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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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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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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