Princess Turns 7!

Today our little Princess is 7 years old!

Wow, did that time fly. She was born at 7:47 am, after the most long and boring 22 hour induction ever. I remember walking the floors of the hospital for hour after hour after hour. The Dude and I played Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit to keep ourselves occupied. The hours stretched on and on, with not much action. Hospital policy restricted moms in labor from eating and I hadn't eaten breakfast before the induction was started, just a small snack, so by the middle of the night I was starving. I would walk past the vending machine on each loop around the hallway and just stare at those teasing crackers. By the time morning rolled around I think I was looking forward to the breakfast they promised me after she was born almost as much as I was holding my sweet new baby! And then there she was, all pink and squishy and oh so beautiful.

And now she's so grown! She loves to dance and sing. Her favorite clothes are the frilliest dresses, which she wears with rainboots as she dances through the mud. Her belief is that a princess can dress in beautiful party dresses AND climb trees, and I wholeheartedly agree. Her favorite foods are chocolate and apples. Her favorite color is red and she loves to snuggle.

Happy 7th Birthday, my little Princess!

Her lunch is all lucky 7s. A cupcake with a drawn on edible glitter gel number 7 and seven butterfly sprinkles.

She also has seven clementine segments, seven grapes, seven sausages with barbecue sauce, seven Ritz crackers, seven lemon cucumber slices, and seven grape tomatoes!

The grapes and grape tomatoes have these food picks in them to make them look like balloons. The letters are colby jack cheese and fruit leather.

For Bean's lunch, I packed pumpkins! A smiling clementine Jack o'Lantern is wearing a party hat pick up in the corner with two candy pumpkins. Two more candy pumpkins are hanging out with Ritz crackers and a fruit leather pumpkin. Green and red grapes are tucked behind an orange pumpkin shaped silicone cup full of lemon cucumber slices, next to an orange jumbo silicone cup filled with mini sausages and barbecue sauce. Under a second fruit leather pumpkin are some colby jack and pepper jack cheese squares.

Clementine Jack is happy to see you!

Both lunches are tucked into our Easy Lunchboxes.

For her classroom birthday celebration, Princess wanted to bring cupcakes and apple slices. Her class is actually made up of two classes put together. There are 55 kids in her class with two teachers - that's a lot of cupcakes!

So, for her class party I made 72 (extra to give to the teachers and office staff) vanilla mini cupcakes with vanilla and chocolate frosting and gummi butterflies on top. Tomorrow I will slice up a bunch of apple rings with shaped centers to bring in to class.

It's going to be a beautiful day!

An Angry Birds How-To

But first...

Ponyo! If you've never seen this movie, go watch. It's adorable. A little fish who becomes a girl, but more than that. We watched it last night, snuggled up together, and Princess loved it. So for her lunch today... Ponyo!

She has half a pepper turkey sandwich with a pair of flower picks and fruit leather letters. She also has green and purple grapes, cupcake Goldfish, carrot sticks, apple pieces, and grape tomatoes with ranch dressing. A few Swedish fish dance and swim here and there (Ponyo's sisters, of course). The grape tomatoes were a last minute stand in for the frozen yogurt fish I had originally planned. Princess nixed the yogurt while I was putting lunch together for her. Just not interested today.

For the letters I use Stretch Island organic fruit leathers. They make very effective and easy letters, and tasty, too! The 'negatives' and extra bits I tuck into a little plastic baggie and keep it in my purse for Beaker to snack on.

And now, Angry Birds!

I wanted a little something fun for G-man and Bean. I found these Angry Birds fruit snacks and Cheese Nips at the grocery store and thought, oooh, there ya go. So, Angry Birds lunches it was!

This is how I put this lunch together. Like most of the lunches I make, they're easier than they look.

First, start with your chosen dish. I like our Easy Lunchboxes most for things like this, because laying out cute scenes are great in these boxes. Plus, I just really love Easy Lunchboxes!

For the pigs' structure, I use leftover chocolate chip banana pancakes from last night. I started by putting a pancake and some scraps down to build a base. This isn't entirely necessary - you can build the structure without the base layer. I just put it in because I knew Bean and G-man would want a little more, and because it made things a little more secure and less likely to shift on the inside. I flattened a white paper muffin cup and laid it down to make a plain background.

Then I sliced up another pancake into strips and laid them out basic structure like on top of the base layer:

For the thieving pigs, I used green grapes. I just popped them in like they would be in the game (or, er, that is what they're supposed to look like, anyway). The silicone cups on the side help to support the structure, and also hold the rest of the lunch.

For the eyes of the pigs, I used white edible confetti sprinkles and edible food-grade marker. The eyes are held to the grapes using clear glitter cupcake decorator gel.

For the red Bird, I scooped red Jello with bits of fruit mixed in into the smallest section of the ELB. The eyes are made with Wilton's Candy Eyeballs and black edible decorator gel. For the beak, I used a tiny bit of carrot, cut into two triangles and arranged in a beak-like fashion with tweezers.

The silicone cups were filled with small carrot discs and Angry Birds Cheese Nips, and then a pack of Angry Birds fruit snacks were tucked in to the empty section of the dish. Done! Step back and enjoy your hard work. Sure to be a hit!

Hello, Kitty!

Princess has a deep and long lasting love for Hello Kitty. She loves the cute little cat. This morning she asked for a bat lunch. Bats? Yes, bats. Unfortunately, I have no bat stuff. Given more warning I might have been able to put something together, but with half an hour until I had to walk them to school, I had to tell her that bats will have to wait and could she please request something I can do with what I have on hand. So she fell back on her favorite - Hello Kitty.

I used a Hello Kitty head shaped cookie cutter for the pepper turkey sandwich, stuck in a bow food pick, and sketched on the details using black edible decorating gel. Her nose is a yellow heart shaped edible confetti sprinkle. Since the cookie cutter is small, I took the rest of the sandwich and cut it into small pieces, poking them onto a heart food skewer.

Princess also has applesauce with a Hello Kitty cupcake ring pressed in, apple slices with a Hello Kitty candy decoration, Hello Kitty fruit snacks, and Scrabble Cheez Its spelling out CAT.

Bean wanted a bear lunch. "You know, a bear shaped hard boiled egg and bear picks and a bear sandwich and..." Yep, I got it. Bears. Bears she wants, so bears she gets!

Her pepper turkey sandwich was cut with a bear shaped cookie cutter and the leftover bits were cut into tiny sandwiches and threaded onto a teddy bear food pick. Another bear hangs out in the applesauce. Bear shaped cheese, chocolate chip Teddy Grahams, and apple slices with a few gummi bears wraps up the bear theme. Of course, it wasn't until after I walked her up to school and was halfway home that I realized I had made the bear shaped hard boiled egg and forgot to actually pack it in her lunch. Well... maybe tomorrow...

Both lunches are packed into our very frequently used Easy Lunchboxes. Love them!

For my breakfast, I packed a small container with shredded deli pepper turkey, a baby Baybel cheese, and some dried fruit granola to mix in with the Greek yogurt in the second dish. The little butterfly sprinkles were just for fun. Because who doesn't love butterflies? And moms deserve cute snacks, too!

Brrr!

Oh yes. Definitely Autumn here! Don't let those unseasonably warm days we've been having up here in the PNW fool you - it is most assuredly October! Yesterday morning the neighborhood was shrouded in fog as I walked the girls to school, and this morning it was downright chilly when we stepped outside. There was a rapid rush back into the house for jackets and sweaters. Up until now the weather has been warm enough for them to not be needed, but today called for something warmer. I think a hot cup of chai latte is in my very near future.

Today is preschool story hour at our library and Beaker usually requests a picnic in the park after the story, but he may change his mind when he feels that nip in the air. I packed him up a lunch, but if we skip the park maybe I'll show him how to make the dining table in to a fort and let him eat lunch in there.

For him I made Nutella 'sushi' sandwich rolls, baby carrot sticks, cucumber slices, and grape tomatoes with ranch, and a peeled and segmented clementine. There are also a few Annie's Organic Bunny Grahams tucked in around his sandwich rolls (which look more like cinnamon rolls to me, and have me daydreaming of Cinnabons hot out of the oven).

This bento box is the perfect size for Beaker. It's the one I found for a buck at the thrift shop! Super cute lid, right? If anyone happens to be able to point me in the right direction for more stuff by this company, I would appreciate the tip. The copyright says "Caramel" and the back of the box is imprinted with Japanese writing, but I haven't been able to find anything more from them online, either with these characters or by the company.

Today for snack Bean has chocolate animal grahams with applesauce in a small container I found tucked away in a dollar bin at a grocery store. The pack held two containers with lids for $1 and is the perfect size for regular silicone cups.

For Bean's lunch, she has... pumpkins! Of course. It's October! In the upper corner is Greek yogurt with a mini silicone cup of granola pressed in. It did not occur to me until much later (hey, I don't do so well with the whole thinking thing in the morning, remember?) that when she pulls the cup out to dump the granola in to the yogurt there is probably going to be a bit of a mess, with yogurt all over the bottom side of the cup. Lesson learned ~ don't do that again. She also has a peeled clementine with a leaf food pick and three small orange pumpkin candies. The clementine is supposed to look like a pumpkin, but that leaf just makes it look more like an orange. I'm going to have to find or make a more pumpkin-leaf-like pick, I think. She also has a sandwich with a cocoa Jack o' Lantern face made with a furikake stencil, baby carrot sticks and cucumber slices with ranch, and a silicone pumpkin cup of party mix.

Princess wanted butterflies. Not a Halloween lunch? "Nope. Butterflies." But, it's October. What about a fall harvest lunch? "No, maybe later. Butterflies, please." Okay, butterflies it is!

She also has Greek yogurt with the bad-idea cup pressed in holding granola. Hers is a pink butterfly shaped mini silicone cup. In the next compartment of the Easy Lunchbox she has cucumber slices and baby carrot sticks with ranch dip and a gummi butterfly. In the large section are two butterfly Nutella sandwiches, grape tomato 'flowers' (using flower stem and flower food picks), a peeled and segmented clementine in a pink flower silicone baking cup, and some mini Triscuits.

A close up of the butterfly garden:

Pumpkins, Spiders, and a Princess - Oh My!

I forgot to post pictures of Beaker's lunch yesterday. Oops!

Fixing that now! He had a ham pumpkin sandwich with carrots and broccoli with ranch, little colby jack pumpkins, Ritz crackers, and candy pumpkins. Which do you think he ate first?

See, I thought it would be the candy, too. I was wrong - he dove for the broccoli! Gobbled it up and asked for more. I always forget how much this kiddo loves broccoli until I put some in front of him and it magically disappears.

Today Brick took a big salad with pepper jack cheese and crumbled bacon. The white tub has ranch dressing and the green cup holds croutons. He also has apple slices and two Hershey Nugget chocolates.

G-man wanted to get his lunch at school (as usual - his school offers a pizza selection, his favorite food, every day), but today was his first day of Jazz Band. He had to be to school an hour early and knew he would be hungry before lunch, so he asked for a big snack. "Party mix theme, Mom. Remember: PARTY MIX. Please send a party mix themed snack." I think he reminded me to put in party mix twelve or fifteen times before he went to bed.

So, G-man has a big snack of (you guessed it) Cheez Its Party Mix with apple slices and green grapes.

Bean also requested a snack, in addition to her lunch. Her fourth grade class has a time each day when kids who bring snacks can take them out and eat them while working on schoolwork. It gets them through the long stretch of time before lunch and helps them concentrate. Usually she grabs a couple of crackers or something small for snack, but she said it's not enough and she is "staaaaarving" by lunch, so today I packed her a bigger snack. She said it was just the right size, and has requested more like this.

For Bean's snack I tucked in applesauce in a Solo cup with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top, two graham crackers (broken up), and a peeled and segmented clementine.

For her lunch she requested "Princess lunch, please." I packed her a side salad with bacon crumbles and pepper jack diamonds with a small cup of ranch dressing and carrot and celery sticks on the side, Italian sausage chunks leftover from dinner, and a couple of Fig Newtons.

The salad and sausage are tucked into these Fred and Friends AristoCakes silicone crown cups that I found on Amazon. Love them! I also tucked in two princess crown food picks.

Princess requested spiders. I? Am terrified of spiders. Ridiculously severe fear of spiders. So, as you can imagine, I don't have a lot of spider stuff here and certainly wasn't about to Google spider ideas! This is what I came up with. It's not much in the spider department. I put in creepy eyes to make up for that.

For her lunch, I skewered slices of Italian sausage leftover from dinner with small squares of wheat bread and tiny bits of pepper jack cheese to make "mini kabobs". I used a spider silicone baking cup to hold a couple of Fig Newtons and a few Annie's Organic Bunny Grahams, and cut up a grape tomato to make a pair of red spider eyes. On one side of the spider are green grapes and on the other side are grape tomatoes. She also has applesauce with a sprinkle of cinnamon, and carrot and celery sticks with ranch dressing.

I have mentioned before that I use Press-N-Seal to create a liquid-proof seal for messy foods in our Easy Lunchboxes. This is what that looks like. I just cut a small piece and press it over the messy foods, like applesauce or yogurt, then put the lid on like usual. So far this has worked very well at keeping the messy foods from leaking!

And a bento for ME! I went to hang out with a friend today (the amazingly talented and all around wonderful artist of Green Baboon Designs!) after class today, so I packed up a lunch for myself. Carrot and celery sticks with pumpkin shaped colby jack cheese, pepper turkey and pastrami rolls, a peeled clementine, mini Triscuits with Laughing Cow cheese wedges, Greek yogurt with a sprinkle of cocoa (I attempted to use a furikake stencil, but it didn't work out so well. If you squint you can see the vague Jack o' Lantern face. Note: hold the furikake stencil closer to the yogurt/whatever next time instead of hovering it above.), and a pumpkin silicone cup filled with mushed up chocolate chunk cheesecake for dessert.

Yum!

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