Monthly Archives: September 2012

Sep27

Check out my MOMables Review and Giveaway!

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Check out my MOMables Review and Giveaway!

My little blog is growing and I am excited to host my first giveaway starting TODAY!  Better yet, the giveaway is for MOMables, a service I’ve been using for a few months now, with great success.

I am going to share with you some of the MOMables lunches that Girlie and I made this week, so you can see how easy they are.  I also encourage you to visit the MOMables site to download a free week of menus, so you can get a feel for what a typical menu includes and how the shopping lists are laid out.

Little Dude’s Tuesday lunch was packed in an Easy LunchBox and included the MOMables recipe for a Strawberry Shortcake Waffle Sandwich!  If you could’ve seen the look on my son’s face when he saw this lunchbox, you’d have been giggling like he was!  He is waffle-crazy right now and this lunch made his day:

Girlie’s Tuesday Lunch was the MOMables Philly Avocado Sandwich.  She told me that she added the fresh tomato from our garden (shown with bell peppers on the small compartment) to the cream cheese and avocado and it was delicious! Her very fruity bento lunch is pictured below.  I also packed her a container of Chobani Champions for some extra protein and calcium.

The kids were out of school for Yom Kippur on Wednesday, but Girlie attended camp at the Newtown Athletic Club.  They serve a pizza lunch there, so she just needed morning and afternoon snacks.  She chose the sandwich sushi and packed it herself in a Lock&Lock for afternoon snack.  Her morning snack was Chobani Champions Vanilla Chocolate Chunk yogurt with Annie’s Bunny Grahams and an apple.  Girlie loved using the iPad to look through the weekly menus and select one to make herself.  She could easily re-create the lunchbox with substitutions for her preferred items.  She loved being able to work independently and using the iPad definitely made the lunch prep more fun. Here are her NAC Snacks and a photo of Girlie rolling out some bread to use in the MOMables Sandwich Sushi:

The Sandwich Sushi was definitely her favorite MOMables recipe idea.  She loves sushi and using the rolling pin is always fun.  She was also very excited about our next lunch: MOMables Egg Salad!  She loves hard boiled eggs and thought the idea of putting them on a sandwich was just plain hilarious!  I’d never made egg salad before and it seemed like a lot of work, but since she is a vegetarian (by her own choice), I agreed to try it as an additional source of protein.  It was not a lot of work and Girlie actually did ALL the work to make it! Here is her creation along with a picture of Girlie in action, peeling eggs:

I find it curious that I expect that my Kindergartener can use the iPad to browse through all my MOMables PDF recipes in iBooks to select recipes and then re-create them, but I was shocked to discover that she can peel an egg without mangling it!  I have a hard time with eggs sometimes and I didn’t think she could do it.  She can and hers were better than mine.  For the egg salad, she was able to put eggs and water in a pot and once the eggs had cooked and cooled, she did all the peeling, mashing, and mixing with lite mayo.  She chose the other elements to include in her lunchbox as well.  She loves fresh fruit and cheese.  We also added a sliced cheese star to the top of the sandwich.  This is a lunch I know we will do again!

So now that I’ve showed you FOUR easy recipes that I tried, let me share with you my thoughts about the MOMables subscription:

  •  The photos are awesome!  You don’t need to think about what to pack or the presentation, MOMables has that covered!
  • Shopping lists are well organized and recipes are efficient about using similar ingredients all week to maximize your purchases.
  • On top of the actual recipe and the shopping lists, you also get Kitchen Notes to help you plan ahead with advance prep items and a printer friendly menu page that consolidates all of the meals, ingredients, and directions onto one page.
  • The recipes are simple and the photos speak for themselves a lot of the time.  Most of the recipes were easy for my kindergartener to make on her own!
  • iPad Tip: If you are on your computer, you can download the menu to your hard drive and then drag and drop into iTunes, which will cause the menu to appear in iBooks.  You can also visit MOMables directly from your iPad’s browser and then open the PDF in iBooks to save it there.  I now have a whole shelf full of mobile menus and shopping lists!
  • Some of the lunches are weird!  And I mean that in a good way!  I would never have considered making a sandwich out of a waffle, but it was fun and my kids gobbled it up!  There is a menu item this week for the Airport Sandwich, which is a combination I’d never have imagined on my own, but you can bet I’m going to try it!  I love having access to new ideas to mix things up every week.
  • Recipes are great for omnivores.  My kids are vegetarian and there was a lot for them in the menu as-is. Most of the recipes that contained meat were easy to make substitutions, but there were some we just didn’t do.  On the meaty-days, we just went to a prior week and picked out an old favorite.
  • MOMables is affordable!  I’ve seen some really expensive meal-planning services, but a MOMables subscription is just $5 – $6 a month, depending on the plan you choose.  You’ll get a lot of awesome meal ideas every week and it is definitely worth it.  Don’t forget to check out the sample menu to find out more!

And now for the fun part!  Giveaway Time!  Check out the Rafflecopter widget below for all the ways you can enter to win!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you again to MOMables for allowing me to offer this giveaway to my readers!

Here are the products I used in this lunch:

Sep24

Happy Birthday Bento!

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Happy Birthday Bento!

My girlie turned 6 today.  What?? How?? Even though it feels like my life revolves around her and I have tried my best to take in every little moment, I still don’t understand how I could possibly have a 6 year-old in my life!  I know that this is a universal experience of time flying with your little ones, but I am just floored by it anyway.

We had a big BBQ party for her yesterday and there was a ton of leftovers.  To save time and ensure the leftovers were consumed, I packed the bento lunches as I put away the rest of the food.  I packed the kids in their Easy LunchBoxes and my husband got his Lock & Lock.

Here’s Girlie’s birthday BBQ bento:

She has this amazing pasta salad that my mom made with some cubes of white cheddar cheese.  I added picks to spell out the word SIX for her. I’ll have to do a proper six bento later this week, but this will have to do for now.  She was so exited to have a lunch made of “party food” as it was!  She has a fruit salad of pineapple, grapes, and strawberries and some veggies with low-fat ranch in a mini-dipper container.  This will be a healthy and filling lunch for her.

Little Dude’s lunch is similar. He has pasta salad, cheese and crackers, fruit salad, and 2 small slices of tomato pie.  I added some animal fork picks to give him a smile.

My husband got one compartment of the leftover burger toppings and a hamburger.  I threw some extra cauliflower in there too.  The other compartment has pasta salad, fruit salad, veggies, and ranch dip in a small heart container marked “XOXO.”

I was traveling the whole week prior to her party and did not have a lot of time to put together a big bash for her.  We decided on a simple BBQ, but it grew and grew until we ended up with around 50 guests!  Our plan was to have a Pinterest party and attempt some of the pins from our Birthday Parties board, but a lot of those got lost in the chaos of 17 kids running around like crazy!  The kids mostly played in the bounce house, beat up on the piñata, and did some arts and crafts I set out for them (painting and decorating building blocks and foam bookmarks).  The crafts were actually a huge hit and the kids were very creative with their projects.  I was impressed!

Some of the pins I had planned on never even got started.  I wanted to make these ice cream hearts and a star walkway to our backyard party.  I also wanted to do this simple trick with the water bottles.  I just did not have time leading up to or during the party.

We did try to explode watermelons, but all the big ones were gone and it didn’t seem like it was going to work on the tiny ones we found, so we abandoned that too.  I think the only pin we successfully re-created was the terra-cotta-pot-s’mores.  Here is a picture of Girlie with the man she has identified has “the love of her life” making s’mores together:

She is absolutely certain that she is going to marry him when they’re older! Here is my Little Dude going wild on the piñata:

All the kids had fun with that and the scramble for candy was intense!  Finally, here is a picture of my beautiful girlie basking in the glow of the Happy Birthday song:

Aaaaaah! I love how much she grows and changes, but I get very sentimental at birthday time.  I just could not keep my cool when I tucked her in last night, knowing she’d never be 5 again.  Of course, she hugged me and told me not to be sad and that she will always be my baby no matter how old she gets.  And she will.  But not like this.  Not like she is right now.  Sigh.  Oh well, I did sign up for this roller coaster!

She was so gracious at her party and tried to look after her guests and her little brother to make sure everyone was having fun. She loved opening all of her presents and even though we did so privately, she still oooohed and aaahed and exclaimed over each one and made sure take time to appreciate it all.  We take a picture of her with each present to include in thank you notes.  It adds a personal touch and we know the kids like to see their friend enjoying the present.

Girlie also loves passing out goodie bags at parties and this year was no exception.  The only change was that I picked up favors at Daiso Japan while I was in San Francisco last week.  I bought this huge stash of bento supplies and put together bento boxes for each kid:

I did not get a picture of the individual favor boxes, but they each had a yellow or pink 2-tier bento box, a cookie cutter, a fork and spoon set, and 2 bento picks.  I tied them with ribbon and attached a paper that explained our love of Pinterest and my profile name if they wanted to follow me or see more bento ideas.  The kids seemed pretty excited.  I hope they like them!  It was not a toy like they probably expected, but hopefully this will get used or at least not be stepped on by a parent at 2am.

And as soon as our guests were out the door and gifts were opened, I got right back to work on making the Madagascar 3 Afro Polka Dot Circus Cupcakes my girlie specifically requested for her school birthday treat!  We usually do rice krispy treats, but this  was what she really wanted.  The look of the kids faces when they saw them was priceless, they were laughing as they remembered Marty’s song and dance from the most recent movie. Thanks again to BentOnBetterLunches for that great idea!  These are easy to make and consistently come out great!

Do you go nuts over parties like I do?  This was a “small and low-key” party for me and it was still a ton of people and a lot of work.  Girlie actually asked me for something for her birthday gift and I said “NO! This party is your gift!”  She accepted it pretty easily, which helped my cause.  I’d love to say that next year’s party will be smaller, but I know me and I can’t help myself.  If you have any advice on managing this issue, please send me your suggestion! I need help!

I used these products in today’s lunch:

Sep19

Any Excuse to Talk Like a Pirate!

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Any Excuse to Talk Like a Pirate!

Hoooray!  It is Talk Like a Pirate Day!  There’s always lots of pirate talk at our house, so I am excited to celebrate this special day!  What better way to celebrate than by participating in a colossal blog hop and treasure hunt!

If this happens to be the first you’re hearing of this, every Blogger Buccaneer in this here Hop has a piece of the treasure map! You’ll need to “collect” each piece and put them together in the right order to find the treasure! You’ll want some parchment and a quill, to keep a log with each clue and each number, because there are 39 scurvy pirates running amok with 39 pieces o’ the map to collect! 37 pieces will guide you to the hidden treasure (by spelling out the URL where you can enter to win!) and there are 2 bonus pieces with the “secret passwords” to get two chances to win some pirate booty!

My pirate bento is all about the pirate ship and the quest to find the treasure!

The ship is made of a PB&J sandwich, with pretzel sticks glued into place by honey.  The mast is pretzel stick and the Jolly Roger is a black plum with an American cheese skull & crossbones that I cut by hand.   The cheddar cheese wave was also cut by hand. I added some golden raisins to represent gold doubloons. I packed grapes with sword picks for doing battle aboard the ship.  I have also included a tortilla treasure map with a cache of Pirate Booty underneath.  I witnessed Girlie sneaking booty out from under the map a couple of times while I was still working on this bento.

Here is the picture of her happily devouring this snacky bento while practicing her pirate talk:

Is your family pirate obsessed like ours?  We love pirates and were out at the local Ren Faire in our pirate garb this weekend, having a blast!  We practiced our Pirate talk throughout the day.

Now the part you’ve been waiting for, the treasure map!  Make a note of this piece before you continue along the hop:

Remember, every blog in the hop has a piece of the map to the bento booty treasure! Fair winds, me hearties! May you plunder one of the prizes we be offerin’ as booty!

Click on this button to continue:

 

Products used:

Sep17

Hello Kittylicious and Fun Shapes!

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Hello Kittylicious and Fun Shapes!

I am hammering out this post in the few minutes I have between customer calls and heading to the airport for Dreamforce!  I am excited to head to San Francisco for this amazing career-growth experience, but it also means a lot of running around trying to wrap up whatever I can at work for the week and do my best to make things easy for my husband and kids while I am gone. I have 3 days worth of lunches to show you today, and then on Wednesday be sure to come back here for the Bento Bloggers & Friends’ colossal Pirate Hop!  We each have a piece of a map and are giving away some awesome prizes for those who find our treasure chest!

Friday’s lunch was the same for both kids. They had leftover spaghetti in a thermos and some fruit and veggies in their Lock&Lock lunchboxes.

I packed a plum, strawberries, apricot, cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, and a babybel cheese with a star cut out in the wax.

Today, Little Dude has an Easy Lunchbox that is just filed to the brim with his favorite foods:

He has crackers, animal-shaped pieces of cheese, and grapes in the main compartment.  He has strawberries, plums, and pears in the fruit compartment.  He has his favorite trail mix in the small compartment.  He kept asking me if he could have his lunch right away.  He ate breakfast, but just wanted to dig into this lunch box immediately. Hopefully this will set his Monday off to a happy start!

I decided to give Girlie a Hello Kittylicious extravaganza.  I wanted to make sure she had a good display of love right before I take off for the week.  She has her Hello Kitty Lunchbag full of HK containers!

You can see the containers open and closed.  These are part of a nested 4 piece set we bought in Chinatown earlier this year.  She has her new favorite request , noodles with butter, in the short thermos.  She has milk in the taller thermos.  She has a chocolate chunk Chobani Champions, pears and plums, and cucumber with red bell pepper.  She will love this!

And now you get a sneak peek at tomorrow’s lunches!  I don’t usually pack ahead, but I figured I’d get one more lunch done before I go. These are packed in their Easy LunchBoxes:

They both have Lunch Punch sandwiches.  Girlie’s is Sunflower Seed Butter and Jam with a Sand*Wishes punch.  Dude’s is PB&J with a Critter Cutter Lunch Punch.  They have a cheese stick,  trail mix, grapes, and strawberries.  Girlie has the cutout of her sandwich filled with craisins.  Little dude has craisins and some yogurt pretzels in the small compartment.  Girlie has cucumber and red bell pepper in her small compartment.

I hope that will send a little mama-love their way while I am gone tomorrow.  I hate leaving them, but it helps that they are usually really good about it.  When I am gone during the school week, they are usually too busy to miss me.  I can’t wait to hear how their weeks were when I see them on Saturday morning and I am anxious to see if Girlie loses her tooth while I am gone.

Do you have any traditions you use when you part with your kids?  I’d love to hear about that! Leave me a comment if you’d like to share.

Here are the products I used in this lunch:

Sep13

Pink Pinwheels & Smart Dogs with NEW ELB Mini-Dippers!

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Pink Pinwheels & Smart Dogs with NEW ELB Mini-Dippers!

Wednesday and Thursdays lunches for this week are all about showing off my new EasyLunchboxes Mini-Dippers!  These new containers fit inside an EasyLunchbox and are leakproof, so they are perfect for holding a small amount of sauce, dressing, or ketchup.  Here’s the lunch I sent for Girlie on Wednesday:

She has PINK pinwheels!  I got this idea from Kendra at Biting the Hand That Feeds You.  I took the dark red juice from roasting beets earlier in the week and added a small amount to some low-fat cream cheese to make an awesome pink cream cheese that is free from synthetic dyes.  You can’t taste any beets mixed in.  I spread the cream cheese on a tortilla and added some jam.  These would be great for a Pinkalicious party! She has pears and pluots in the small compartment and carrots, snow peas, and red bell peppers to dip in a small amount of low-fat ranch dressing.  She also got a few yogurt-covered star cookies in another mini-dipper.  The dippers held the extra foods perfectly and I did not have to worry about anything spilling over or getting mixed up.  These will definitely become a lunchtime staple around here.

Little Dude’s lunch was basically the same, but packed in his Goodbyn Bynto:

Instead of veggies and dip, he has his favorite food: yogurt!  He got an Orange Vanilla Chobani Champions.  I also separated his fruit into heart-shaped silicon cups.  I was a little worried he might not eat so much pink because he’s becoming very aware of the fact that pink is for girls, but lunch is lunch and he pretty much cleaned out that Bynto!

Today’s lunch also features mini-dippers, but this time for ketchup.  Here is Girlie’s EasyLunchbox:

She has a “California Tommy,” which is my vegetarian take on the Texas version (which is actually a Philadelphia food). My version uses crescent roll dough, a smart dog, sliced cheese, and some vegetarian bacon strips.  This recipe was featured in the new Cooking with Trader Joe’s – Easy Lunch Boxes cookbook!  Today’s lunch has the California Tommy with ketchup, cheese stars, the applesauce we made this week, and a veggie mixture of cucumber, red bell pepper, and grape tomatoes.  Little Dude’s lunch is the same, except that he got trail mix instead of veggies.

Have you tried the new mini-dippers yet?  They’re available on Amazon now for $7.95 for a set of 8.

Check out my friend Stephanie’s website, A Pocket Full of Buttons, for a collection of mini-dipper bento lunches.

And now for the exciting cookbook news: Cooking With Trader Joe’s – Easy Lunch Boxes is out this Saturday!  I’ve already pre-ordered from Amazon, but I am definitely going to try to snag a copy at Barnes & Noble too!  To give you an idea of how fabulous this book looks, here is a screenshot of my California Tommy recipe and photo:

Pretty cool, right?  I got an advance copy online to review, but I just can’t wait to get my hands on the real thing!  I have three recipes in the book: California Tommy Dogs, Turkey-Day Pinwheels, and Heart-Shaped Pizza.  These are all real recipes that I regularly make for my family.  Easy and fun to do!  The California Tommy Dogs and Heart-Shaped Pizza are generally made for dinner and then re-used in the lunchbox.  Both can be frozen and defrosted overnight for more convenience. If you try these, please let me know if you liked the recipe.  No comment necessary if it was a flop! :)

There are over 80 amazing recipes in this book with great photographs to give you some inspiration.  Here’s a list of the sections to give you a good idea of what you can expect from this book:

  • Pack it (Really) Fast!
  • Pack it Early!
  • Pack it Kid-Friendly!
  • Pack it Playful!
  • Pack a Snack!
  • Pack it Yummy!
  • Pack it for Work!
  • Pack it Veggie!
  • Pack it Vegan!
  • Pack it Gluten-Free!

My kids made the transition to vegetarian a few months ago and I am excited to try some of these recipes in their lunches.  We’ve also been toying with the idea of going gluten-free, and this book would be an excellent resource for starting that change. I am thrilled to be a part of this new cookbook along with many of my bento-blogging idols!

Here are the products I used or wrote about today:

Sep11

SandWishes Monday and Leftovers Tuesday

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SandWishes Monday and Leftovers Tuesday

I opened my mailbox on Saturday and found a very exciting delivery waiting for me: my new Lunch Punches!  We already had a set of Transport and Critter Cutter Lunch Punches, but Girlie and I had been admiring the SandWishes set for quite some time. The very generous folks at the Lunch Punch sent us a set to use on the blog AND an additional set to use in a giveaway!  Stay tuned for details on that giveaway next month!

Of course, I got right to work making some extra-cute sandwiches.  Girlie chose the Fairy Princess and Little Dude asked for the Frog Prince.  Their creations are shown below:

Girlie has a sunflower seed butter and jam sandwich because she’s suddenly decided that she does not like peanut butter, but loves sunflower seeds.  Little Dude has the standard PB&J.  They both have some white cheddar cheese and blueberries.  They also have homemade applesauce from apples we picked ourselves over the weekend! We took a trip over to Shady Brook farm to pick apples and blackberries and it was so much fun!  Girlie has carrots, snow peas, and grape tomatoes in the small compartment and Little Dude has goldfish crackers.

I love how the Lunch Punches are very easy to use.  I just make the sandwich I was going to make anyway, and then press the cutter on top to make a cute shape with fun impressions.  I find that for the ones with cutouts, like the star on the fairy, it is best to punch the bread slices individually and then make the sandwich.  For the ones that rely more in impressions, like the frog, it is easier to make the sandwich first and then press.  The cutters are BPA free and dishwasher safe.  I’ve used our other sets countless times and have not seen any warping from dishwasher use.  The kids really love these. You can use my Lunch Punch tag on the sidebar to see some other examples of Lunch Punch sandwiches.

Today’s lunch was the same for both kids, so I only took one picture.

They’ve got their Kotobuki Frog and Panda boxes along with a Thermos of hot lunch leftovers (a rice and veggies mix).  Girlie also has a green smoothie that isn’t really green because the berries have stolen the kale’s thunder!   The smoothie is frozen in a ball jar and will defrost in time for lunch.  The lower level of the lunchbox is packed with crackers and cheese cubes on one side and cucumber with grape tomatoes on the other.  I used some cute kids’ food baran to keep the sides separate.  The top compartment contains peaches, pluots, and some of the blackberries we picked over the weekend.

I have always wanted to go apple picking and I really thought that it was a fall activity.  The weather was gorgeous over the weekend and we were nearby the farm, so we decided to check it out.  I thought that since it is still summer, we’d be a little early, but it would still be fun.  Actually, we were a little late (but it was still fun!).  The trees had plenty of fruit on them still, but we had to take a close look at the apples to make sure they weren’t over-ripe.  The blackberries were nearly picked clean!  We had a blast anyway, because we got to ride in a wagon pulled by a tractor out into a field and fill up our bags with apples straight off the tree.  When we got home, I was surprised that Little Dude was the one to volunteer to help make the applesauce and Girlie ran off to go play.  Dude stayed by my side the whole time, carefully washing apples, while I peeled and chopped.  It was nice to have a project to do together.  The applesauce was in Monday’s lunch and we’ll be eating it all week if I don’t decide to freeze some.

Here are a couple of cute picture of the wagon ride and the picking:

I love having these simple family moments with them.  They are so spoiled and it is odd that we have to go out of our way to show them activities like this.  I want them to have the connection with the planet and I think these types of outings really help.  Little Dude was particularly enthusiastic.  I thought he’d get frustrated with having to pick out only the ripe blackberries, but he made it into a game! He pretended to be a robot and used his hands as robot claws and picked with precision. It was so fun to watch!  They were both so good!

Has your family been to any “pick-your-own” events?  What other fruits are fun and easy for little ones to do?

Here are the products I used in this lunch:

Sep7

Today is Flying Friday!

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Today is Flying Friday!

I can’t say enough about how excited I am about this school year!  Both of my kids seem really happy with their new classrooms and their new teachers are awesome.  Drop-off has been a breeze for both kids, without the typical clinging and whining.  A whole week of excellent school behavior is definitely something to celebrate!

Little Dude’s preschool class is definitely “bigger” than last year’s toddler room.  He gets a lot of the same programming that Girlie gets in Kindergarten, with classroom jobs, weather, calendar, and most importantly, potty time!  They have a fun tradition for reinforcing days of the week using themes.  The days are referred to as Marching Monday, Tapping Tuesday, Wiggling Wednesday, Thumping Thursday, and Flying Friday.  I’ll have to find some creative ways to work these day themes into my lunches from time to time just for giggles.  Today’s theme was easy because I already had a Lunch Punch to match Flying Friday:

Little Dude’s lunch is packed in an EasyLunchBox and he has a PB&J airplane sandwich with cheddar cheese cubes.  I used some alphabet picks to spell the word “FLY” and I colored in the airplane cutout with food markers.  He has apple slices with a star cutout and his favorite trail mix.  I’d guess that he’ll be playing with his lunch today!

Girlie loves her new hot pink Goodbyn Bynto and I made her a great lunch to take in that container today:

She has a Chobani Champions and some trail mix in the largest compartment.  She has mini pita sandwiches that are stuffed with cream cheese, cucumber, and tomato in the middle compartment.  Her small compartment contains mango and blueberries.  I’ll be honest with you; I really wanted to keep that lunch for myself.  It had all of my favorite foods in it too!

I also packed my husband’s lunch – that’s 3 times this week!  The new Lock&Lock Lunchbox set is working out great for him.  He can easily microwave the hot stuff separately from the cold foods:

He has leftover chicken and vegetable coconut curry that I made in the crockpot earlier in the week.  The other container has garlic naan, mango and blueberries, and cucumber, tomato, bell peppers, and a laughing cow light cheese wedge.  That should be filling and delicious.  I also cut a star out of the naan to put on the chicken curry because it just looked to boring without it.  Yes, this has become an illness for me.

I am trying to mix up the kids’ lunches more to give them lots of good vegetarian options (they are both vegetarian by their own choice).  If you have a favorite kid-friendly vegetarian lunch to share, please send it my way!

I hope your first week back to school went as smoothly as ours did! Have a great weekend!

These are the products I used in today’s lunch:

Sep6

Tooth Fairy Bento!

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Tooth Fairy Bento!

Big news!!! After what seems like FOREVER, my Girlie’s loose tooth has finally fallen out!  I just took a peek at the Bear’s Loose Tooth bento that I made to celebrate the tooth becoming loose, and that was dated July 11, so it took nearly 2 months to fall out!  Is that a long time or is that typical?

Naturally, she was very excited about the tooth being lost at school and eager for her visit from the tooth fairy.  The impending fairy visit even encouraged her to get to sleep a little early, which I celebrated just as much!  Of course, I had to commemorate her lost tooth with a special Tooth Fairy Bento for school today.  Check out her EasyLunchBox below:

She has a tooth fairy quesadilla (there are actually two of them stacked on top of each other) and a quesadilla tooth.  The little yellow dots you see are crystal sprinkles.  I sprinkled pink (the pink are hard to see) and yellow ones in there for fairy dust.  She has cheese cubes with alphabet picks that spell out “FAIRY.”  She has a watermelon princess crown with mango and blueberries for fruit.  She has broccoli and light ranch dressing for dip.  I also packed her a yogurt on the side, because it just didn’t seem like enough food as it was.

Little Dude has the Kotobuki Frog lunchbox today.  He usually gets the Panda, but he’s been pretending to be a frog lately, so I thought he’d get a kick out of that! This is 3 different lunchbox styles in as many days… I hope he’s enjoying the variety!

Little Dude has watermelon, mango and blueberries in the top compartment, a whole wheat mini-bagel with low-fat cream cheese and some cheddar cheese triangles in the middle compartment, and a Chobani Champions cup on the side.  This is definitely not the most balanced lunch I’ve ever made (It is virtually all fruit and dairy!), but it has lots of healthy vitamins, calcium, and protein, and I know he will love it.  He’s been very excited about his lunches and his brand new Camelbak water bottle all week (he actually slept with the water bottle one night!) and I really believe this is helping him look forward to school. Today was day 3 and he walked right in, gave me a kiss, and got straight to playing.  No drama.  I am so happy and will definitely keep rewarding him with his favorite lunch foods!

Here’s a picture of my Little Dude sleeping with his new water bottle:

I couldn’t resist sneaking in for a picture of that!  And here’s a picture of the gap-tooth girlie trying to show off the missing tooth:

Has your kid lost a tooth yet?  How have you celebrated their big day?  I’d love to hear other ideas to keep the excitement going!

Here are the products I used in today’s lunch:

Sep5

PB&A Pita Pockets with Chobani

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PB&A Pita Pockets with Chobani

First day of school was a huge success! Both kids seem to love their new classrooms and teachers.  Seeing a lot of faces from last year’s classes helped a bunch, as well as all the new activities and awesome playgrounds.

For Day 2 lunch, I am testing out a new kind of lunchbox – the Goodbyn Bynto.  I’ve wanted to try this style of lunchbox for a while because of the bright colors, deeper sections, and versatile 3 section layout.  Also, a friend of mine pointed out that it fits a container of Chobani Champions yogurt perfectly in the large container.  I found a great deal on these for about $7 each (still twice the cost of my treasured EasyLunchBoxes) and decided to give them a try to mix things up a little.   Here is my first round of Bynto Lunches:

Girlie has veggies in the smallest section, with cucumber, orange bell pepper, and a tomato grown from our own container garden! Little dude has Watermelon in his small section, with a bunny fork pick.  He is really excited about decorations in his lunchbox right now.  They both have a hard boiled egg in a heart cup with Peanut Butter and Apple pita pockets in the medium section.  The largest section contains Chobani Champions yogurt (Orange Vanilla for Girlie and VerryBerry for Little Dude) and yogurt pretzels.  Girlie has a plum and Dude has some craisins.

I invented this recipe for the PB&A pita pockets on the fly, but it was so good that Little Dude was licking the bowl after I scooped out the filling.  Of course, he was also barking like a puppy while he licked and slurped, but that’s ok too!  Here is my “recipe” based on rough estimates:

3 mini pita pockets, sliced in half

1/3 Cup Natural Peanut Butter (you could substitute sunflower butter if you have allergy restrictions)

1 Tbsp Honey

1/2 Apple (peeled and diced)

Sprinkle of Cinnamon Sugar (we love the Trader Joe’s cinnamon sugar grinder)

Mix it all up all the ingredients for filling and stuff in the pita pocket halves.  YUM.  I had a little bit of extra filling and I mixed that with some plain fat-free Greek yogurt to eat as a snack later.

Try it and let me know what you think!  I only made 3 little half-pita sandwiches each, but they had plenty of protein from the egg and Chobani, so they did not need a lot of sandwich to go with that.

I think I packed all of Little Dude’s favorite things today.  He is crazy about Watermelon, hard boiled eggs, Chobani Champions, and yogurt pretzels.  He was so excited for those mini-pitas too.  When he saw his finished lunchbox, he immediately grabbed it and carried it to the door. He couldn’t even wait for me to put my shoes on to get in the car and go.  I think it is so funny that these lunches are becoming his big motivator for going to school!  Or maybe the lunches symbolize the fun he’ll have when he gets there.  Either way, it is making a big difference and we’re not seeing the drop-off drama we had last year, and I am thrilled!

Here are the products I used in today’s lunches:

Sep4

First Day of School!

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First Day of School!

Today is the first day of school!  I can barely contain my excitement! Check out my cuties all pumped to start their first day:


Girlie is starting Kindergarten today and Little Dude is in the 3 year-old room at the preschool.  Girlie has been looking forward to school starting all summer, but Little Dude is more in-the-moment.  I don’t think he really understood that school was starting up again until I got out all the bento supplies to get ready for today’s lunch.  I was organizing everything yesterday and he came over and started going through all my sandwich cutters, cookie cutters, lunchboxes, and picks. He got very excited and asked me to make him a “choo-choo sandwich” with an “elephant decoration” (a pick) in his lunchbox for his new classroom. How could I say no?  I did my best to make it relevant to first day of school, by including the number 3 for being in the 3 year-old room.  I thought it was funny that the re-emergence of his lunchbox made school starting more real.  After he made his lunch requests, he could not stop talking about going back to school, and his drop-off was remarkably tear-free.  Girlie was much more laid-back and gave me creative license for today’s lunch.   She was much more focused on seeing all her friends.

This is my Girlie’s back-to-school lunch for kindergarten:


She has a K-shaped cheese sandwich, grapes, and a hard-boiled hello kitty egg in the large compartment.  She has pineapple, blueberries, and star-shaped watermelon chunks in the fruit compartment.  She has baked acorn squash that I mashed with some butter and cinnamon sugar in the small compartment.  It is like baby food, but everyone in our family loves it!

This is what I packed for Little Dude:

He has his requested choo-choo PB&J sandwich. which I decorated with cheese stars and a cheese #3.  The first number I put on came out perfectly, but it mysteriously disappeared after he came to take a peek.  This one was a little blurry, but he will love it anyway.  He also has grapes, blueberries, pineapple, and watermelon stars.  My kids love fruit! He also has the acorn squash mash.

While I was at it, I even packed for my husband!  This from our new Lock & Lock lunchbox set:

He has leftovers from our BBQ this weekend.  He’s got a salad of romaine, cucumber, and orange bell pepper with a Trader Joe’s chili lime chicken burger and some carne asada.  I gave him a small container with light ranch dressing.  A second Lock & Lock box (the bag holds up to 3 boxes, but I needed room for ice pack, napkins, and utensils) has blueberries, pineapple, and cantaloupe in one compartment, pretzel slims and cheese cubes in another, and celery with roasted peppers in the large space.

I already received glowing reviews of my husband’s lunch via text message.  I am excited to see how the kids ate at school… that’s usually the best testimony!  I am already plotting ideas for the rest of this week’s lunches. I am so happy to have my bento-obsession back in full-swing!

In other news, we hosted a birthday party for my one-year-old cousin over the weekend.  I was talking about wanting to make a fruit salad in a watermelon bowl and Girlie came up with idea of her own!  She wanted to buy fresh strawberries and make “hula girls” by placing a canned pineapple ring on top of the berry and adding a pick for the face.  I was very happy not to be asked to make rice krispy treats or cookies (knowing there would be plenty of cake and ice cream at the party), so I quickly agreed and added canned pineapple rings to my list! You can see both of our creations below:

Her hula girls are cute, right?  I was very proud of her creativity and more than a little pleased that my playing with food seems to be rubbing off on her a little!  Everyone at the party oohed and aaaahed over her creation and she was beaming.   She’s getting so big now and impresses me with her ideas all the time.

Did your kids start school today?  I’d love to hear any suggestions you have for keeping up the momentum for being excited about school.

Here are the products I used in packing lunches today: