Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Cute little bunny sandwiches.

This might just be my favourite mini sandwich cutter. It's sure had a lot of use since the start of the school year. Here's a familiar preschool lunch for Heidi.


Heidi has four bunny shaped ham sandwiches, red & green grapes, honeydew melon, carrot sticks, red pepper strips and ranch dip. She hasn't really been eating any raw veggies except for carrots. She asked me to try some peppers so I put two small pieces in her lunch. She took a nibble but didn't eat them. Still counts as progess in my book! I'm a little tired of sending her carrots all of the time and she is going to get tired of eating them! I'd love to find a new raw veggie that she likes.

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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Funny Faces

We're on Mid-Term break here. Woo Hoo! No early mornings for a whole week ^_^. Last week got so busy that I didn't have a chance to blog many lunches. Here are a couple of funny face lunches that I made for Amy & Rose.

Rose had veggies & dip, cantaloupe, pineapple. celery with peanut butter (and candy eyes), yellow pepper and a funny face ham sandwich. 

I went on a healthy eating grocery tour a couple of week's ago. I've changed a few things on in our diets, mainly in the reducing fat area. I get so focused on reading the labels for the carbohydrates and sugar when making decisions about what to choose that I forget to keep a check on the fat. I guess that's just from years of being PG and having TOTAL STRESS over my blood sugars. Well one change that we made was to switch to Bolthouse Farms salad dressing - their yogurt ranch is a hit with the kids and has only a fraction of the fat. Win! It's really tasty too, and I'm not even a Ranch lover.


Amy's lunch is similar. Way less veggies and crackers added. She's been pretty difficult with her food choices lately, we're getting back into our same lunch rut so soon into the year. Not sure what to do about it just yet. I'll likely experiment a bit over the break to try out some new lunchy items at home. She didn't like the new salad dresing - but she has yet to meet one that she likes. Also still not a salad eater, we're working on the deconstructed version first. 



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Monday, October 28, 2013

Budding Chef Competition - Vegetable Critters

Last weekend was the Annual Budding Chef competition at school. All 3 girls entered again this year. The girls did not win in their categories this time, but they all got a participation ribbon. Heidi said, "We all got ribbons so we all won!" Love my little peacemaker ^_^.

Rose & Heidi's age are allowed to enter the veggie critters competition. It's one category and all of the Children's House can enter so it's ages 3-6.

Heidi made a fly.

I helped with both. It's really hard to push the toothpicks into the potatoes! 

Rose made a dinosaur.


There were lots of fun entries - it's a pretty tough category. 
Here are the ones that won.
The car on the bottom left was first place, the butterfly was second place and the elephant with the lady bugs came third. We spent a while thinking up and looking at other critters for ideas online the day before. We almost made that exact same elephant (I thought it would be easy for the kids - I really tried to convince them!) but they were not interested in making it.

I also took a photo of many of the other entries. Here are a few. 
I'm partial to Darth Vader. Neat idea!



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Monday, October 21, 2013

Happy Jack O' Lantern Sandwich

Instead of a Spookie Halloween Lunch, I decided to make a happy one! Amy has a smiling Jack O Lantern sandwich today.


As excited as she was about her Spookie Ookie lunch, Amy didn't seem to eat much out of it. She was either rushed or not that hungry. In this Happy Jack O Lantern lunch I packed many of Amy's favourite foods. Cucumber and carrot sticks, honeydew melon and pineapple and both reg & green grapes. Her Happy Jack O Lantern sandwich is a ham sandwich. She ate more out of this lunch, but still not very much. I think she must be very chatty at the lunch tables these days!


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Friday, October 18, 2013

Spookie Oookie Lunch


Amy wanted a spookie Halloween lunch so this is what I came up with, a funky monster which looks sort of happy and lots of monster parts! Today's post is part of a fun Frightful Fall blog hop by the Bento Blogger's and Friends. At the end of the post click the button to hop over to the next Frightful Fall lunch.


Amy has mozzarella cheese & fruit leather fingers, spookie boiled egg eyeballs with grape slices and dried cranberry accents, apple and almonds monster mouth and a few grapes. The gummy candy Vampire teeth are made by the Natural Confectionery Company. Amy's sandwich is a turkey sandwich with lettuce hair, cucumber and candy eyes and a red pepper mouth.

Rose has a Haunted Pumpkin Patch Lunch.

I packed her a Wadson's Farms baby butter lettuce salad with cheese pumpkins, ghost cucumbers, skull carrots and grape tomatoes. She also has red & yellow pepper strips, grapes, strawberries, a couple of grapes and an owl shaped cheese sandwich. This lunch is vegetarian. I packed her a lunchbox love note from the Halloween Jokes series. Amy also had one but it didn't make it into the photo. Her joke went something like this - What kind of fruit do vampires love? Neck-tarines.  hahaha!

So here's how the hop works. Click the button below to hop to Sarah's blog Zoe's Lunchbox. Keep clicking the buttons to see all of the lunches. When you arrive back here you will have seen them all. There are 15 different blogs.



Since this is day 3 of the Bento Bloggers & Friends Frightful Fall hop, you can also go through the other 2 hops that went live earlier this week. Click here to start day 1, Click Here to start day 2. Each one will have 15 blogs so if you hop all 3 that's a total of 45 fun lunch blogs! You'll surely find lots of fun FallOWeen ideas ideas.



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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Flower Power

Here are another couple of lunches from a few weeks ago.  Boy has it been a busy week this week and it's only Wednesday! Do you ever just feel rushed off of your feet? That's how I feel these days. Can't wait until Mid-Term break - it's just around the corner. I don't think I will send the girls to any camps. We'll likely chill at home, have fun with some crafts and not have to get up early! 


Amy's Planetbox lunchbox, has carrot sticks and mozzarella cheese sticks, mandarin oranges and purple grapes, cantaloupe and strawberries and a flower shaped ham sandwich.


Rose has pretty much the same! I like when that happens. In the morning while the girls are getting ready and I am packing lunch they are often underfoot. I always like to give them some choice about what goes in their lunch. Usually they just speak up and say that they don't want this and they want something else instead. Rose chose a turkey sandwich, no cheese sticks, extra carrots and a tomato.

These lunches were super fast to make - so I'm sharing on:

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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

A pair of fruit salads

I made two fruit salad lunches for Heidi & Amy. These lunches were super fast to make - 5 Minutes tops! Everyone made it to school on time - phew!


Heidi has Ritz crackers, ham & turkey rollups, carrot sticks with ranch dip and a fruot salad made to order. She requested peaches, honeydew melon, grapes, apples and maraschino cherries.


Amy's lunch is almost identical. She has the same fruit salad that Heidi chose, plus there are a few pears added.


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Monday, October 14, 2013

Applesauce+yogurt = yummy!


Yum! Our new favourite yogurt combo for lunch.

Rose has ritz crackers, ham rollups, turkey rollups, honeydew melon and a few maraschino cherries (by special request). The big dipper contains cinnamon applesauce on the bottom and vanilla yogurt on top. The little panda container has a few sprinkles to put on her yogurt. I packed an ice pack on the top and bottom of this planetbox, Rose said it was still nice and cold at lunchtime.

I saw a really lovely yogurt combo on OrganizedBites a while back and I instantly wanted to try it out - unsweetened applesauce, Vanana yogurt, honey and cinnamon. Before sending it for lunch, I made it at home with cinnamon applesauce, vanilla yogurt and honey and while I LOVED it, Rose preferred it without the honey. So here is Rose's version, packed for lunch. She ate everything and I think she was a bit hungrier than usual when she came home from school, so next time I need to add a little something extra. The lunch on OrganizedBites does look fuller and I also like how she swirled the yogurt so that you could see just a hint of something underneath! 


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Friday, October 11, 2013

Freaky Friday Lunch

The girls are excited about Halloween coming up and they wanted me to start packing them some Halloween lunches. I ended up waking up really late and they were a couple of minutes late for school. oops! Here's Rose's Freaky Lunch.


Finger sandwiches, apple, lettuce and fruit strip monster. It's a happy monster. I also packed Rose her favourite red and yellow peppers, a boiled egg dyed purple using beet juice and decorated with nori, grapes and gummy Vampire teeth made by the Natural Confectionary Company.


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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Hello Butterflies!


A pretty little butterfly themed lunch for Heidi. This was packed a week or so ago. I still have several lunches to post but am almost caught up.


Heidi has two strawberry jam filled, butterfly shaped sandwiches that I made using my new cookie cutter. Purple grapes, strawberries, cantaloupe and a babybel cheese. She LOVED this lunch, she said  "Hello Butterflies!" She left a few bites of the babybel cheese and a couple of pieces of fruit so I guess it tasted good too ;)


Here are some items that I used when making this lunch.
Disclaimer: if you make a purchase using the links on my site I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support!


  Food Decorating Pick Puffy Ring Bunny Egg Butterfly Japanese Bento Accessory 3D Food Picks Honey Bee
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Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Vegetarian Toddler Lunch



This simple lunch for Emily was packed for her to take to her playgroup about two weeks ago.

Emily has a bunch of mini jam sandwiches cut with the FunBites cutter, and a few cheddar cheese shaped bunnies to add a little protein. They were sort of hard to cut out and they broke a bit at the ears. I should have used a little punch out tool to carefully remove them from the cutter. I also packed a leftover mini ear of corn, a clementine, strawberries and blackberries.

Emily goes to playgroup with her cousin and Emily shared her corn with her since she didn't seem to want it. She also left most, if not all, of the cheddar and the blackberries. Doesn't sound like she ate much, but there was plenty of food in there so I assume she just wasn't very hungry that day. If you are local I believe the FunBites cutter can be found at People's Pharmacy.


Here are some items that I used when making this lunch.
Disclaimer: if you make a purchase using the links on my site I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support!

  Japanese Bento Accessories Sandwich Cutter 4 designs Animal Food Sandwich Cutter set Small Fun Bites - Cube

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Tuesday, October 8, 2013

MOMables Hummus Rainbow lunch

This lunch idea came right off of the MOMables menu! I have packed veggies and hummus before but when I saw it come up on my weekly menu I realised that I haven't sent that in ages, and possibly not ever as the main part of lunch.


Rose has 2 fancy hat shaped sandwiches. I think they might be turkey but as this was lunch from about a week ago I can't recall exactly. She has a good variety of fruit - clementines, apples, red & green grapes and blackberries. The main compartment of her planetbox rover lunchbox holds hummus and an assortment of fresh veggies - red, orange and green bell peppers, cucumber hearts, carrot sticks and a couple of grape tomatoes.

If you aren't familiar with MOMables lunch menus you can check it out here. Even if you don't sign up for a subscription right now, definitely sign up for their email newsletter!

Here are some items that I used when making this lunch.
Disclaimer: if you make a purchase using the links on my site I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support!



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Following In My Shoes Bento Lunches

Monday, October 7, 2013

Easy Vegetarian Preschool Lunch





I packed this easy preschool lunch for Heidi about two weeks ago.



Heidi has 2 strawberry jam and 2 cheddar cheese bunny shaped sandwiches, carrot sticks and ranch dip, a strawberry yogurt and a medley of berries - strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. She ate almost everything leaving a berry or two and a bite of carrot. I think this was one of her favourite lunches!

The planetbox shuttle is deeper than the rover so that little yogurt fits in there quite nicely. It's a bit of a tight fit in the rover and I am always worried that it would bust open!

Here are some items that I used when making this lunch.
Disclaimer: if you make a purchase using the links on my site I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support!

Japanese Bento Accessories Sandwich Cutter 4 designs Animal

Shared on:

BentoForKidlet


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Thursday, October 3, 2013

Hearts for my Sweetheart

A heart themed lunch for my sweetheart Heidi <3


This is another lunch from a week or so ago. Heidi has heart shaped grape jelly sandwiches, boiled egg, carrots, cucumbers and a grape tomato with ranch dip. I took a risk on the cucumber and tomato but she didn't really like them. Red and green grapes stacked two deep round out her lunch.



Here are some items that I used when making this lunch.
Disclaimer: if you make a purchase using the links on my site I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support!

  Japanese Bento Hard Boiled Egg Mold Star Heart for Bento Decoration Japanese Bento Box Accessory Food Pick 20 pcs In Love
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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Vegetarian Sandwich & Salad Lunch

I have had some crazy weeks. Busy at work, 2 business trips, I was sick, the kids were sick and so on. I haven't posted a lunch in ages but I have a few photos from the past couple of weeks. This is one that was for Rose.
For Rose I packed, 2 bunny shaped cheese sandwiches, a medley of berries, a string cheese, salad made with Wadson's Farms baby butter lettuce, orange peppers, carrot bunnes, cucumber butterflies and grape tomatoes. I've been packing her a cute little fork in a case each day. I'll try to remember to take a photo!

This was basically all of her favourite things. All but a few bites were eaten!


Here are some items that I used when making this lunch.
Disclaimer: if you make a purchase using the links on my site I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support!

Japanese Bento Accessories Sandwich Cutter 4 designs Animal
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