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.

What is the Plural of TARDIS?

Is it TARDISes? TARDI? Or is TARDIS already pluralized? Hmm.

Anyway, here is a double TARDIS lunch for Bean!

In this lunch:

Two TARDIS sandwich halves

Peeled clementine

Rice nori crackers

I was seriously about 3/4 asleep when I made this lunch. I even had spinach (which she loves!) pulled out of the fridge, ready to go, right next to me and completely forgot to pack it. This is what happens when I try to get up fifteen minutes early to pack lunches in the morning instead of getting them ready the night before! Not quite enough food for an active 12 year old, but luckily Bean had a granola bar and a pack of seaweed snacks in her backpack to nibble. Lesson learned - zombie packing leads to lunch errors!

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Yar! Pirate Lunches Ahoy!

As many of you already know, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Since it was on a Saturday this year, we celebrated with a whole week of piratey lunches for the littlest of the Chaos Kids. He is digging this whole lunch at school thing!

For Monday, Beaker had a little pirate sailing away in an allergy-safe dinghy to find the treasure on the fruity isle.

This lunch includes:

Gluten-free half sandwich on Udi's bread

Baybel mini cheese pirate

Schar gluten-free shortbread cookie sun

Orange island with carrot sticks

Gluten-free cracker crisps

(The cheesy letters covered up the place were I dropped a little food paint on the bread...)

How do you celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day? Share below!

An InLinkz Link-up

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First Day of School

Time to break out the books, bags, and bento gear - it's back to school they go!

Every year I marvel at how fast the time went. This year is not really different! Beaker is in full day school for the first time, so this is his first experience with having lunch at school every day. Of course, with his allergies that means taking a lunch every day. So far it looks like the biggest challenge is going to be getting him to sit still and eat his lunch, instead of shoving a few bites in his mouth and then rushing out to play at recess with his new friends!

For the first day of first grade, Beaker took a Planet Box Rover full of deliciousness for lunch and snack:

Schar Gluten-Free Shortbread Cookies

Schar Gluten-Free Cheese Bites crackers

Carrots and cucumbers with dip

Gluten-free ham and cheese sandwich with Schar bread

Mini grapes from our garden

Starfruit slices

Lulu is in fourth grade now, and still thinks she is too grown up for cute lunches, so this may be one of the few I get to make for her this year:

Snack mix

Mini grapes

Starfruit slice

Carrots with ranch dip

Turkey sandwich

Brownie bits

Luckily for me, Bean still loves decorative lunches! Bean also cosplayed Hermione Granger for her first day of seventh grade. This kid is all sorts of awesome!

Brownie bits

Snack mix

Carrots and cucumber with ranch dip

Turkey sandwich

Mini grapes

Starfruit slices

Of course, Brick and G-man are big high school kids now. Neither of them wants lunches packed - apparently the high school has a pretty decent cafeteria and both prefer to buy lunch rather than carry a lunch kit with them daily. G-man is a Freshman now, and Brick is a Junior (and talking about colleges and jobs!)

Okay, but seriously though... where did the summer go?! How is it already September? And how did my itty bitty babies get so big and grown up so fast?!

This year I have two kids at the elementary school, one at the middle school, and two in high school. HIGH SCHOOL, people. That's like, almost an adult! How is it even possible for my kids to almost be adults? I'M not even an adult! Okay, technically I might be an adult, but whatever, yo. You can't make me adult. If you need me, I will be hiding in my blanket fort with my coloring book and a fresh box of crayons.

Anyway. This is what the Chaos Kids look like now!

Looking forward to another fantastic year!

If you want to wander down memory lane with me (*sniff * they were so small!), CLICK HERE to see a few blog posts from previous First Days.

Also, Beaker and Bean picked out the BEST backpacks for this year!

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We Love a Parade!

Before the summer officially started was Parade Season. G-man and Bean were in three or four parades with their middle school band this year. Which of course meant that Beaker and I were there in the crowds to cheer them on!

These are a couple of our Parade Picnic Lunches from this year. Including the Junior Rose Parade, where my kids' middle school took top honors and marched off with the award for first place in their category!

Orange slices, ham and cheese sandwich, crackers, and chocolate cookies.

Apple chunks, Glutino pretzel sticks, ham and cheese rolls, carrots and cucumber with ranch.

Because of course Pandas should be invited to a Parade Picnic!

Beaker loved eating this one while watching the parade. He couldn't decide which part of the parade was his favorite!

And for Mom, cucumber slices with ranch, ham and cheese rolls, crackers, and apple chunks.

All of the above were packed into Easy Lunchboxes. They are our favorites! Fast, easy, convenient, and they make a great solid surface for eating with your lunch on your lap.

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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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Tiger Power!

One thing I did not really anticipate about having children is that as they get older, they become interested in activities. I was more of an after-school-art-club kind of kid, not into sports. Somehow I have kids who are into sports and clubs and activities though. And that is awesome, it's a lot of fun and they have a blast! But man, is it a lot of work.

This year the two girls joined a cheer team. Between Beaker's soccer and their cheer, we had practicies five nights a week, two or more games every Saturday, plus additional team activities. Two of our kids are also in band and drama club, and the two teens have weekly appointments. It has been a busy few months! All of these mean a lot of packed meals to take on the road.

Bento boxes to the rescue! Easy Lunchboxes are especially great for these busy weeks. We have quite a few sets, so we could pack a few days worth at once and tuck them into the fridge to grab-and-go when needed. They are also sturdy and easy to hold, making them perfect for lunches eaten fast while sitting on bleachers during halftime.

Bean and Lulu cheer for the Tigers, a local football team. They both LOVE cheer. I have to admit to having some reservations at first, but both of them have really blossomed during their time on the team. They are looking forward to starting gymnastics after Christmas, and cheering again next year for the same league. Beaker had a blast with them, too - he attended nearly every practice, learning all of the cheers right along with his sisters. All three kids learned how to do sommersaults, cartwheels, handstands and more from cheer.

Since Beaker's soccer games and Bean and Lulu's cheer games were never in the same place and frequently cut it close on time when they didn't outright conflict (a lot of splitting this season - one parent would go to one sport while the other went to the other sport), a lot of lunches like these were packed over the last few months! Here are two of the lunches I packed up for the girls to take to cheer.

Details for Lulu's lunch:

Grapes

Orange slices

Crackers with cheese

Carrot halves

Lemon cucumber slices

Turkey sandwich made with the CuteZCute cutter/stamper

Chocolate chip mini cookie

Packed in an Easy Lunchbox

Details for Bean's lunch:

Grapes

Orange slices

Gluten free crackers with Laughing Cow cheese

Carrot halves

Lemon cucumber slices

Gluten free turkey sandwich made with Udi's gluten free bread

Gluten free chocolate chip mini cookie

Packed in an Easy Lunchbox

The two lunches are almost entirely the same, different only in that one is gluten free and the other is not. I have found that setting the lunches up assembly line style, keeping the ingredients simple and similar between them, really helps to streamline the process and make lunch packing faster and easier. Of course I adjust for dietary needs, allergies, and food preferences, but I try to keep them pretty simple to avoid wasting large amounts of time. Much more pleasant that way!

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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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Little Pandas

I am setting a personal goal to post to my blog every day in November. I started the month off with a bang by completely forgetting about that goal this morning! But mid-afternoon still counts!

Fast and easy lunch for Lulu:

Details:

Sabra hummus

Cucumber slices

Carrots

Pretzels

Chocolate chip mini cookies

Ham and cheese rolls

Grapes

Clementine half

Packed in an Easy Lunchbox

And a gluten free version of the same (with no hummus, because she isn't a fan) for Bean:

Details:

Grapes

Carrots

Clementine

Ham and cheese rolls

Cheese wedge

Glutino pretzel crisps

Cucumber slices with pepper and sesame seeds

Packed in an Easy Lunchbox

The Pumpkin King

My favorite holiday... and my favorite movie about this holiday!

On the weekend evenings leading up to Halloween, we've been having a little movie fest. Every weekend evening (school nights we just have too much to do, between homework and dinner and cheer/soccer practice!) we all snuggle up together after dinner and watch a different Halloween themed movie. We've watched Paranorman, Hocus Pocus, and many more. All were great, some even excellent, but the number one overall family favorite was DEFINITELY Nightmare Before Christmas.

Tim Burton's Disney film is just exactly the mix of creepy, cool and cute to keep the entire family entertained. We watch this movie at least 3 times each year and will never get bored.

Bean requested a Nightmare Before Christmas lunch this week, and this is what I came up with!

This lunch is scary good. It's also gluten free, and tucked full of 'hidden' nutrients.

The sandwich is sliced ham on Udi's gluten free bread, with a grinning Jack Skellington painted on provolone cheese with food safe dye. Tucked inside is a handfull of spinach leaves - Bean's favorite!

Jack's faithful... um, dog? ghost? Ghost dog? Uh... Zero is made with cream cheese frosting spread on a chunk of gluten free chocolate zucchini cake, with some Glutino pretzels tucked in on the side.

And of course, the Pumpkin King wouldn't be complete without a pumpkin. This grinning Jack O' Lantern is actually a clementine, with a face painted on with food safe dye. There are also some crunchy sweet carrots for snacking.

Keep going! Click the button to see what tricks and treats are next on the Halloween bento trail....

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Beware the Bones

Make no bones about it, this delicious lunch was a big hit with my Halloween loving Bean!

Lunch is packed into an Easy Lunchboxes bento box and includes:

Tiny mini seedless grapes

Clementine

Cucumber slices

Turkey hoagie half sandwich on a Schar gluten free roll

Mini carrot cupcake

Glutino pretzel sticks

Vanilla yogurt

The skull & bones are made with vanilla yogurt frozen into a fun shaped silicone ice cube tray. They're nestled into green sludge - also vanilla yogurt, mixed with a bit of green food dye. Fun, fast, and festive!

Speaking of fun and fast ways to make food festive, we love these little bloody bones candy decorations! They're a sweet way to add a little touch of creepy to any treat.

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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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Cute Koala

An adorably simple lunch for Lulu today!

This darling little koala sandwich was made with the new Cuddle Palz set from CuteZCute. These sandwich cutter and stamper sets are both super easy to use and super adorable. The set comes with the tools to make a little mouse, tiger, bear, or this sweet koala:

The outside shape is included along with the cutter/stamper for the details, a body shape, and an adorable little pick for pushing out leftover bits. We are loving the new set!

In this lunch:

Koala sandwich

Yogurt with sprinkles

Apple slices and grapes

Carrot sticks with ranch

Pretzel twists and mini Oreos

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