Spoooooky lunches for yooooou!

Happy Halloween!!! OK, a day early but I'm the first to wish you that, right?

Here are the kids lunches for tomorrow - I'm sad Halloween will be wrapping up, it's been so much fun.

Here is the 3 year olds. Now, I know I don't usually send things like Oreos but I couldn't resist making an Oreo bat with fruit leather wings! I melted a couple chocolate chips in the microwave in order to stick on the eyes.

She also has a mini waffle sandwich (jam in between) - we get the Earths Best mini waffles. The stem is a piece of veggie booty and the face is fruit leather.

The boo is another mini waffle sandwich topped with a multigrained Ritz cracker with peanut butter and alphabet preztels to spell out BOO.

Then peach applesauce with a fruit leather pumpkin and a melon ghost with grapes. The spider is stuck into a piece of melon in an orange little cup as I had a space to fill!


The 6 year old is a lot of the same only he can eat dairy but his school is nut free.

So instead of the cracker/peanut butter, he gets preztels spelling out BOO on another waffle sandwich. He also got a Babybel cheese - I stuck a pumpkin I cut out of paper on top to make it Halloween-ish, and a pick to make the pumpkin stem.


Normally their snacks are pretty boring (yogurt etc) so I don't bother posting them. This one is cute though, so why not! I had left over plastic test tubes from a party favor we made so I used them in their lunch. I alternated raisins and Floridas Natural Fruit thingies (OK, not the official name) so it was (sort of) orange and black. Hey they are natural, they can't be THAT orange, right?


Can't wait to see what you made for Halloween lunches! Make sure you send them to me at kimineurope @ hotmail.com

Oh, and a shout out to new reader Rachel for posting a comment - love those comments and so glad you are enjoying the blog!

Pumkinhead Bento

I love my little pumpkinheads. The 6 year old lost tooth #6 today. When he smiled, I told him he looked like a jack-o-lantern. He made me smile and said "Hmm, no gaps. Guess you are just a regular pumpkin then".

I made something for the 3 year old to take into daycare tomorrow, think the kids and teachers will enjoy it. Used food coloring and made orange rice krispie squares, pressed it into a round dish and added a fruit leather face and paper stem.



I didn't do it for the 6 year olds class, the whole allergy thing freaks me out. However, I couldn't not give him a special treat so I made him a little rice krispie pumpkin. The stem is one of my flower leaf picks.

He also has melon and cheese and crackers. The orange Ritz would have probably be more pumpkiny but I'm a sucker for anything labelled "whole grain". Behind it in a little container is pita chips I made with a pumpkin cookie cutter. Take the pita, cut it up, spray with some cooking spray and bake. They are crunchy and delish!


And the 3 year old's lunch. No dairy makes it tricker. (Hello dairy allergy, you are cramping my theme style, go aaaaway! LOL)

She has pita chips with salsa (there is a pumpkin in the salsa but don't feel bad if you can't see it LOL), watermelon with a spider and orange flower picks, veggie booty with a black cat and finally, crackers with peanut butter and a fruit leather face.



And finally, this super cute lunch submitted by Amber!

Halloween by Lisa and Christine!

Thanks to Christine and Lisa for submitting these awesome Halloween lunches!

If you have any lunches you'd like to send in pictures for, please send them to kimineurope @ hotmail.com Right now we are loving Halloween but send them all in!

Happy Haunting Bento

The first Halloween bento! I decided I'd do at least 2, maybe 3 - because Halloween + bento = so much fun! So this is number 1 and both kids got the same thing.

Ghosty sandwiches cut with a cookie cutter with icing eyes and a Cheerio mouth. Spooooky, isn't it? You can buy a package of icing eyes at baking supply stores, they are cheap. I don't use them all time but my kids enjoy them as they feel like they are getting candy in their lunch.

Then, cantaloupe pumpkins cut with a small cutter and a black cat pick. A tip - I hide all the scraps under the cut outs so I don't waste it then layer the cute things on top.

Finally, had to have something orange and black so orange fishy crackers with black raisins.



I've got a few other ideas so I'll definitely make another on Halloween day and probably one more in between, depending on my time/energy/mojo/procrastination/laziness/general sloth like tenancies. Check back!

Just a small amount of cuteness....

Now, before you get any crazy ideas, not all of my lunches are cute. In fact, many are not so cute or even just plain boring.

This is the 6 year olds lunch from the other day. I was trying to throw his lunch together, leave for work and (oh crap, it's orange day) cover the 3 year old with orange stickers at the same time. Apparently no one in this house owns anything orange, who knew?

So I just try and add a little bit of cute on those days. Sometimes a little cute is better than no cute, right? I took whole grain alphabet pretzels (Blue Menu, from the Superstore) and pressed them into his sandwich to spell out his name. I added a hippo pick to his fruit and cut up his cereal bar so fishy crackers could swim around it. Quick, easy and done!



And speaking of orange day, Christine (who works at the 3 year olds daycare and is obviously much more organized than I am!) prepared this for her little boy:


Doing a one color lunch is always fun - or even a rainbow lunch!

Now, I need some comments on the following:

1) Halloween bento. Do I pack one on Halloween day because that makes sense or should I do it this week, so you can see ahead of time? Or maybe both? Let me know.

2) How the heck do I get people to post comments? I see lots of blogs and there are tons of comments so how do I get that happening? Do people not know how to comment? Or just too lazy like I usually am?? LOL I totally want this blog to be a network of sharing of ideas so I need to know you are out there! Random strangers, this means you too. Come on people, don't make me guilt you like this.

3) Finally, are there any themes you want me to bento? Any ideas? Tell me and I'll see what I can do. The rule will be I will only use what I have on hand so that I really have to use my old rusty noggin.

And what I did above is what one of the 3 year olds beloved teachers would call "the sandwich". Nice comment/yell at you/nice comment. HA! Is that not true, Krystal? And yet so fitting for a lunch blog!

The Pink Princess Pancake and the Blue Boat Bento

Doesn't that title sound like some sort of fairy tale?!

I wanted to make a princess lunch for the 3 year old - because what 3 year old girl wouldn't be into that? And if there is one thing we all know about princesses, they involve pink - lots of pink.

Her princess lunch consisted of blueberry applesauce with a princess ring stuck in it and watermelon with pink heart picks. The little containers have dried cranberries with a pink raccoon pick and a beautiful grape rose. At the bottom, tiara pancake (recipe below) sandwiches (2 pancakes with jam in the middle) adorned with raisins and fruit leather on a pink napkin.

The big highlight was the spoon. I got this set of 3 skinny spoons and forks the last time I was at Daiso and they have a seriously love for those little spoons, who knows why!



Now, I'm not a waster. I try and use all the scraps. So after I cut out the tiara pancakes, I had almost half pancakes left - but not really big enough to cut anything out of them. Sooooo, I trimmed them flat and they became boats for the 6 year olds lunch. I'm pretty sure he's glad he got boats instead of pretty, pretty princess.



I punched out fruit leather circles then punched out holes in the boats and stuck the portholes in. Little flags became the masts and you can't see it, but there are fruit leather waves.

Above, he has grapes with sea life picks and waffle mini pretzels with a cheese boat and fish, and more fruit leather waves. He enjoyed it but did file a complaint about his lack of ring!

On sports nights, we try and have some quick that we know the kids will eat and the night before it was pancakes, hence the leftovers. I always have a big container of homemade mix on hand to quickly throw them together.

Here is the recipe - now please note - this will make a big container - you will NOT use all this at once, this is to keep on hand! That could be mighty confusing!

Pancake Mix (to keep on hand)

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda

Mix together and store in an airtight container.

Now, when you want to use it, combine 1 egg, 3/4 cup of milk and 1 mashed banana in a bowl. Whisk in 1 cup of your mix. If you choose, fold in 3/4 cup of blueberries.

Cook pancakes in lightly greased pan.

So good and better than buying a bag of mix.

Bentos - By You!

This was so much fun, I'd love to keep it going! Send any pictures of your cute lunches to kimineurope @ hotmail.com and every couple of weeks (or when I get a few), I'll post them!

Quick shout out to Christine for always commenting on my posts and to Nic for posting about my blog on her Facebook yesterday. (Hi, Nic's friends!)

Here we go - your lunches! Make sure you leave a comment below and tell these ladies how much they rock for sharing their lunches!

These were Jen's first bentos - awesome job! She reported back that her kids ate every bite!


This bento is from Christine. She's seen my lunches for the last 4 years while caring for my babies and it's so much fun that she now has the cutest little boy to make bentos for!


This lunch is from Amber - she could have many lunches to make in years to come as her daughter is determined to marry my son! LOL


These adorable lunches are from Sarah. (We've just had our Thanksgiving here in Canada in case you are in the US and were wondering!)



And a Halloween one from Sarah: