I’ve been meaning to post this lunch since Thursday but I’ve been under the weather, so it’s going to be smooshed together in one of two Easter posts. I actually had planned a different lunch altogether with nothing but bunnies but you have to improvise when your bunny-shaped eggs won’t take well to the egg molds. So here we go, an Easter themed bento 🙂

In this lunch:

---

Main A cream cheese sandwich with a little mozzarella tail. In the baking cup, cheddar bunnies.
Sides  An egg cut to look like a chick — actually, it was supposed to look like a rabbit but oh well. The chick has a piece of carrot for the beak and sprinkles for the eyes and sushi grass around it. Also a blueberry carrot “patch” consisting of baby carrots (with dill for the greens) simply set into blueberries.
Also Included but not Pictured String cheese and a banana

---

Also in this post, the kiddos’ Easter eggs! We had lots of fun with the rice dyeing method of coloring Easter eggs that even the two year old kiddo did it and did it well. It was really simple.

You need:

• Containers with lids, or, alternately, disposable cups and tin foil/plastic wrap, or whatever will cover the top completely.
• 1/4 cup of rice for each container
• Food dye
• Hard-boiled eggs

And the (super easy) instructions:

1. Pour the 1/4 cup of rice into each container (we used cups because we had recycled our containers already).
2. Place 15-20 drops of dye in each of the colors you want.
3. Place hard-boiled egg inside and cover the top with lid or foil/plastic wrap
4. Shake vigorously (or until you giggle).

And that’s it! That’s all. Some tips we learned:

• The sooner you put the eggs in after you put the dye in, the more vibrant/more colored your egg will be.
• For speckled eggs, dye the rice and wait 15 minutes to 1/2 hour. When we first started our project, we put the dye into the rice and were shaking up the rice and then Dad came in with our take-out dinner, so we had to wait to dye the eggs. The result was speckled eggs because with the time we gave it, the dye had absorbed more into the rice.
• You can put them in different colors after each layer is done. Each kiddo was given 3 eggs (so few because only ONE of the three actually eats hard-boiled eggs) so to keep the activity going, we put them in different colors. I think the ones my eldest kiddo did were the loveliest, with the “Monet-inspired” one seen below as my favorite 🙂
• For younger kids, I’d use the lidded containers. My kids used the tin foil and shook them so hard that some ripped through the top and lost some rice, getting it pretty much all over the table. So much for a no-mess activity!

Here were the best of the best, done (in order)  by eldest kiddo (7), youngest kiddo (2), and middle kiddo (4). Love that we got such great results by putting them in different colors. The layered approach was really great.

Today, I used: