took Brick, G, Bean, and Lulu to a midnight release party in full costume. Lulu wasn't yet 2, and was so charming in her cloak and curls that she was featured on the front page of a local newspaper. Brick and G were old enough to really enjoy the games and fun events at the bookstore leading up to the release, and Bean had been learning to read with the specific goal of reading the series herself. It was a blast, and is still one of our favorite family memories.

We recently started reading the series to Beaker at night before bed, and seeing him fall in love with the characters the way the rest of us did is nothing short of magical.

Bean has been asking for a Harry Potter lunch for some time, and I finally got around to making her one for this hop. She was utterly thrilled (and has put in a request for a lunch from each of the books)!

This lunch is gluten free and also nut/peanut free, and is packed in a Planet Box Rover. Details:

Moaning Myrtle mini Baybel cheese

Baby carrots

Aragog's apple slices

Diary of Tom Riddle gluten free crackers

Gummy basilisk

Turkey and cheese sandwich on Udi's gluten free bread

Tom's giant snake pet is slithering around this tasty sandwich.

The (gluten free) Diary of Tom Marvalo Riddle...

...And a cheesy Moaning Myrtle.

This year Bean and Beaker were even Harry Potter characters for Halloween!

Beaker was an adorable little first year Harry Potter.

And Bean was a lovely third year Hermione Granger, complete with Time Turner necklace!

Now keep going to see what awesome Potter-ness Organized Bites has to share! And of course be sure not to miss the rest of the great posts in the hop!

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A Day At The Pumpkin Patch

A few days before Halloween, Beaker went on his very first field trip with his kindergarten class. They went to a local pumpkin patch for a day of fun. There was a petting zoo with llamas, goats, chickens, and rabbits; a big hay bale maze and a giant hay bale pyramid to climb on; and they went on a tractor pulled hay ride out to the pumpkin fields where each kindergartener was able to choose a pumpkin to take home. Despite the wet weather, Beaker had a blast. Luckily the rain mostly stopped shortly after we arrived, leaving us with wet, muddy, soggy ground but not much falling from the sky. It worked out pretty nicely, and was mostly dry enough by the end of the morning for Beaker to be able to eat some of his lunch outside, instead of huddled in the car.

For lunch, Beaker has:

A sandwich on a Schar gluten free roll with cheese flowers

A "Jack O' Lantern" clementine

Carrot coins

Gluten free crisp crackers

Grapes

Candy pumpkins

His lunch is all packed up in an Easy Lunchbox container, which is perfect for picnics. The flat construction makes it easy to hold on your lap outside, and the simple construction means that when the rain picked up again we were able to quickly snap the lid on to keep his meal dry.

Another recent pumkin/Halloween themed lunch that I forgot to post earlier...

This lunch has:

Sandwich made with summer sausage and Udi's gluten free bread

A clementine "pumpkin"

Candy pumpkins

Cheese pieces

Crispy gluten free crackers

Baby carrots

Yogurt dyed green and frozen into skull-and-bones shapes

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Butterfly Tin

Sometimes making a meal special involves just taking tiny steps. Like putting it in a different kind of dish or cutting into fun shapes.

For this summery meal, I put Beaker's lunch into a muffin tin. They're kind of perfect for little kid lunches, actually. The small cups limit portion sizes to amounts exactly right for little bellies, and they naturally keep foods from touching (which is often important to my little guy). It's a low-effort way to put a little extra punch in lunch!

This is a loosely butterfly themed, gluten free muffin tin lunch. On the top row, Beaker has carrot discs in the first cup of the tin, EnerG allergen free pretzel rings and Enjoy Life chocolate chips (tucked into a butterfly shaped silicone cup) in the second, and mini sausages in the third. On the bottom row, he has watermelon balls, butterfly shaped apple slices, and ketchup in a silicone flower cup.

Definitely a Beaker-Approved lunch! His favorite part was the butterfly apple slices. They were pretty easy and fast to make. Just cut an apple into slices and use a mini cookie cutter to pop out the shapes, then brush with a bit of fruit juice to keep them from browning. Works like a charm and makes them just the right size and shape for little hands to hold.

Simple Pinkie Pie

Simple, but delicious. Kid loved it!

Been a long week! When Lulu asked for a My Little Ponies lunch - Lulu, who barely allows me to pack her lunches at all most days because she doesn't like the attention she gets when I pack her cute lunches - I jumped on it. But I had to keep it toned down, a minimum of cute, so that she would actually eat the food without the distraction of people wanting to see.

Pinkie Pie is my favorite Pony, and I happened to have gummi 'gators on hand, so the simplicity worked out nicely.

She has crackers with cheese, orange slices, spinach wrap sandwich rolls, carrots with Sunbutter, and a gummi treat.

Gummy the gummi alligator cracked me up. I couldn't resist the one really cute-d up detail. Gummy has his party hat on and is chilling out on the graham cracker sand beach.

Lulu approved!

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The Giving Tree

So, I had this lunch in mind for Shel Silverstein's day. Something exciting and awesome, celebrating two of the most amazing books I've ever read - Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic. These two books of poetry had a deep impact on my entire childhood. For me, the works of Shel Silverstein were full of silly wonder and deeply profound thoughts, worded in such a way that spoke to me. 

I borrowed Where the Sidewalk Ends from the library probably more than any other book ever. I've read these poems to every one of my children as infants, though they likely don't remember. Some I can still recite from heart. 

I would curl up under the covers often, letting the words flow over my young brain. "If you're a dreamer, come in..." A perfect welcome, an Invitation to wander through the pages. Most of these two books narrated my childhood years. 

But back to the present! So, I had this lunch in mind, right? I mean, a blog hop celebrating the best poet ever, I was all over that! But you know what they say about the best laid plans... Life just kind of got in the way. Got down to the wire, the last day before it needed to be done, and I woke up thinking YES! Today it WILL get done. And then my phone melted and I discovered that the rabbit hutch had been accidentally left open all night during the first heavy rainstorm of the season, resulting in a very wet and unhappy bunny, and the dishwasher started leaking, and did I mention that my freaking phone melted?! And then I had to go to work. So now it's midnight, and the super detailed, hand painted homage to my favorite books of poetry is not going to happen.

Instead of honoring my childhood, I decided at the eleventh hour (erm, 10:57, actually) to look to the present and chose a book which makes me think not of being a child, but of being a parent: The Giving Tree. The tree loves her boy so much, and she gives and gives and gives until there is literally nothing left of her, and then she gives some more. Meanwhile, the only thing the boy gives her is companionship when he wants something. But for her that is enough, because she knows that he loves her and she wants to take care of him. Seeing him happy makes her happy.

To me as a child, the take-away message from this book was that the tree was a sucker and the boy was selfish and ungrateful. How can you take-take-take like that and never give back?! As an adult, that has not changed, but at the same time... I can understand it. Sometimes, as a parent, you give and give and give and it's not because you expect anything back. You do it because you love them and you want them to be happy. Seeing their faces light up with joy is the best kind of return. Sometimes they may seem ungrateful, and they whine and fuss and complain, but you still know that they love you. And even though they don't always show it, you know they do appreciate you, and all that you do for them.

This lunch is completely gluten free and nut free, and contains:

Glutino gluten free crackers

Laughing Cow cheese

Schar gluten free shortbread cookie

tiny cup of mustard

grapes

grilled hot dog

broccoli

carrots

sugar snap peas

provolone cheese

All tucked into an Easy Lunchbox container. To keep the food from shifting, I folded a napkin and tucked it in on top. If you're curious, it only took about twenty minutes to make the lunch, including grilling the hot dog and cutting up the veggies. 

There is a lot more wonder ahead!

Click the button to coninue on the hop to Beneficial Bento and see the awesomeness that is waiting for you there!

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Stache Your Lunch

Apparently mustaches are very popular amongst teen girls these days. Who knew? Bean thinks anything with a 'stache on it is immediately super awesome and silly. Finally made her a mustache lunch this week!

This super silly pair of simple sandwich halves are gluten-free, made with Udi's bread, sliced meat, and cheese. They look to me like they belong in a vaudeville show and could break into a silly song any moment!

Along with the sandwich she has Glutino gluten free pretzel crisps and celery with a soft cheese spread, cucumbers and carrot bits, half a mini orange with grapes, and a couple of curled up gummi worms.

She loved the whole lunch, but her favorite part was definitely the new lunch bag...

Besides being hilariously 'stache-tastic, this lunch box is also a bright cheery pink and the sparkly mustache lights up when the bag is tapped. It is so perfectly, ridiculously Bean  that if I had designed one specifically for her I couldn't have made it any more exactly perfect.

Lulu isn't as amused by mustaches, but did enjoy her own 'stached up lunch.

She has pretzels, organic fruit snacks, a cheese stick, grapes, turkey rolls, carrots, a mini orange half, celery, and a soft cheese wedge all tucked into a Lunchbots Trio. These boxes are small, but fit quite a bit in that compact space. Exactly the right amount for a third grade lunch!

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First Day of Kindergarten

*Sniff* 

How does the time go so fast? People have been asking that for centuries, but it is still a marvel. Babies grow up so very quickly. Just yesterday Beaker was giving us his first smiles, first foods, first steps. And now, a new first. His first day of Kindergarten!

He insisted on dressing all in Batman, because "B is for Batman, like B is for me!" His shoes and jacket were also Batman, and when the teacher introduced the letter they would be learning for the first day, he was utterly thrilled to find that it was none other than the letter B.

His classes are half days, so he has lunch at home and takes a snack to school to eat in the afternoon before recess. For his first day, he had this yummy muffin tin ABC!

Clockwise from the top left:

A blueberry lemon gluten-free cookie bar

Roasted chicken lunch meat rolls

Glutino gluten-free pretzels

ABC grapes

Yogurt with letter and number sprinkles

Carrot slices with dressing

For his first day snack, he chose a little Crayola mini tin lunchbox. It's the perfect size to pack a snack into a sandwich-box container! Both the tin and the box we found in the dollar section at Target.

He has carrot sticks and apple slices with Smudge (a nut free cocoa dip from Freedom Foods) and a few raspberries.

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First Day of School

Oh, wow! How is it that time of year again already?! It seems to sneak up faster and faster every year. One minute it's June and you're saying good-bye to your school friends, and the next minute it's September and time again for the rush to find school supplies and get everything organized for the new year.

This year I have all five of my kids in school! Five kids in four different schools is taking a lot more organization than I expected, but I suspect we'll get the hang of things over the next few months.

Brick (who hates having his picture taken and ran as soon as he saw the camera come out) is in tenth grade now. G-man is in eighth, his last year of middle school. Bean is in sixth grade, and Lulu is in third grade. Beaker just started kindergarten, but since he is in a completely different school program than his siblings, his first day was half a week later than theirs.

Of course they needed special lunches for the first day of school! Except for G, who was even more excited about the school pizza than he was about seeing his friends again. 

Bean has switched to a gluten-free diet like Beaker, to help clear up some health issues from last year. So far it has been helping, we think. For her lunch I packed a cute sandwich on gluten-free bread, with rolls of turkey scraps on the side. She also has a pair of Lucy's GF cookies, cucumber slices with carrot flowers, Glutino pretzel crisps (with a cheese 6), and fruit.

Grapes and oranges are some of the only fruits she can eat without allergy symptoms flaring up, so it's a good thing that they are so easy to pack for lunches!

For Lulu, a sweet little tiger sandwich on multigrain bread. Tucked in the top is a few mini golden Oreo cookies, with carrot coins and cucumber flowers on the bottom. She also has pretzels - with a cheesey 3 - and fruit, too.

Her little tiger and Bean's mouse were made with the new CuteZCute Cuddle Palz set from BentoUSA, and Lulu has a pair of triangle sandwiches cut from the scraps.

Bean and Lulu both have their lunches packed in our favorite Easy Lunchboxes.

Brick has a very similar lunch, packed in a Sistema Cube. I tucked a granola bar in for an energy boosting snack - high school tends to have some long days.

Brick took his lunch to school packed in this fun lunchbag I found over the summer. He said he got quite a few head turns and strange looks. Can't imagine why...

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