Tagged: lunch

December 8, 2014

Advent Bento: 17 Days until Christmas!

Time for another installment of the Advent bentos! I got a tell you the truth, Mondays are hard lunch days for us. I usually buy groceries during the week, so by Monday, I’m usually at the end of the loaf of bread, or using up fruit before it goes bad, or making it a snacky lunch. Today was a day for snacky lunch! A do-it-yourself Lunchable, as it were… but still healthy and fun 🙂

And today’s advent surprise? A dulce de leche owl that we got from our Girl Scout fall nut sales 🙂

Advent Bento | OneCraftyThing.com

Main Round butter crackers, cheddar cheese cut into stars, little rounds of turkey deli meat.
Sides A Clementine orange and a surprise dulce de leche owl (from the Girl Scouts!)
Also included but not pictured green grapes and yogurt

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December 1, 2014

Advent Bento for the Holidays

After doing bento for a few years, it’s hard to come up with new themes every year, especially for the holidays. There are some things that MUST be done for certain holidays: Santas, trees, reindeer, etc. are a must for Christmas (since we celebrate it), turkeys are for thanksgiving, clovers are for St.Patrick’s day… And in a way, it’s instant theme, but on the other hand a bit limiting. Well, every year I try to think of a new Advent activity for the kiddos, and I thought it would be a good idea to bring it into lunch 🙂 So this year I’m doing advents bentos! I’m not going to be doing special bento every day, but I had the idea to do one every Monday, and for the lunches in between, I would give the kiddo one snack that would equal the number of days until Christmas. So for example, tomorrow she might get 23 goldfish crackers… I’ll send her a little note to count them!

But anyhow, for today, there are 24 days until Christmas and I thought it would be fun to have a little area with a surprise. So I just cut out a little piece of paper and taped it on top of the small section of our Easy Lunchbox. I had some extra Santa hat stickers from a kid craft we did, so I just stuck it on top to be festive. Can you tell what the surprise was? A little hard to tell, but I found some small coal-shaped pieces of chocolate for fun. I was going to put in a different treat, but honestly, the kiddos were acting up this morning and being difficult (it’s hard for everybody to get back into the swing of things after a week-long vacation), so I thought this was appropriate 😉

Main PB&J sandwich stamped and numbered cutouts. The holly decoration are just sprinkles.
Sides A mandarin orange and a half arranged like a wreath and coal chocolate pieces.
Also included but not pictured I thought this lunch was kind of light, so I included some bunny cheddar crackers, a mango fruit pouch and yogurt.

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November 27, 2014

Happy Turkey Day! Bento

Since there is no school this week, I made this bento at the end of last week. I meant for it to look like the turkey had a plaque behind him saying “Thanks” but it turned out that it ended up looking like a huge turkey afro, which, in retrospect, is really funny. That’s what happens when you’re dead set on using certain elements (the turkey is made out of pumpkin bread with all kinds of veggies in it) and end up with something that wasn’t quite in the plans.

In today’s lunch:

Main Turkey is made with pumpkin bread (loaded with zucchini, carrots, and squash). I baked the bread in a special round pan for cake pops, but they only came up as half-spheres. His beak is a cashew and his waddle is a craisin. His eyes are candy eyes and his tail is made from candy corn that I stuck into a slit in the side of the body (in retrospect, some peanut butter would’ve been good to secure the tail). Turkey afro is just a PB&J sandwich 🙂
Sides Cutie orange flower with a grape for the center. Trail mix with a mellowcreme marshmallow
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

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November 14, 2014

Octopus, Octopus, lurking in the water bento

A friend of mine gave cookie cutters as a party favor for her son’s birthday and this awesome octopus was one of them. It’s adorable! So I had to make a lunch out of it. It’s not the first time I’ve done an under-the-sea type of lunch (and most likely not the last!) but it was simple and easy to do with a few little details to make it fun. I made a simple tutorial for the squid here, so that you too can recreate this lunch!

Main PB&J Octopus. His tentacle-suckers were little pieces of cereal that I stuck in between the sandwich. It was tasty and it gave a plain cookie-cutter sandwich some nice detail, along with the candy eyes. I just broke the little cereals in two to get such even suckers.
Sides Goldfish crackers (naturally) and strawberry squid (tute here) on black grapes. The eye on the squid was just a little piece of bread on which I colored an eye with an edible marker.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

For this lunch, I used:

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October 29, 2014

Monsters of Halloween Bentos!

Today, I’m part of the Bento Bloggers and Friends Hallowe’en Hop! Halloween is an awesome time for bento makers because of all the fun themes that arise from the season! And today is also special because it’s a two-fer 😉 I made one for my older kiddo to take to school and one for my preschool kiddo to eat at home, because she has very sweetly been asking for “pretty” lunches like her sister. She wants in on the fun too 🙂

The first one is for the older kiddo!

In the bento above:

Main Really, the “main” is three PB&J mini sandwiches shaped like bats! I used these for Halloween last year but love them so much that I brought them back… also, it goes with the “vampire” theme of one of the sides.
Sides Pomegranate seeds for a bloody vampire grin :), green grapes, and a 1/2 pear Frankenstein. His hair and eyebrows are an avocado skin that was well cleaned out (I had avocado for lunch yesterday and kept the peel) and his eyes are pre-made candy eyes. Teeth are just some mandarin skins (I had mandarins, too) I tucked into his mouth. His “bolts” on either side are a bit hard to see but they are also green grapes.
Also Included but not Pictured Yogurt

And for the preschooler, I made a slightly younger version of the above, but with some snacky changes that she would like. This was lunch:

Main 2 bone-shaped peanut butter sandwiches (no jam).
Sides A mandarin (with a jack-o’lantern face drawn on), a 1/2 of a pear Frankenstein (with smaller eyes and avocado hair), a banana ghost with chocolate chip eyes/mouth, six baby carrot sticks.

For more amazing Hallowe’en lunches, continue on to the next awesome bento blog on our hop! Just click on the image below!

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October 22, 2014

Plants vs Zombies Bento

This week’s bento is sort of following the Halloween theme of the month, but mostly just the fun theme. Plants vs Zombies! When this came out I played it all the time 🙂 and now the kiddo plays it every so often, too. I’ve been wanting to do a zombie lunch for a bit and had a bit of a debate of whether it should be realistic zombies or more cartoon zombies. These guys won! I’m glad because it was one of my more fun lunches to make.

Main PB & strawberry jam double stack sandwich– the bottom two layers are the shape of the whole head and the top layer has the mouth cut out so that I could place the teeth (cut freehand, but outlined first with an edible pen so I knew where to cut). Inside the mouth, I put strawberry jam for gums and pieces of bread cut into teeth shapes. The green stuff on top is just peanut butter with a teensy bit of green and a little black. The eyes are made from gum paste (I’m experimenting with different materials to see which holds up best — gum paste dries pretty hard) and are dotted with black edible marker. The tiny pieces of black hair and the nose holes are cut pieces of black licorice whips.
Sides Nuts with eyes (I used pre-made ones from Wilton)! (like the walnuts in the game!) and a mandarin(with drawn on sharpie face) in a flower cup.
Included but not Pictured Yogurt

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October 21, 2014

This Year’s Halloween Costume

Ah to be seven and to have a limitless imagination! This year, my silliest kiddo, my eldest, has decided that she would be (among all the princesses and kitties) a washing machine for Halloween. Yep. A washing machine. It was a wonderful choice and I made her costume from a box and a lot of tape (among other things). But for lunch I made her this silly thing. It’s not my most impressive lunch but it was a fun inside joke, as her school friends haven’t seen her costume yet. She giggled at the sight of it in the morning and I hope she had another giggle at lunch.

Main PB&J (double stacked) washing machine 🙂 I made a small hole in the middle and used the round bread for the head. Crust for hair, a little bit of nori for her smile and candy eyes. Inside the washing machine, the “laundry” made of non-pareils.
Sides Green grapes and cantaloupe, as well as a mandarin
Included but not Pictured Yogurt

For this lunch I used:

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October 10, 2014

The First of the Halloween Bentos!

This week, we started Halloween bentos! Halloween is my absolute most favorite time of the year. And we are a tiny bit hardcore about it. This year, it’s a little busier than previous years because I’ve gone back to work for a good portion of the week, but we still try to be Halloweeny 😉 So this is the first Halloween bento of the season and non-sandwich one at that!

Main A fun Halloween shaped pasta with cat, pumpkins, witches, and bats 🙂 Red sauce in a silicone baking cup, with mozzarella cheese details.
Sides Trader Joe’s Halloween Joe Joes and two mandarins. I used a sharp paring knife to cut out the face details of the mandarins.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

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October 2, 2014

A Frozen Bento: Anna of Arendelle

Today’s bento is all about Frozen’s Anna 🙂 It’s been a year since it came out and I still get an enthusiastic “ME!!!” from all three kiddos when I ask who wants to watch the movie. Their enthusiasm is catching, so today’s bento is all about Disney’s favorite little sister.
In today’s lunch

Main PBJ with carrot hair, cut with a peeler. It’s pretty hard to braid carrots, I’ll tell you, though, so I had to hold her hair down in a couple of places with some toothpicks (mainly the top). Anna’s eyes are white fondant and two hard blue candies we just got in a goodie bag from a party. I lined her eyes with black edible markers. Her mouth is fondant with a tad of pink food dye. Here is a tip on the fondant: let it dry completely before “gluing” them on to the bread (I used a bit of peanut butter), otherwise it will melt on the bread in the container. Nose and freckles made with edible marker.
Sides A carved Fuji apple and red grapes with a green “frozen” heart.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

Today, I used:

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September 24, 2014

Does a bear poop in the woods? A Charmin(g) Bento

Yesterday, I was getting the kiddos ready for school and scrolling through my usual websites when a friend showed me a blog post by Baby Sideburns, which was about the pressure she felt from all those Pinterest lunches that she sees. She pointed out my Elsa lunch (in a rather funny matter) as an example of doing too much for lunch time. I totally get that– I know it’s not for everyone and I’ve had people tell me that I’m nuts for doing this at all. I must have too much time on my hands (nope, 3 small children, household, and a job) or I must be trying to make other kids jealous of mine (nope, I know my kid’s whole class — I used to teach them drawing — and every kid who mentioned it to me seems pretty cool about it) or whatnot.

I know I’m rambling a bit. Stay with me here.

I know some people see the Pinterest stuff as one mom one-upping the next. But call me an idealist when I say that I hope that more than making people feel bad, I (and all my Pinterest-posting crafty friends) am really looking to put out inspiration into the world. Not only inspiration to make lunches fun, ( because, I know just as well as anyone that lunch is just lunch), but really, to make some mundane tasks (packing kid lunches!) more fun for me and once in a while, make a kid smile. That ain’t so bad, is it?

So to make myself smile, my kiddo smile (potty humor is big around here), and hopefully some of my followers smile, today I made a bear pooping in the woods bento. And I want to tell everyone, I was inspired by Baby Sideburns’ bento! Thanks Baby Sideburns!

In today’s lunch:

Main A PB & strawberry jam bear sandwich; the toilet roll is a piece of a Pirouette wafer wrapped in a little bit of white fondant. The bear poop is mini chocolate chips 😉
Sides Trail mix and galia melon trees
Also included but not pictured A fuji apple for snack time

Today I used:

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